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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/11752-0.txt b/11752-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9b62bb6 --- /dev/null +++ b/11752-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6895 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11752 *** + +CHIVALRY + +JAMES BRANCH CABELL + +1921 + + + + + + +TO +ANNE BRANCH CABELL + + + "AINSI A VOUS, MADAME, A MA TRÈS HAULTE ET + TRÈS NOBLE DAME, A QUI J'AYME A DEVOIR + ATTACHEMENT ET OBÉISSANCE, + J'ENVOYE CE LIVRET." + + + + + +Introduction + + +Few of the more astute critics who have appraised the work of James +Branch Cabell have failed to call attention to that extraordinary +cohesion which makes his very latest novel a further flowering of the +seed of his very earliest literary work. Especially among his later +books does the scheme of each seem to dovetail into the scheme of the +other and the whole of his writing take on the character of an +uninterrupted discourse. To this phenomenon, which is at once a fact and +an illusion of continuity, Mr. Cabell himself has consciously +contributed, not only by a subtly elaborate use of conjunctions, by +repetition, and by reintroducing characters from his other books, but by +actually setting his expertness in genealogy to the genial task of +devising a family tree for his figures of fiction. + +If this were an actual continuity, more tangible than that fluid +abstraction we call the life force; if it were merely a tireless +reiteration and recasting of characters, Mr. Cabell's work would have an +unbearable monotony. But at bottom this apparent continuity has no more +material existence than has the thread of lineal descent. To insist +upon its importance is to obscure, as has been obscured, the epic range +of Mr. Cabell's creative genius. It is to fail to observe that he has +treated in his many books every mainspring of human action and that his +themes have been the cardinal dreams and impulses which have in them +heroic qualities. Each separate volume has a unity and harmony of a +complete and separate life, for the excellent reason that with the +consummate skill of an artist he is concerned exclusively in each book +with one definite heroic impulse and its frustrations. + +It is true, of course, that like the fruit of the tree of life, Mr. +Cabell's artistic progeny sprang from a first conceptual germ--"In the +beginning was the Word." That animating idea is the assumption that if +life may be said to have an aim it must be an aim to terminate in +success and splendor. It postulates the high, fine importance of excess, +the choice or discovery of an overwhelming impulse in life and a +conscientious dedication to its fullest realization. It is the quality +and intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological +norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the +exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, +aimless mediocrities about him. What the dream is, matters not at +all--it may be a dream of sainthood, kingship, love, art, asceticism or +sensual pleasure--so long as it is fully expressed with all the +resources of self. It is this sort of completion which Mr. Cabell has +elected to depict in all his work: the complete sensualist in +Demetrios, the complete phrase-maker in Felix Kennaston, the complete +poet in Marlowe, the complete lover in Perion. In each he has shown that +this complete self-expression is achieved at the expense of all other +possible selves, and that herein lies the tragedy of the ideal. +Perfection is a costly flower and is cultured only by an uncompromising, +strict husbandry. + +All this is, we see, the ideational gonfalon under which surge the +romanticists; but from the evidence at hand it is the banner to which +life also bears allegiance. It is in humanity's records that it has +reserved its honors for its romantic figures. It remembers its Caesars, +its saints, its sinners. It applauds, with a complete suspension of +moral judgment, its heroines and its heroes who achieve the greatest +self-realization. And from the splendid triumphs and tragic defeats of +humanity's individual strivings have come our heritage of wisdom and of +poetry. + +Once we understand the fundamentals of Mr. Cabell's artistic aims, it is +not easy to escape the fact that in _Figures of Earth_ he undertook the +staggering and almost unsuspected task of rewriting humanity's sacred +books, just as in _Jurgen_ he gave us a stupendous analogue of the +ceaseless quest for beauty. For we must accept the truth that Mr. Cabell +is not a novelist at all in the common acceptance of the term, but a +historian of the human soul. His books are neither documentary nor +representational; his characters are symbols of human desires and +motives. By the not at all simple process of recording faithfully the +projections of his rich and varied imagination, he has written thirteen +books, which he accurately terms biography, wherein is the bitter-sweet +truth about human life. + + +II + +Among the scant certainties vouchsafed us is that every age lives by its +special catchwords. Whether from rebellion against the irking monotony +of its inherited creeds or from compulsions generated by its own +complexities, each age develops its code of convenient illusions which +minimize cerebration in dilemmas of conduct by postulating an +unequivocal cleavage between the current right and the current wrong. It +works until men tire of it or challenge the cleavage, or until +conditions render the code obsolete. It has in it, happily, a certain +poetic merit always; it presents an ideal to be lived up to; it gives +direction to the uncertain, stray impulses of life. + +The Chivalric code is no worse than most and certainly it is prettier +than some. It is a code peculiar to an age, or at least it flourishes +best in an age wherein sentiment and the stuff of dreams are easily +translatable into action. Its requirements are less of the intellect +than of the heart. It puts God, honor, and mistress above all else, and +stipulates that a knight shall serve these three without any +reservation. It requires of its secular practitioners the holy virtues +of an active piety, a modified chastity, and an unqualified obedience, +at all events, to the categorical imperative. The obligation of poverty +it omits, for the code arose at a time when the spiritual snobbery of +the meek and lowly was not pressing the simile about the camel and the +eye of the needle. It leads to charming manners and to delicate +amenities. It is the opposite of the code of Gallantry, for while the +code of Chivalry takes everything with a becoming seriousness, the code +of Gallantry takes everything with a wink. If one should stoop to pick +flaws with the Chivalric ideal, it would be to point out a certain +priggishness and intolerance. For, while it is all very well for one to +cherish the delusion that he is God's vicar on earth and to go about his +Father's business armed with a shining rectitude, yet the unhallowed may +be moved to deprecate the enterprise when they recall, with discomfort, +the zealous vicarship of, say, the late Anthony J. Comstock. + +But here I blunder into Mr. Cabell's province. For he has joined many +graceful words in delectable and poignant proof of just that lamentable +tendency of man to make a mess of even his most immaculate conceivings. +When he wrote _Chivalry_, Mr. Cabell was yet young enough to view the +code less with the appraising eye of a pawnbroker than with the ardent +eye of an amateur. He knew its value, but he did not know its price. So +he made of it the thesis for a dizain of beautiful happenings that are +almost flawless in their verbal beauty. + + +III + +It is perhaps of historical interest here to record the esteem in which +Mark Twain held the genius of Mr. Cabell as it was manifested as early +as a dozen years ago. Mr. Cabell wrote _The Soul of Melicent_, or, as it +was rechristened on revision, _Domnei_, at the great humorist's request, +and during the long days and nights of his last illness it was Mr. +Cabell's books which gave Mark Twain his greatest joy. This knowledge +mitigates the pleasure, no doubt, of those who still, after his fifteen +years of writing, encounter him intermittently with a feeling of having +made a great literary discovery. The truth is that Mr. Cabell has been +discovered over and over with each succeeding book from that first fine +enthusiasm with which Percival Pollard reviewed _The Eagle's Shadow_ to +that generous acknowledgment by Hugh Walpole that no one in England, +save perhaps Conrad and Hardy, was so sure of literary permanence as +James Branch Cabell. + +With _The Cream of the Jest, Beyond Life_, and _Figures of Earth_ before +him, it is not easy for the perceptive critic to doubt this permanence. +One might as sensibly deny a future to Ecclesiastes, _The Golden Ass, +Gulliver's Travels_, and the works of Rabelais as to predict oblivion +for such a thesaurus of ironic wit and fine fantasy, mellow wisdom and +strange beauty as _Jurgen_. But to appreciate the tales of _Chivalry_ +is, it seems, a gift more frequently reserved for the general reader +than for the professional literary evaluator. Certainly years before +discussion of Cabell was artificially augmented by the suppression of +_Jurgen_ there were many genuine lovers of romance who had read these +tales with pure enjoyment. That they did not analyse and articulate +their enjoyment for the edification of others does not lessen the +quality of their appreciation. Even in those years they found in +Cabell's early tales what we find who have since been directed to them +by the curiosity engendered by his later work, namely, a superb +craftsmanship in recreating a vanished age, an atmosphere in keeping +with the themes, a fluid, graceful, personal style, a poetic ecstasy, a +fine sense of drama, and a unity and symmetry which are the hall-marks +of literary genius. + +BURTON RASCOE. New York City, September, 1921. + + + + +Contents + +PRECAUTIONAL + +THE PROLOGUE + + + I THE STORY OF THE SESTINA + + II THE STORY OF THE TENSON + + III THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP + + IV THE STORY OF THE CHOICES + + V THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE + + VI THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS + + VII THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE + +VIII THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD + + IX THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE + + X THE STORY OF THE FOX-BRUSH + + THE EPILOGUE + + + + + +Precautional + + +Imprimis, as concerns the authenticity of these tales perhaps the less +debate may be the higher wisdom, if only because this Nicolas de Caen, +by common report, was never a Gradgrindian. And in this volume in +particular, writing it (as Nicolas is supposed to have done) in 1470, as +a dependant on the Duke of Burgundy, it were but human nature should he, +in dealing with the putative descendants of Dom Manuel and Alianora of +Provence, be niggardly in his ascription of praiseworthy traits to any +member of the house of Lancaster or of Valois. Rather must one in common +reason accept old Nicolas as confessedly a partisan writer, who upon +occasion will recolor an event with such nuances as will be least +inconvenient to a Yorkist and Burgundian bias. + +The reteller of these stories needs in addition to plead guilty of +having abridged the tales with a free hand. Item, these tales have been +a trifle pulled about, most notably in "The Story of the Satraps," where +it seemed advantageous, on reflection, to put into Gloucester's mouth a +history which in the original version was related _ab ovo_, and as a +sort of bungling prologue to the story proper. + +Item, the re-teller of these stories desires hereby to tender +appropriate acknowledgment to Mr. R.E. Townsend for his assistance in +making an English version of the lyrics included hereinafter; and to +avoid discussion as to how freely, in these lyrics, Nicolas has +plagiarized from Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and other elder poets.[1] + +And--"sixth and lastly"--should confession be made that in the present +rendering a purely arbitrary title has been assigned this little book; +chiefly for commercial reasons, since the word "dizain" has been +adjudged both untranslatable and, in its pristine form, repellantly +_outré_. + + +2 + +You are to give my titular makeshift, then, a wide interpretation; and +are always to remember that in the bleak, florid age these tales +commemorate this Chivalry was much the rarelier significant of any +personal trait than of a world-wide code in consonance with which all +estimable people lived and died. Its root was the assumption +(uncontested then) that a gentleman will always serve his God, his honor +and his lady without any reservation; nor did the many emanating by-laws +ever deal with special cases as concerns this triple, fixed, and +fundamental homage. + + + +Such is the trinity served hereinafter. Now about lady-service, or +_domnei_, I have written elsewhere. Elsewhere also I find it recorded +that "the cornerstone of Chivalry is the idea of vicarship: for the +chivalrous person is, in his own eyes at least, the child of God, and +goes about this world as his Father's representative in an alien +country." + +I believe the definition holds: it certainly tends to explain the +otherwise puzzling pertinacity with which the characters in these tales +talk about God and act upon an assured knowledge as to Heaven's private +intentions and preferences. These people are the members of one family +engrossed, as all of us are apt to be when in the society of our kin, by +family matters and traditions and by-words. It is not merely that they +are all large children consciously dependent in all things upon a not +foolishly indulgent Father, Who keeps an interested eye upon the least +of their doings, and punishes at need,--not merely that they know +themselves to act under surveillance and to speak within ear-shot of a +divine eavesdropper. The point is, rather, that they know this +observation to be as tender, the punishment to be as unwilling, as that +which they themselves extend to their own children's pranks and +misdemeanors. The point is that to them Heaven is a place as actual and +tangible as we consider Alaska or Algiers to be, and that their living +is a conscious journeying toward this actual place. The point is that +the Father is a real father, and not a word spelt with capital letters +in the Church Service; not an abstraction, not a sort of a something +vaguely describable as "the Life Force," but a very famous kinsman, of +whom one is naïvely proud, and whom one is on the way to visit.... The +point, in brief, is that His honor and yours are inextricably blended, +and are both implicated in your behavior on the journey. + +We nowadays can just cloudily imagine this viewing of life as a sort of +boarding-school from which one eventually goes home, with an official +report as to progress and deportment: and in retaliation for being +debarred from the comforts of this view, the psychoanalysts have no +doubt invented for it some opprobrious explanation. At all events, this +Chivalry was a pragmatic hypothesis: it "worked," and served society for +a long while, not faultlessly of course, but by creating, like all the +other codes of human conduct which men have yet tried, a tragi-comic +mêlée wherein contended "courtesy and humanity, friendliness, hardihood, +love and friendship, and murder, hate, and virtue, and sin." + + +3 + +For the rest, since good wine needs no bush, and an inferior beverage is +not likely to be bettered by arboreal adornment, I elect to piece out +my exordium (however lamely) with "The Printer's Preface." And it runs +in this fashion: + +"Here begins the volume called and entitled the Dizain of Queens, +composed and extracted from divers chronicles and other sources of +information, by that extremely venerable person and worshipful man, +Messire Nicolas de Caen, priest and chaplain to the right noble, +glorious and mighty prince in his time, Philippe, Duke of Burgundy, of +Brabant, etc., in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord God a thousand +four hundred and seventy: and imprinted by me, Colard Mansion, at +Bruges, in the year of our said Lord God a thousand four hundred and +seventy-one; at the commandment of the right high, mighty and virtuous +Princess, my redoubted Lady, Isabella of Portugal, by the grace of God +Duchess of Burgundy and Lotharingia, of Brabant and Limbourg, of +Luxembourg and of Gueldres, Countess of Flanders, of Artois, and of +Burgundy, Palatine of Hainault, of Holland, of Zealand and of Namur, +Marquesse of the Holy Empire, and Lady of Frisia, of Salins and of +Mechlin; whom I beseech Almighty God less to increase than to continue +in her virtuous disposition in this world, and after our poor fleet +existence to receive eternally. Amen." + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + + + "_Afin que les entreprises honorables et les nobles aventures et + faicts d'armes soyent noblement enregistrés et conservés, je vais + traiter et raconter et inventer ung galimatias_." + +THE DIZAIN OF QUEENS OF THAT NOBLE MAKER IN THE FRENCH TONGUE, MESSIRE +NICOLAS DE CAEN, DEDICATED TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS ISABELLA OF PORTUGAL, +OF THE HOUSE OF THE INDOMITABLE ALFONSO HENRIQUES, AND DUCHESS DOWAGER +OF BURGUNDY. HERE BEGINS IN AUSPICIOUS WISE THE PROLOGUE. + + + + +The Prologue + +A Sa Dame + + +Inasmuch as it was by your command, illustrious and exalted lady, that I +have gathered together these stories to form the present little book, +you should the less readily suppose I have presumed to dedicate to your +Serenity this trivial offering because of my esteeming it to be not +undeserving of your acceptance. The truth is otherwise: your postulant +approaches not spurred toward you by vainglory, but rather by equity, +and equity's plain need to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of +noble ladies must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who +is the light and mainstay of our age. I humbly bring my book to you as +Phidyle approached another and less sacred shrine, _farre pio et +saliente mica_, and lay before you this my valueless mean tribute not as +appropriate to you but as the best I have to offer. + +It is a little book wherein I treat of divers queens and of their +love-business; and with necessitated candor I concede my chosen field to +have been harvested, and scrupulously gleaned, by many writers of +innumerable conditions. Since Dares Phrygius wrote of Queen Heleine, and +Virgil (that shrewd necromancer) of Queen Dido, a preponderating mass of +clerks, in casting about for high and serious matter, have chosen, as +though it were by common instinct, to dilate upon the amours of royal +women. Even in romance we scribblers must contrive it so that the fair +Nicolete shall be discovered in the end to be no less than the King's +daughter of Carthage, and that Sir Doön of Mayence shall never sink in +his love affairs beneath the degree of a Saracen princess; and we are +backed in this old procedure not only by the authority of Aristotle but, +oddly enough, by that of reason. + +Kings have their policies and wars wherewith to drug each human +appetite. But their consorts are denied these makeshifts; and love may +rationally be defined as the pivot of each normal woman's life, and in +consequence as the arbiter of that ensuing life which is eternal. +Because--as anciently Propertius demanded, though not, to speak the +truth, of any woman-- + + Quo fugis? ah demens! nulla est fuga, tu licet usque + Ad Tanaim fugias, usque sequetur amor. + +And a dairymaid, let us say, may love whom she will, and nobody else be +a penny the worse for her mistaking of the preferable nail whereon to +hang her affections; whereas with a queen this choice is more +portentous. She plays the game of life upon a loftier table, ruthlessly +illuminated, she stakes by her least movement a tall pile of counters, +some of which are, of necessity, the lives and happiness of persons whom +she knows not, unless it be by vague report. Grandeur sells itself at +this hard price, and at no other. A queen must always play, in fine, as +the vicar of destiny, free to choose but very certainly compelled in the +ensuing action to justify that choice: as is strikingly manifested by +the authentic histories of Brunhalt, and of Guenevere, and of swart +Cleopatra, and of many others that were born to the barbaric queenhoods +of extinct and dusty times. + +All royal persons are (I take it) the immediate and the responsible +stewards of Heaven; and since the nature of each man is like a troubled +stream, now muddied and now clear, their prayer must ever be, _Defenda +me, Dios, de me_! Yes, of exalted people, and even of their near +associates, life, because it aims more high than the aforementioned +Aristotle, demands upon occasion a more great catharsis, which would +purge any audience of unmanliness, through pity and through terror, +because, by a quaint paradox, the players have been purged of humanity. +For a moment Destiny has thrust her scepter into the hands of a human +being and Chance has exalted a human being to decide the issue of many +human lives. These two--with what immortal chucklings one may facilely +imagine--have left the weakling thus enthroned, free to direct the heavy +outcome, free to choose, and free to evoke much happiness or age-long +weeping, but with no intermediate course unbarred. _Now prove thyself_! +saith Destiny; and Chance appends: _Now prove thyself to be at bottom a +god or else a beast, and now eternally abide that choice. And now_ (O +crowning irony!) _we may not tell thee clearly by which choice thou +mayst prove either_. + +In this little book about the women who intermarried, not very enviably, +with an unhuman race (a race predestinate to the red ending which I have +chronicled elsewhere, in _The Red Cuckold_), it is of ten such moments +that I treat. + +You alone, I think, of all persons living, have learned, as you have +settled by so many instances, to rise above mortality in such a testing, +and unfailingly to merit by your conduct the plaudits and the adoration +of our otherwise dissentient world. You have often spoken in the stead +of Destiny, with nations to abide your verdict; and in so doing have +both graced and hallowed your high vicarship. If I forbear to speak of +this at greater length, it is because I dare not couple your well-known +perfection with any imperfect encomium. Upon no plea, however, can any +one forbear to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of noble ladies +must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who is the light +and mainstay of our age. + +_Therefore to you, madame--most excellent and noble lady, to whom I love +to owe both loyalty and love--I dedicate this little book._ + + + + +I + +_THE STORY OF THE SESTINA_ + + + "Armatz de fust e de fer e d'acier, Mos ostal seran bosc, fregz, + e semdier, E mas cansos sestinas e descortz, E mantenrai los frevols + contra 'ls fortz." + +THE FIRST NOVEL.--ALIANORA OF PROVENCE, COMING IN DISGUISE AND IN +ADVERSITY TO A CERTAIN CLERK, IS BY HIM CONDUCTED ACROSS A HOSTILE +COUNTRY; AND IN THAT TROUBLED JOURNEY ARE MADE MANIFEST TO EACH THE +SNARES WHICH HAD BEGUILED THEM AFORETIME. + + + + +The Story of the Sestina + + +In this place we have to do with the opening tale of the Dizain of +Queens. I abridge, as afterward, at discretion; and an initial account +of the Barons' War, among other superfluities, I amputate as more +remarkable for veracity than interest. The result, we will agree at +outset, is that to the Norman cleric appertains whatever these tales may +have of merit, whereas what you find distasteful in them you must impute +to my delinquencies in skill rather than in volition. + +Within the half hour after de Giars' death (here one overtakes Nicolas +mid-course in narrative) Dame Alianora thus stood alone in the corridor +of a strange house. Beyond the arras the steward and his lord were at +irritable converse. + +First, "If the woman be hungry," spoke a high and peevish voice, "feed +her. If she need money, give it to her. But do not annoy me." + +"This woman demands to see the master of the house," the steward then +retorted. + +"O incredible Boeotian, inform her that the master of the house has no +time to waste upon vagabonds who select the middle of the night as an +eligible time to pop out of nowhere. Why did you not do so in the +beginning, you dolt?" The speaker got for answer only a deferential +cough, and very shortly continued: "This is remarkably vexatious. _Vox +et praeterea nihil_--which signifies, Yeck, that to converse with women +is always delightful. Admit her." This was done, and Dame Alianora came +into an apartment littered with papers, where a neat and shriveled +gentleman of fifty-odd sat at a desk and scowled. + +He presently said, "You may go, Yeck." He had risen, the magisterial +attitude with which he had awaited her entrance cast aside. "Oh, God!" +he said; "you, madame!" His thin hands, scholarly hands, were plucking +at the air. + +Dame Alianora had paused, greatly astonished, and there was an interval +before she said, "I do not recognize you, messire." + +"And yet, madame, I recall very clearly that some thirty years ago the +King-Count Raymond Bérenger, then reigning in Provence, had about his +court four daughters, each one of whom was afterward wedded to a king. +First, Meregrett, the eldest, now regnant in France; then Alianora, the +second and most beautiful of these daughters, whom troubadours hymned as +the Unattainable Princess. She was married a long while ago, madame, to +the King of England, Lord Henry, third of that name to reign in these +islands." + +Dame Alianora's eyes were narrowing. "There is something in your voice," +she said, "which I recall." + +He answered: "Madame and Queen, that is very likely, for it is a voice +which sang a deal in Provence when both of us were younger. I concede +with the Roman that I have somewhat deteriorated since the reign of +Cynara. Yet have you quite forgotten the Englishman who made so many +songs of you? They called him Osmund Heleigh." + +"He made the Sestina of Spring which won the violet crown at my +betrothal," the Queen said; and then, with eagerness: "Messire, can it +be that you are Osmund Heleigh?" He shrugged assent. She looked at him +for a long time, rather sadly, and demanded if he were the King's man or +of the barons' party. + +The nervous hands were raised in deprecation. "I have no politics," +Messire Heleigh began, and altered it, gallantly enough, to, "I am the +Queen's man, madame." + +"Then aid me, Osmund," she said. + +He answered with a gravity which singularly became him, "You have reason +to understand that to my fullest power I will aid you." + +"You know that at Lewes these swine overcame us." He nodded assent. "Now +they hold the King, my husband, captive at Kenilworth. I am content +that he remain there, for he is of all the King's enemies the most +dangerous. But, at Wallingford, Leicester has imprisoned my son, Prince +Edward. The Prince must be freed, my Osmund. Warren de Basingbourne +commands what is left of the royal army, now entrenched at Bristol, and +it is he who must liberate my son. Get me to Bristol, then. Afterward we +will take Wallingford." The Queen issued these orders in cheery, +practical fashion, and did not admit opposition into the account, for +she was a capable woman. + +"But you, madame?" he stammered. "You came alone?" + +"I come from France, where I have been entreating--and vainly +entreating--succor from yet another monkish king, the holy Lewis of that +realm. Eh, what is God about when He enthrones these whining pieties! +Were I a king, were I even a man, I would drive these smug English out +of their foggy isle in three days' space! I would leave alive not one of +these curs that dare yelp at me! I would--" She paused, anger veering +into amusement. "See how I enrage myself when I think of what your +people have made me suffer," the Queen said, and shrugged her shoulders. +"In effect, I skulked back in disguise to this detestable island, +accompanied by Avenel de Giars and Hubert Fitz-Herveis. To-night some +half-dozen fellows--robbers, thorough knaves, like all you +English,--attacked us on the common yonder and slew the men of our +party. While they were cutting de Giars' throat I slipped away in the +dark and tumbled through many ditches till I spied your light. There you +have my story. Now get me an escort to Bristol." + +It was a long while before Messire Heleigh spoke. Then, "These men," he +said--"this de Giars and this Fitz-Herveis--they gave their lives for +yours, as I understand it,--_pro caris amicis_. And yet you do not +grieve for them." + +"I shall regret de Giars," the Queen acknowledged, "for he made +excellent songs. But Fitz-Herveis?--foh! the man had a face like a +horse." Again her mood changed. "Many persons have died for me, my +friend. At first I wept for them, but now I am dry of tears." + +He shook his head. "Cato very wisely says, 'If thou hast need of help, +ask it of thy friends.' But the sweet friend that I remember was a clean +eyed girl, joyous and exceedingly beautiful. Now you appear to me one of +those ladies of remoter times--Faustina, or Jael, or Artemis, the King's +wife of Tauris,--they that slew men, laughing. I am somewhat afraid of +you, madame." + +She was angry at first; then her face softened. "You English!" she said, +only half mirthful. "Eh, my God! you remember me when I was a high +hearted young sorceress. Now the powers of the Apsarasas have departed +from me, and time has thrust that Alianora, who was once the +Unattainable Princess, chin deep in misery. Yet even now I am your +Queen, messire, and it is not yours to pass judgment upon me." "I do +not judge you," he returned. "Rather I cry with him of old, _Omnia +incerta ratione!_ and I cry with Salomon that he who meddles with the +strife of another man is like to him that takes a hound by the ears. Yet +listen, madame and Queen. I cannot afford you an escort to Bristol. This +house, of which I am in temporary charge, is Longaville, my brother's +manor. Lord Brudenel, as you doubtless know, is of the barons' party +and--scant cause for grief!--is with Leicester at this moment. I can +trust none of my brother's people, for I believe them to be of much the +same opinion as those Londoners who not long ago stoned you and would +have sunk your barge in Thames River. Oh, let us not blink the fact that +you are not overbeloved in England. So an escort is out of the question. +Yet I, madame, if you so elect, will see you safe to Bristol." + +"You? Singly?" the Queen demanded. + +"My plan is this: Singing folk alone travel whither they will. We will +go as jongleurs, then. I can yet manage a song to the viol, I dare +affirm. And you must pass as my wife." + +He said this with simplicity. The plan seemed unreasonable, and at first +Dame Alianora waved it aside. Out of the question! But reflection +suggested nothing better; it was impossible to remain at Longaville, and +the man spoke sober truth when he declared any escort other than himself +to be unprocurable. Besides, the lunar madness of the scheme was its +strength; that the Queen would venture to cross half England +unprotected--and Messire Heleigh on the face of him was a paste-board +buckler--was an event which Leicester would neither anticipate nor on +report credit. There you were! these English had no imagination. The +Queen snapped her fingers and said: "Very willingly will I be your wife, +my Osmund. But how do I know that I can trust you? Leicester would give +a deal for me; he would pay any price for the pious joy of burning the +Sorceress of Provence. And you are not wealthy, I suspect." + +"You may trust me, mon bel esper,"--his eyes here were those of a beaten +child--"because my memory is better than yours." Messire Osmund Heleigh +gathered his papers into a neat pile. "This room is mine. To-night I +keep guard in the corridor, madame. We will start at dawn." + +When he had gone, Dame Alianora laughed contentedly. "Mon bel esper! my +fairest hope! The man called me that in his verses--thirty years ago! +Yes, I may trust you, my poor Osmund." + +So they set out at cockcrow. He had procured for himself a viol and a +long falchion, and had somewhere got suitable clothes for the Queen; and +in their aging but decent garb the two approached near enough to the +appearance of what they desired to be thought. In the courtyard a knot +of servants gaped, nudged one another, but openly said nothing. Messire +Heleigh, as they interpreted it, was brazening out an affair of +gallantry before the countryside; and they esteemed his casual +observation that they would find a couple of dead men on the common +exceedingly diverting. + +When the Queen asked him the same morning, "And what will you sing, my +Osmund? Shall we begin the practise of our new profession with the +Sestina of Spring?"--old Osmund Heleigh grunted out: "I have forgotten +that rubbish long ago. _Omnis amans, amens_, saith the satirist of Rome +town, and with reason." + +Followed silence. + +One sees them thus trudging the brown, naked plains under a sky of +steel. In a pageant the woman, full-veined and comely, her russet gown +girded up like a harvester's might not inaptly have prefigured October; +and for less comfortable November you could nowhere have found a symbol +more precise than her lank companion, humorously peevish under his white +thatch of hair, and constantly fretted by the sword tapping at his +ankles. + +They made Hurlburt prosperously and found it vacant, for the news of +Falmouth's advance had driven the villagers hillward. There was in this +place a child, a naked boy of some two years, lying on a doorstep, +overlooked in his elders' gross terror. As the Queen with a sob lifted +this boy the child died. + +"Starved!" said Osmund Heleigh; "and within a stone's throw of my snug +home!" + +The Queen laid down the tiny corpse, and, stooping, lightly caressed +its sparse flaxen hair. She answered nothing, though her lips moved. + +Past Vachel, scene of a recent skirmish, with many dead in the gutters, +they were overtaken by Falmouth himself, and stood at the roadside to +afford his troop passage. The Marquess, as he went by, flung the Queen a +coin, with a jest sufficiently high flavored. She knew the man her +inveterate enemy, knew that on recognition he would have killed her as +he would a wolf; she smiled at him and dropped a curtsey. + +"This is remarkable," Messire Heleigh observed. "I was hideously afraid, +and am yet shaking. But you, madame, laughed." + +The Queen replied: "I laughed because I know that some day I shall have +Lord Falmouth's head. It will be very sweet to see it roll in the dust, +my Osmund." + +Messire Heleigh somewhat dryly observed that tastes differed. + +At Jessop Minor befell a more threatening adventure. Seeking food at the +_Cat and Hautbois_ in that village, they blundered upon the same troop +at dinner in the square about the inn. Falmouth and his lieutenants were +somewhere inside the house. The men greeted the supposed purveyors of +amusement with a shout; and one of these soldiers--a swarthy rascal with +his head tied in a napkin--demanded that the jongleurs grace their meal +with a song. + +Osmund tried to put him off with a tale of a broken viol. + +But, "Haro!" the fellow blustered; "by blood and by nails! you will sing +more sweetly with a broken viol than with a broken head. I would have +you understand, you hedge thief, that we gentlemen of the sword are not +partial to wordy argument." Messire Heleigh fluttered inefficient hands +as the men-at-arms gathered about them, scenting some genial piece of +cruelty. "Oh, you rabbit!" the trooper jeered, and caught at Osmund's +throat, shaking him. In the act this rascal tore open Messire Heleigh's +tunic, disclosing a thin chain about his neck and a handsome locket, +which the fellow wrested from its fastening. "Ahoi!" he continued. +"Ahoi, my comrades, what sort of minstrel is this, who goes about +England all hung with gold like a Cathedral Virgin! He and his +sweetheart"--the actual word was grosser--"will be none the worse for an +interview with the Marquess." + +The situation smacked of awkwardness, because Lord Falmouth was familiar +with the Queen, and to be brought specifically to his attention meant +death for two detected masqueraders. Hastily Osmund Heleigh said: + +"Messire, the locket contains the portrait of a lady whom in my youth I +loved very greatly. Save to me, it is valueless. I pray you, do not rob +me of it." + +But the trooper shook his head with drunken solemnity. "I do not like +the looks of this. Yet I will sell it to you, as the saying is, for a +song." + +"It shall be the king of songs," said Osmund,--"the song that Arnaut +Daniel first made. I will sing for you a Sestina, messieurs,--a Sestina +in salutation of Spring." + +The men disposed themselves about the dying grass, and presently he +sang. + +Sang Messire Heleigh: + + "Awaken! for the servitors of Spring + Proclaim his triumph! ah, make haste to see + With what tempestuous pageantry they bring + The victor homeward! haste, for this is he + That cast out Winter and all woes that cling + To Winter's garments, and bade April be! + + "And now that Spring is master, let us be + Content, and laugh, as anciently in spring + The battle-wearied Tristan laughed, when he + Was come again Tintagel-ward, to bring + Glad news of Arthur's victory--and see + Ysoude, with parted lips, that waver and cling. + + "Not yet in Brittany must Tristan cling + To this or that sad memory, and be + Alone, as she in Cornwall; for in spring + Love sows against far harvestings,--and he + Is blind, and scatters baleful seed that bring + Such fruitage as blind Love lacks eyes to see!" + +Osmund paused here for an appreciable interval, staring at the Queen. +You saw his flabby throat a-quiver, his eyes melting, saw his cheeks +kindle, and youth seeping into the lean man like water over a crumbling +dam. His voice was now big and desirous. + +Sang Messire Heleigh: + + "Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see + The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling, + Never again when in the grave ye be + Incurious of your happiness in spring, + And get no grace of Love there, whither he + That bartered life for love no love may bring. + + "No braggart Heracles avails to bring + Alcestis hence; nor here may Roland see + The eyes of Aude; nor here the wakening spring + Vex any man with memories: for there be + No memories that cling as cerements cling, + No force that baffles Death, more strong than he. + + "Us hath he noted, and for us hath he + An hour appointed; and that hour will bring + Oblivion.--Then, laugh! Laugh, dear, and see + The tyrant mocked, while yet our bosoms cling, + While yet our lips obey us, and we be + Untrammeled in our little hour of spring! + + "Thus in the spring we jeer at Death, though he + Will see our children perish and will briny + Asunder all that cling while love may be." + +Then Osmund put the viol aside and sat quite silent. The soldiery +judged, and with cordial frankness stated, that the difficulty of his +rhyming scheme did not atone for his lack of indecency, but when the +Queen of England went among them with Messire Heleigh's faded green hat +she found them liberal. Even the fellow with the broken head admitted +that a bargain was proverbially a bargain, and returned the locket with +the addition of a coin. So for the present these two went safe, and +quitted the _Cat and Hautbois_ fed and unmolested. + +"My Osmund," Dame Alianora said, presently, "your memory is better than +I had thought." + +"I remembered a boy and a girl," he returned. "And I grieved that they +were dead." + +Afterward they plodded on toward Bowater, and the ensuing night rested +in Chantrell Wood. They had the good fortune there to encounter dry and +windless weather and a sufficiency of brushwood, with which Osmund +constructed an agreeable fire. In its glow these two sat, eating bread +and cheese. + +But talk languished at the outset. The Queen had complained of an ague, +and Messire Heleigh was sedately suggesting three spiders hung about the +neck as an infallible corrective for this ailment, when Dame Alianora +rose to her feet. "Eh, my God!" she said; "I am wearied of such +ungracious aid! Not an inch of the way but you have been thinking of +your filthy books and longing to be back at them! No; I except the +moments when you were frightened into forgetfulness--first by Falmouth, +then by the trooper. O Eternal Father! afraid of a single dirty +soldier!" + +"Indeed, I was very much afraid," said Messire Heleigh, with perfect +simplicity; "_timidus perire, madame._" + +"You have not even the grace to be ashamed! Yet I am shamed, messire, +that Osmund Heleigh should have become the book-muddled pedant you are. +For I loved young Osmund Heleigh." + +He also had risen in the firelight, and now its convulsive shadows +marred two dogged faces. "I think it best not to recall that boy and +girl who are so long dead. And, frankly, madame and Queen, the merit of +the business I have in hand is questionable. It is you who have set all +England by the ears, and I am guiding you toward opportunities for +further mischief. I must serve you. Understand, madame, that ancient +folly in Provence yonder has nothing to do with the affair. Count Manuel +left you: and between his evasion and your marriage you were pleased to +amuse yourself with me--" + +"You were more civil then, my Osmund--" + +"I am not uncivil, I merely point out that this old folly constitutes +no overwhelming obligation, either way. I cry _nihil ad Andromachen!_ +For the rest, I must serve you because you are a woman and helpless; yet +I cannot forget that he who spares the wolf is the sheep's murderer. It +would be better for all England if you were dead. Hey, your gorgeous +follies, madame! Silver peacocks set with sapphires! Cloth of fine +gold--" + +"Would you have me go unclothed?" Dame Alianora demanded, pettishly. + +"Not so," Osmund retorted; "again I say to you with Tertullian, 'Let +women paint their eyes with the tints of chastity, insert into their +ears the Word of God, tie the yoke of Christ about their necks, and +adorn their whole person with the silk of sanctity and the damask of +devotion.' I say to you that the boy you wish to rescue from +Wallingford, and make King of England, is freely rumored to be not +verily the son of Sire Henry but the child of tall Manuel of Poictesme. +I say to you that from the first you have made mischief in England. And +I say to you--" + +But Dame Alianora was yawning quite frankly. "You will say to me that I +brought foreigners into England, that I misguided the King, that I +stirred up strife between the King and his barons. Eh, my God! I am +sufficiently familiar with the harangue. Yet listen, my Osmund: They +sold me like a bullock to a man I had never seen. I found him a man of +wax, and I remoulded him. They asked of me an heir for England: I +provided that heir. They gave me England as a toy; I played with it. I +was the Queen, the source of honor, the source of wealth--the trough, in +effect, about which swine gathered. Never since I came into England, +Osmund, has any man or woman loved me; never in all my English life have +I loved man or woman. Do you understand, my Osmund?--the Queen has many +flatterers, but no friends. Not a friend in the world, my Osmund! And so +the Queen made the best of it and amused herself." + +Somewhat he seemed to understand, for he answered without asperity: + +"Mon bel esper, I do not find it anywhere in Holy Writ that God requires +it of us to amuse ourselves; but upon many occasions we have been +commanded to live righteously. We are tempted in divers and insidious +ways. And we cry with the Psalmist, 'My strength is dried up like a +potsherd.' But God intends this, since, until we have here demonstrated +our valor upon Satan, we are manifestly unworthy to be enregistered in +God's army. The great Captain must be served by proven soldiers. We may +be tempted, but we may not yield. O daughter of the South! we must not +yield!" + +"Again you preach," Dame Alianora said. "That is a venerable truism." + +"Ho, madame," he returned, "is it on that account the less true?" + +Pensively the Queen considered this. "You are a good man, my Osmund," +she said, at last, "though you are very droll. Ohimé! it is a pity that +I was born a princess! Had it been possible for me to be your wife, I +would have been a better woman. I shall sleep now and dream of that good +and stupid and contented woman I might have been." So presently these +two slept in Chantrell Wood. + +Followed four days of journeying. As Messer Dante had not yet surveyed +Malebolge, Osmund Heleigh and Dame Alianora lacked a parallel for that +which they encountered; their traverse discovered England razed, +charred, and depopulate--picked bones of an island, a vast and absolute +ruin about which passion-wasted men skulked like rats. Messire Heleigh +and the Queen traveled without molestation; malice and death had +journeyed before them on this road, and had swept it clear. + +At every trace of these hideous precessors Osmund Heleigh would say, "By +a day's ride I might have prevented this." Or, "By a day's ride I might +have saved this woman." Or, "By two days' riding I might have fed this +child." + +The Queen kept Spartan silence, but daily you saw the fine woman age. In +their slow advance every inch of misery was thrust before her for +inspection; meticulously she observed and evaluated her handiwork. +Enthroned, she had appraised from a distance the righteous wars she set +afoot; trudging thus among the débris of these wars, she found they had +unsuspected aspects. Bastling the royal army had recently sacked. +There remained of this village the skeletons of two houses, and for the +rest a jumble of bricks, rafters half-burned, many calcined fragments of +humanity, and ashes. At Bastling, Messire Heleigh turned to the Queen +toiling behind. + +"Oh, madame!" he said, in a dry whisper, "this was the home of so many +men!" + +"I burned it," Dame Alianora replied. "That man we passed just now I +killed. Those other men and women--my folly slew them all. And little +children, my Osmund! The hair like flax, blood-dabbled!" + +"Oh, madame!" he wailed, in the extremity of his pity. + +For she stood with eyes shut, all gray. The Queen demanded: "Why have +they not slain me? Was there no man in England to strangle the proud +wanton? Are you all cowards here?" + +He said: "I detect only one coward in the affair. Your men and +Leicester's men also ride about the world, and draw sword and slay and +die for the right as they see it. And you and Leicester contend for the +right as ye see it. But I, madame! I! I, who sat snug at home spilling +ink and trimming rose-bushes! God's world, madame, and I in it afraid to +speak a word for Him! God's world, and a curmudgeon in it grudging God +the life He gave!" The man flung out his soft hands and snarled: _"We +are tempted in divers and insidious ways._ But I, who rebuked you! +behold, now, with how gross a snare was I entrapped!" "I do not +understand, my Osmund." + +"I was afraid, madame," he returned, dully. "Everywhere men fight, and I +am afraid to die." + +So they stood silent in the ruins of Bastling. + +"Of a piece with our lives," Dame Alianora said at last. "All ruin, my +Osmund." + +But Messire Heleigh threw back his head and laughed, new color in his +face. "Presently men will build here, my Queen. Presently, as in legend +was re-born the Arabian bird, arises from these ashes a lordlier and +more spacious town." + +They went forward. The next day chance loosed upon them Gui Camoys, lord +of Bozon, Foliot, and Thwenge, who, riding alone through Poges Copse, +found there a man and a woman over their limited supper. The woman had +thrown back her hood, and Camoys drew rein to stare at her. Lispingly he +spoke the true court dialect. + +"Ma belle," said this Camoys, in friendly condescension, "n'estez vous +pas jongleurs?" + +Dame Alianora smiled up at him. "Ouais, messire; mon mary faict les +chançons--" She paused, with dilatory caution, for Camoys had leaped +from his horse, giving a great laugh. + +"A prize! ho, an imperial prize!" Camoys shouted. "A peasant woman with +the Queen's face, who speaks French! And who, madame, is this? Have you +by any chance brought pious Lewis from oversea? Have I bagged a brace +of monarchs?" + +Here was imminent danger, for Camoys had known the Queen some fifteen +years. Messire Heleigh rose, his five days' beard glinting like +hoar-frost as his mouth twitched. + +"I am Osmund Heleigh, messire, younger brother to the Earl of Brudenel." + +"I have heard of you, I believe--the fellow who spoils parchment. This +is odd company, however, Messire Osmund, for Brudenel's brother." + +"A gentleman must serve his Queen, messire. As Cicero very justly +observes--" + +"I am inclined to think that his political opinions are scarcely to our +immediate purpose. This is a high matter, Messire Heleigh. To let the +sorceress pass is, of course, out of the question; upon the other hand, +I observe that you lack weapons of defence. Yet if you will have the +kindness to assist me in unarming, your courtesy will place our commerce +on more equal footing." + +Osmund had turned very white. "I am no swordsman, messire--" + +"Now, this is not handsome of you," Camoys began. "I warn you that +people will speak harshly of us if we lose this opportunity of gaining +honor. And besides, the woman will be burned at the stake. Plainly, you +owe it to all three of us to fight." + +"--But I refer my cause to God. I am quite at your service." "No, my +Osmund!" Dame Alianora then cried. "It means your death." + +He spread out his hands. "That is God's affair, madame." + +"Are you not afraid?" she breathed. + +"Of course I am afraid," said Messire Heleigh, irritably. + +After that he unarmed Camoys, and presently they faced each other in +their tunics. So for the first time in the journey Osmund's long +falchion saw daylight. He had thrown away his dagger, as Camoys had +none. + +The combat was sufficiently curious. Camoys raised his left hand. "So +help me God and His saints, I have upon me neither bone, stone, nor +witchcraft wherethrough the power and the word of God might be +diminished or the devil's power increased." + +Osmund made similar oath. "Judge Thou this woman's cause!" he cried, +likewise. + +Then Gui Camoys shouted, as a herald might have done, "Laissez les +aller, laissez les aller, laissez les aller, les bons combatants!" and +warily each moved toward the other. + +On a sudden Osmund attacked, desperately apprehensive of his own +cowardice. Camoys lightly eluded him and slashed at Osmund's undefended +thigh, drawing much blood. Osmund gasped. He flung away his sword, and +in the instant catching Camoys under the arms, threw him to the ground. +Messire Heleigh fell with his opponent, who in stumbling had lost his +sword, and thus the two struggled unarmed, Osmund atop. But Camoys was +the younger man, and Osmund's strength was ebbing rapidly by reason of +his wound. Now Camoys' tethered horse, rearing with nervousness, tumbled +his master's flat-topped helmet into the road. Osmund caught up this +helmet and with it battered Camoys in the face, dealing severe blows. + +"God!" Camoys cried, his face all blood. + +"Do you acknowledge my quarrel just?" said Osmund, between horrid sobs. + +"What choice have I?" said Gui Camoys, very sensibly. + +So Osmund rose, blind with tears and shivering. The Queen bound up their +wounds as best she might, but Camoys was much dissatisfied. + +"For private purposes of His own, madame," he observed, "and doubtless +for sufficient reasons, God has singularly favored your cause. I am +neither a fool nor a pagan to question His decision, and you two may go +your way unhampered. But I have had my head broken with my own helmet, +and this I consider to be a proceeding very little conducive toward +enhancing my reputation. Of your courtesy, messire, I must entreat +another meeting." + +Osmund shrank as if from a blow. Then, with a short laugh, he conceded +that this was Camoys' right, and they fixed upon the following Saturday, +with Poges Copse as the rendezvous. + +"I would suggest that the combat be to the death," Gui Camoys said, "in +consideration of the fact it was my own helmet. You must undoubtedly be +aware, Messire Osmund, that such an affront is practically without any +parallel." + +This, too, was agreed upon. + +Then, after asking if they needed money, which was courteously declined, +Gui Camoys rode away, and sang as he went. Osmund Heleigh remained +motionless. He raised quivering hands to the sky. + +"Thou hast judged!" he cried. "Thou hast judged, O puissant Emperor of +Heaven! Now pardon! Pardon us twain! Pardon for unjust stewards of Thy +gifts! Thou hast loaned this woman dominion over England, with all +instruments to aid Thy cause, and this trust she has abused. Thou hast +loaned me life and manhood, agility and wit and strength, all +instruments to aid Thy cause. Talents in a napkin, O God! Repentant we +cry to Thee. Pardon for unjust stewards! Pardon for the ungirt loin, for +the service shirked, for all good deeds undone! Pardon and grace, O King +of kings!" + +Thus he prayed, while Gui Camoys sang, riding deeper into the tattered, +yellowing forest. By an odd chance Camoys had lighted on that song made +by Thibaut of Champagne, beginning _Signor, saciez, ki or ne s'en ira_, +which denounces all half-hearted servitors of Heaven; and this he sang +with a lilt gayer than his matter countenanced. Faintly there now came +to Osmund and the Queen the sound of Camoys' singing, and they found it, +in the circumstances, ominously apt. + +Sang Camoys: + + "Et vos, par qui je n'ci onques aïe, + Descendez luit en infer le parfont." + +Dame Alianora shivered. But she was a capable woman, and so she said: "I +may have made mistakes. But I am sure I never meant any harm, and I am +sure, too, that God will be more sensible about it than are you poets." + +They slept that night in Ousley Meadow, and the next afternoon came +safely to Bristol. You may learn elsewhere with what rejoicing the royal +army welcomed the Queen's arrival, how courage quickened at sight of the +generous virago. In the ebullition Messire Heleigh was submerged, and +Dame Alianora saw nothing more of him that day. Friday there were +counsels, requisitions, orders signed, a memorial despatched to Pope +Urban, chief of all a letter (this in the Queen's hand throughout) +privily conveyed to the Lady Maude de Mortemer, who shortly afterward +contrived Prince Edward's escape from her husband's gaolership. There +was much sowing of a seed, in fine, that eventually flowered victory. +There was, however, no sign of Osmund Heleigh, though by Dame Alianora's +order he was sought. + +On Saturday at seven in the morning he came to her lodging, in complete +armor. From the open helmet his wrinkled face, showing like a wizened +nut in a shell, smiled upon her questionings. + +"I go to fight Gui Camoys, madame and Queen." + +Dame Alianora wrung her hands. "You go to your death." + +He answered: "That is true. Therefore I am come to bid you farewell." + +The Queen stared at him for a while; on a sudden she broke into a +curious fit of deep but tearless sobbing, which bordered upon laughter, +too. + +"Mon bel esper," said Osmund Heleigh, gently, "what is there in all this +worthy of your sorrow? The man will kill me; granted, for he is my +junior by some fifteen years, and is in addition a skilled swordsman. I +fail to see that this is lamentable. Back to Longaville I cannot go +after recent happenings; there a rope's end awaits me. Here I must in +any event shortly take to the sword, since a beleaguered army has very +little need of ink-pots; and shortly I must be slain in some skirmish, +dug under the ribs perhaps by a greasy fellow I have never seen. I +prefer a clean death at a gentleman's hands." + +"It is I who bring about your death!" she said. "You gave me gallant +service, and I have requited you with death, and it is a great pity." + +"Indeed the debt is on the other side. The trivial services I rendered +you were such as any gentleman must render a woman in distress. Naught +else have I afforded you, madame, save very anciently a Sestina. Ho, a +Sestina! And in return you have given me a Sestina of fairer make,--a +Sestina of days, six days of manly common living." His eyes were +fervent. + +She kissed him on either cheek. "Farewell, my champion!" + +"Ay, your champion. In the twilight of life old Osmund Heleigh rides +forth to defend the quarrel of Alianora of Provence. Reign wisely, my +Queen, so that hereafter men may not say I was slain in an evil cause. +Do not, I pray you, shame my maiden venture at a man's work." + +"I will not shame you," the Queen proudly said; and then, with a change +of voice: "O my Osmund! My Osmund, you have a folly that is divine, and +I lack it." + +He caught her by each wrist, and stood crushing both her hands to his +lips, with fierce staring. "Wife of my King! wife of my King!" he +babbled; and then put her from him, crying, "I have not failed you! +Praise God, I have not failed you!" + +From her window she saw him ride away, a rich flush of glitter and +color. In new armor with a smart emblazoned surcoat the lean pedant sat +conspicuously erect; and as he went he sang defiantly, taunting the +weakness of his flesh. + +Sang Osmund Heleigh: + + "Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see + The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling + Never again when in the grave ye be + Incurious of your happiness in spring, + And get no grace of Love, there, whither he + That bartered life for love no love may bring." + +So he rode away and thus out of our history. But in the evening Gui +Camoys came into Bristol under a flag of truce, and behind him heaved a +litter wherein lay Osmund Heleigh's body. + +"For this man was frank and courteous," Camoys said to the Queen, "and +in the matter of the reparation he owed me acted very handsomely. It is +fitting that he should have honorable interment." + +"That he shall not lack," the Queen said, and gently unclasped from +Osmund's wrinkled neck the thin gold chain, now locketless. "There was a +portrait here," she said; "the portrait of a woman whom he loved in his +youth, Messire Camoys. And all his life it lay above his heart." + +Camoys answered stiffly: "I imagine this same locket to have been the +object which Messire Heleigh flung into the river, shortly before we +began our combat. I do not rob the dead, madame." + +"Well," the Queen said, "he always did queer things, and so, I shall +always wonder what sort of lady he picked out to love, but it is none of +my affair." + +Afterward she set to work on requisitions in the King's name. But Osmund +Heleigh she had interred at Ambresbury, commanding it to be written on +his tomb that he died in the Queen's cause. + +How the same cause prospered (Nicolas concludes), how presently Dame +Alianora reigned again in England and with what wisdom, and how in the +end this great Queen died a nun at Ambresbury and all England wept +therefor--this you may learn elsewhere. I have chosen to record six days +of a long and eventful life; and (as Messire Heleigh might have done) I +say modestly with him of old, _Majores majora sonent._ Nevertheless, I +assert that many a forest was once a pocketful of acorns. + +THE END OF THE FIRST NOVEL + + + + +II + +THE STORY OF THE TENSON + + + "Plagues à Dieu ja la nueitz non falhis, + Ni'l mieus amicx lone de mi nos partis, + Ni la gayta jorn ni alba ne vis. + Oy Dieus! oy Dieus! de l'alba tan tost we!" + +THE SECOND NOVEL.--ELLINOR OF CASTILE, BEING ENAMORED OF A HANDSOME +PERSON, IS IN HER FLIGHT FROM MARITAL OBLIGATIONS ASSISTED BY HER +HUSBAND, AND IS IN THE END BY HIM CONVINCED OF THE RATIONALITY OF ALL +ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES. + + + + +_The Story of the Tenson_ + + +In the year of grace 1265 (Nicolas begins), about the festival of Saint +Peter _ad Vincula_, the Prince de Gâtinais came to Burgos. Before this +he had lodged for three months in the district of Ponthieu; and the +object of his southern journey was to assure the tenth Alphonso, then +ruling in Castile, that the latter's sister Ellinor, now resident at +Entréchat, was beyond any reasonable doubt the transcendent lady whose +existence old romancers had anticipated, however cloudily, when they +fabled in remote time concerning Queen Heleine of Sparta. + +There was a postscript to this news. The world knew that the King of +Leon and Castile desired to be King of Germany as well, and that at +present a single vote in the Diet would decide between his claims and +those of his competitor, Earl Richard of Cornwall. De Gâtinais chaffered +fairly; he had a vote, Alphonso had a sister. So that, in effect--ohé, +in effect, he made no question that his Majesty understood! + +The Astronomer twitched his beard and demanded if the fact that Ellinor +had been a married woman these ten years past was not an obstacle to the +plan which his fair cousin had proposed? + +Here the Prince was accoutred cap-à -pie, and hauled out a paper. Dating +from Viterbo, Clement, Bishop of Rome, servant to the servants of God, +desirous of all health and apostolical blessing for his well-beloved son +in Christ, stated that a compact between a boy of fifteen and a girl of +ten was an affair of no particular moment; and that in consideration of +the covenantors never having clapped eyes upon each other since the +wedding-day,--even had not the precontract of marriage between the +groom's father and the bride's mother rendered a consummation of the +childish oath an obvious and a most heinous enormity,--why, that, in a +sentence, and for all his coy verbosity, the new pontiff was perfectly +amenable to reason. + +So in a month it was settled. Alphonso would give his sister to de +Gâtinais, and in exchange get the latter's vote to make Alphonso King of +Germany; and Gui Foulques of Sabionetta--now Clement, fourth Pope to +assume that name--would annul the previous marriage, and in exchange get +an armament to serve him against Manfred, the late and troublesome +tyrant of Sicily and Apulia. The scheme promised to each one of them +that which he in particular desired, and messengers were presently sent +into Ponthieu. + +It is now time we put aside these Castilian matters and speak of other +things. In England, Prince Edward had fought, and won, a shrewd battle +at Evesham. People said, of course, that such behavior was less in the +manner of his nominal father, King Henry, than reminiscent of Count +Manuel of Poictesme, whose portraits certainly the Prince resembled to +an embarrassing extent. Either way, the barons' power was demolished, +there would be no more internecine war; and spurred by the unaccustomed +idleness, Prince Edward began to think of the foreign girl he had not +seen since the day he wedded her. She would be a woman by this, and it +was befitting that he claim his wife. He rode with Hawise Bulmer and her +baby to Ambresbury, and at the gate of the nunnery they parted, with +what agonies are immaterial to this history's progression; the tale +merely tells that, having thus decorously rid himself of his mistress, +the Prince went into Lower Picardy alone, riding at adventure as he +loved to do, and thus came to Entréchat, where his wife resided with her +mother, the Countess Johane. + +In a wood near the castle he approached a company of Spaniards, four in +number, their horses tethered while these men (Oviedans, as they told +him) drank about a great stone which served them for a table. Being +thirsty, he asked and was readily accorded hospitality, and these five +fell into amicable discourse. One fellow asked his name and business in +those parts, and the Prince gave each without hesitancy as he reached +for the bottle, and afterward dropped it just in time to catch, cannily, +with his naked left hand, the knife-blade with which the rascal had dug +at the unguarded ribs. The Prince was astounded, but he was never a +subtle man: here were four knaves who, for reasons unexplained--but to +them of undoubted cogency--desired his death: manifestly there was here +an actionable difference of opinion; so he had his sword out and killed +the four of them. + +Presently came to him an apple-cheeked boy, habited as a page, who, +riding jauntily through the forest, lighted upon the Prince, now in +bottomless vexation. The lad drew rein, and his lips outlined a whistle. +At his feet were several dead men in various conditions of +dismemberment. And seated among them, as if throned upon this boulder, +was a gigantic and florid person, so tall that the heads of few men +reached to his shoulder; a person of handsome exterior, high-featured +and blond, having a narrow, small head, and vivid light blue eyes, and +the chest of a stallion; a person whose left eyebrow had an odd oblique +droop, so that the stupendous man appeared to be winking the information +that he was in jest. + +"Fair friend," said the page. "God give you joy! and why have you +converted this forest into a shambles?" + +The Prince told him as much of the half-hour's action as has been +narrated. "I have perhaps been rather hasty," he considered, by way of +peroration, "and it vexes me that I did not spare, say, one of these +lank Spaniards, if only long enough to ascertain why, in the name of +Termagaunt, they should have desired my destruction." + +But midway in his tale the boy had dismounted with a gasp, and he was +now inspecting the features of one carcass. "Felons, my Prince! You have +slain some eight yards of felony which might have cheated the gallows +had they got the Princess Ellinor safe to Burgos. Only two days ago this +chalk-eyed fellow conveyed to her a letter." + +Prince Edward said, "You appear, lad, to be somewhat overheels in the +confidence of my wife." + +Now the boy arose and defiantly flung back his head in shrill laughter. +"Your wife! Oh, God have mercy! Your wife, and for ten years left to her +own devices! Why, look you, to-day you and your wife would not know each +other were you two brought face to face." + +Prince Edward said, "That is very near the truth." But, indeed, it was +the absolute truth, and as it concerned him was already attested. + +"Sire Edward," the boy then said, "your wife has wearied of this long +waiting till you chose to whistle for her. Last summer the young Prince +de Gâtinais came a-wooing--and he is a handsome man." The page made +known all which de Gâtinais and King Alphonso planned, the words +jostling as they came in torrents, but so that one might understand. "I +am her page, my lord. I was to follow her. These fellows were to be my +escort, were to ward off possible pursuit. Cry haro, beau sire! Cry +haro, and shout it lustily, for your wife in company with six other +knaves is at large between here and Burgos,--that unreasonable wife who +grew dissatisfied after a mere ten years of neglect." + +"I have been remiss," the Prince said, and one huge hand strained at his +chin; "yes, perhaps I have been remiss. Yet it had appeared to me--But +as it is, I bid you mount, my lad!" + +The boy demanded, "And to what end?" + +"Oy Dieus, messire! have I not slain your escort? Why, in common reason, +equity demands that I afford you my protection so far as Burgos, +messire, just as plainly as equity demands I slay de Gâtinais and fetch +back my wife to England." + +The page wrung exquisite hands with a gesture which was but partially +tinged with anguish, and presently began to laugh. Afterward these two +rode southerly, in the direction of Castile. + +For it appeared to the intriguing little woman a diverting jest that in +this fashion her husband should be the promoter of her evasion. It +appeared to her more diverting when in two days' space she had become +fond of him. She found him rather slow of comprehension, and she was +humiliated by the discovery that not an eyelash of the man was irritated +by his wife's decampment; he considered, to all appearances, that some +property of his had been stolen, and he intended, quite without passion, +to repossess himself of it, after, of course, punishing the thief. + +This troubled the Princess somewhat; and often, riding by her stolid +husband's side, the girl's heart raged at memory of the decade so newly +overpast which had kept her always dependent on the charity of this or +that ungracious patron--on any one who would take charge of her while +the truant husband fought out his endless squabbles in England. Slights +enough she had borne during the period, and squalor, and physical hunger +also she had known, who was the child of a king and a saint.[2] But now +she rode toward the dear southland; and presently she would be rid of +this big man, when he had served her purpose; and afterward she meant to +wheedle Alphonso, just as she had always wheedled him, and later still, +she and Etienne would be very happy: in fine, to-morrow was to be a new +day. + +So these two rode southward, and always Prince Edward found this new +page of his--this Miguel de Rueda,--a jolly lad, who whistled and sang +inapposite snatches of balladry, without any formal ending or beginning, +descanting always with the delicate irrelevancy of a bird-trill. + +Sang Miguel de Rueda: + + "Man's Love, that leads me day by day + Through many a screened and scented way, + Finds to assuage my thirst. + + "No love that may the old love slay, + None sweeter than the first. + + "Fond heart of mine, that beats so fast + As this or that fair maid trips past, + Once, and with lesser stir + We viewed the grace of love, at last, + And turned idolater. + + "Lad's Love it was, that in the spring + When all things woke to blossoming + Was as a child that came + Laughing, and filled with wondering, + Nor knowing his own name--" + +"And still I would prefer to think," the big man interrupted, heavily, +"that Sicily is not the only allure. I would prefer to think my wife so +beautiful.--And yet, as I remember her, she was nothing extraordinary." + +The page a little tartly said that people might forget a deal within a +decade. + +The Prince continued his unriddling of the scheme hatched in Castile. +"When Manfred is driven out of Sicily they will give the throne to de +Gâtinais. He intends to get both a kingdom and a handsome wife by this +neat affair. And in reason, England must support my Uncle Richard's +claim to the German crown, against El Sabio--Why, my lad, I ride +southward to prevent a war that would devastate half Europe." + +"You ride southward in the attempt to rob a miserable woman of her sole +chance of happiness," Miguel de Rueda estimated. + +"That is undeniable, if she loves this thrifty Prince, as indeed I do +not question my wife does. Yet our happiness here is a trivial matter, +whereas war is a great disaster. You have not seen--as I, my little +Miguel, have often seen--a man viewing his death-wound with a face of +stupid wonder, a bewildered wretch in point to die in his lord's quarrel +and understanding never a word of it. Or a woman, say--a woman's twisted +and naked body, the breasts yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes of +some village, or the already dripping hoofs which will presently crush +this body. Well, it is to prevent many such ugly spectacles hereabout +that I ride southward." + +Miguel de Rueda shuddered. But, "She has her right to happiness," the +page stubbornly said. + +"She has only one right," the Prince retorted; "because it has pleased +the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us twain to lofty stations, to entrust +to us the five talents of the parable; whence is our debt to Him, being +fivefold, so much the greater than that of common persons. Therefore +the more is it our sole right, being fivefold, to serve God without +faltering, and therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more +an inconsiderable matter. For, as I have read in the Annals of the +Romans--" He launched upon the story of King Pompey and his daughter, +whom a certain duke regarded with impure and improper emotions. "My +little Miguel, that ancient king is our Heavenly Father, that only +daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here delivered for +protection to five soldiers--that is, to the five senses,--to preserve +it from the devil, the world, and the flesh. But, alas! the +too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon the gaudy vapors of this +world--" + +"You whine like a canting friar," the page complained; "and I can assure +you that the Lady Ellinor was prompted rather than hindered by her +God-given faculties of sight and hearing and so on when she fell in love +with de Gâtinais. Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer +and the more intelligent man, and it was God who bestowed on her +sufficient wit to perceive the superiority of de Gâtinais. And what am I +to deduce from this?" + +The Prince reflected. At last he said: "I have also read in these same +Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on account of the +malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm will engender; but if +the body be smitten by lightning, in a few days the carcass will abound +with vermin. My little Miguel, both men and women are at birth +empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no worm--that is, no virtue. +But once they are struck with lightning--that is, by the grace of +God,--they are astonishingly fruitful in good works." + +The page began to laugh. "You are hopelessly absurd, my Prince, though +you will never know it,--and I hate you a little,--and I envy you a +great deal." + +"Ah, but," Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, for the man was never +quick-witted,--"but it is not for my own happiness that I ride +southward." + +The page then said, "What is her name?" + +Prince Edward answered, very fondly, "Hawise." + +"I hate her, too," said Miguel de Rueda; "and I think that the holy +angels alone know how profoundly I envy her." + +In the afternoon of the same day they neared Ruffec, and at the ford +found three brigands ready, two of whom the Prince slew, and the other +fled. + +Next night they supped at Manneville, and sat afterward in the little +square, tree-chequered, that lay before their inn. Miguel had procured a +lute from the innkeeper, and he strummed idly as these two debated +together of great matters; about them was an immeasurable twilight, +moonless, but tempered by many stars, and everywhere they could hear an +agreeable whispering of leaves. + +"Listen, my Prince," the boy said: "here is one view of the affair." +And he began to chant, without rhyming, without raising his voice above +the pitch of talk, while the lute monotonously accompanied his chanting. + +Sang Miguel: + + "Passeth a little while, and Irus the beggar and + Menephtah the high king are at sorry unison, and + Guenevere is a skull. Multitudinously we tread + toward oblivion, as ants hasten toward sugar, and + presently Time cometh with his broom. Multitudinously + we tread a dusty road toward oblivion; but + yonder the sun shines upon a grass-plot, converting it + into an emerald; and I am aweary of the trodden path. + + "Vine-crowned is the fair peril that guards the + grasses yonder, and her breasts are naked. 'Vanity + of Vanities!' saith the beloved. But she whom I love + seems very far away to-night, though I might be with + her if I would. And she may not aid me now, for not + even love is all-powerful. She is most dear of created + women, and very wise, but she may never understand + that at any time one grows aweary of the trodden path. + + "At sight of my beloved, love closes over my heart + like a flood. For the sake of my beloved I have striven, + with a good endeavor, to my tiny uttermost. Pardie, I + am not Priam at the head of his army! A little while + and I will repent; to-night I cannot but remember that + there are women whose lips are of a livelier tint, that + life is short at best, that wine evokes in me some admiration + for myself, and that I am aweary of the trodden + path. + + "She is very far from me to-night. Yonder in the + Hörselberg they exult and make sweet songs, songs + which are sweeter, immeasurably sweeter, than this + song of mine, but in the trodden path I falter, for I am + tired, tired in every fibre of me, and I am aweary of + the trodden path" + +Followed a silence. "Ignorance spoke there," the Prince said. "It is the +song of a woman, or else of a boy who is very young. Give me the lute, +my little Miguel." And presently the Prince, too, sang. + +Sang the Prince: + + "I was in a path, and I trod toward the citadel of the + land's Seigneur, and on either side were pleasant and + forbidden meadows, having various names. And one + trod with me who babbled of the brooding mountains + and of the low-lying and adjacent clouds; of the west + wind and of the budding fruit-trees. He debated the + significance of these things, and he went astray to + gather violets, while I walked in the trodden path." + + "He babbled of genial wine and of the alert lips of + women, of swinging censers and of the serene countenances + of priests, and of the clear, lovely colors of + bread and butter, and his heart was troubled by a + world profuse in beauty. And he leaped a stile to share + his allotted provision with a dying dog, and afterward, + being hungry, a wall to pilfer apples, while I walked + in the trodden path. + + "He babbled of Autumn's bankruptcy and of the age-long + lying promises of Spring; and of his own desire + to be at rest; and of running waters and of decaying + leaves. He babbled of the far-off stars; and he debated + whether they were the eyes of God or gases which + burned, and he demonstrated, with logic, that neither + existed. At times he stumbled as he stared about him + and munched his apples, so that he was all bemired, but + I walked in the trodden path. + + "And the path led to the gateway of a citadel, and + through the gateway. 'Let us not enter,' he said, 'for + the citadel is vacant, and, moreover, I am in profound + terror, and, besides, I have not as yet eaten all my + apples.' And he wept aloud, but I was not afraid, for + I had walked in the trodden path." + +Again there was a silence. "You paint a dreary world, my Prince." + +"My little Miguel, I paint the world as the Eternal Father made it. The +laws of the place are written large, so that all may read them; and we +know that every road, whether it be my trodden path or some byway through +your gayer meadows, yet leads in the end to God. We have our choice,--or +to come to Him as a laborer comes at evening for the day's wages fairly +earned, or to come as a roisterer haled before the magistrate." + +"I consider you to be in the right," the boy said, after a lengthy +interval, "although I decline--and decline emphatically--to believe you." + +The Prince laughed. "There spoke Youth," he said, and he sighed as +though he were a patriarch. "But we have sung, we two, the Eternal +Tenson of God's will and of man's desires. And I claim the prize, my +Little Miguel." + +Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. "You have conquered, my very +dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that Hawise--" But Miguel de +Rueda choked. "Oh, I do not understand! and yet in part I understand!" +the boy wailed in the darkness. + +And the Prince laid one hand upon his page's hair, and smiled in the +darkness to note how soft was this hair, since the man was less a fool +than at first view you might have taken him to be; and he said: + +"One must play the game out fairly, my lad. We are no little people, +she and I, the children of many kings, of God's regents here on earth; +and it was never reasonable, my Miguel, that gentlefolk should cheat at +their dicing." + +The same night Miguel de Rueda repeated the prayer which Saint Theophilus +made long ago to the Mother of God: + + "Dame, je n'ose, + Flors d'aiglentier et lis et rose, + En qui li filz Diex se repose," + +and so on. Or, in other wording: "Hearken, O gracious Lady! thou that +art more fair than any flower of the eglantine, more comely than the +blossoming of the rose or of the lily! thou to whom was confided the +very Son of God! Harken, for I am afraid! afford counsel to me that am +ensnared by Satan and know not what to do! Never will I make an end of +praying. O Virgin débonnaire! O honored Lady! Thou that wast once a +woman--!" + +So he prayed, and upon the next day as these two rode southward, he sang +half as if in defiance. + +Sang Miguel: + + "And still,--whatever years impend + To witness Time a fickle friend, + And Youth a dwindling fire,-- + I must adore till all years end + My first love, Heart's Desire. + + "I may not hear men speak of her + Unmoved, and vagrant pulses stir + To greet her passing-by, + And I, in all her worshipper + Must serve her till I die. + + "For I remember: this is she + That reigns in one man's memory + Immune to age and fret, + And stays the maid I may not see + Nor win to, nor forget." + +It was on the following day, near Bazas, that these two encountered Adam +de Gourdon, a Provençal knight, with whom the Prince fought for a long +while, without either contestant giving way; in consequence a rendezvous +was fixed for the November of that year, and afterward the Prince and de +Gourdon parted, highly pleased with each other. + +Thus the Prince and his attendant came, in late September, to Mauléon, +on the Castilian frontier, and dined there at the _Fir Cone._ Three or +four lackeys were about--some exalted person's retinue? Prince Edward +hazarded to the swart little landlord, as the Prince and Miguel lingered +over the remnants of their meal. + +Yes, the fellow informed them: the Prince de Gâtinais had lodged there +for a whole week, watching the north road, as circumspect of all passage +as a cat over a mouse-hole. Eh, monseigneur expected some one, +doubtless--a lady, it might be,--the gentlefolk had their escapades like +every one else. The innkeeper babbled vaguely, for on a sudden he was +very much afraid of his gigantic patron. + +"You will show me to his room," Prince Edward said, with a politeness +that was ingratiating. + +The host shuddered and obeyed. + +Miguel de Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips drumming +upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his shoulders, all +resolution. On the stairway he passed the black little landlord, who was +now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. But Miguel de Rueda went on +to the room above. The door was ajar. He paused there. + +De Gâtinais had risen from his dinner and stood facing the door. He, +too, was a blond man and the comeliest of his day. And at sight of him +awoke in the woman's heart all the old tenderness; handsome and brave +and witty she knew him to be, as indeed the whole world knew him to be +distinguished by every namable grace; and the innate weakness of de +Gâtinais, which she alone suspected, made him now seem doubly dear. +Fiercely she wanted to shield him, less from bodily hurt than from that +self-degradation which she cloudily apprehended to be at hand; the test +was come, and Etienne would fail. Thus much she knew with a sick, +illimitable surety, and she loved de Gâtinais with a passion which +dwarfed comprehension. + +"O Madame the Virgin!" prayed Miguel de Rueda, "thou that wast once a +woman, even as I am now a woman! grant that the man may slay him +quickly! grant that he may slay Etienne very quickly, honored Lady, so +that my Etienne may die unshamed!" + +"I must question, messire," de Gâtinais was saying, "whether you have +been well inspired. Yes, quite frankly, I do await the arrival of her +who is your nominal wife; and your intervention at this late stage, I +take it, can have no outcome save to render you absurd. So, come now! +be advised by me, messire--" + +Prince Edward said, "I am not here to talk." + +"--For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary disputation the cutting of +one gentleman's throat by another gentleman is well enough, since the +argument is unanswerable. Yet in this case we have each of us too much +to live for; you to govern your reconquered England, and I--you perceive +that I am candid--to achieve in turn the kingship of another realm. Now +to secure this realm, possession of the Lady Ellinor is to me essential; +to you she is nothing." + +"She is a woman whom I have deeply wronged," Prince Edward said, "and to +whom, God willing, I mean to make atonement. Ten years ago they wedded +us, willy-nilly, to avert the impending war between Spain and England; +to-day El Sabio intends to purchase Germany with her body as the price; +you to get Sicily as her husband. Mort de Dieu! is a woman thus to be +bought and sold like hog's flesh! We have other and cleaner customs, we +of England." + +"Eh, and who purchased the woman first?" de Gâtinais spat at him, +viciously, for the Frenchman now saw his air-castle shaken to the +corner-stone. + +"They wedded me to the child in order that a great war might be averted. +I acquiesced, since it appeared preferable that two people suffer +inconvenience rather than many thousands be slain. And still this is my +view of the matter. Yet afterward I failed her. Love had no clause in +our agreement; but I owed her more protection than I have afforded. +England has long been no place for women. I thought she would comprehend +that much. But I know very little of women. Battle and death are more +wholesome companions, I now perceive, than such folk as you and +Alphonso. Woman is the weaker vessel--the negligence was mine--I may not +blame her." The big and simple man was in an agony of repentance. + +On a sudden he strode forward, his sword now shifted to his left hand +and his right hand outstretched. "One and all, we are weaklings in the +net of circumstance. Shall one herring, then, blame his fellow if his +fellow jostle him? We walk as in a mist of error, and Belial is fertile +in allurements; yet always it is granted us to behold that sin is sin. I +have perhaps sinned through anger, Messire de Gâtinais, more deeply than +you have planned to sin through luxury and through ambition. Let us then +cry quits, Messire de Gâtinais, and afterward part in peace, and in +common repentance." + +"And yield you Ellinor?" de Gâtinais said. "Oh no, messire, I reply to +you with Arnaud de Marveil, that marvellous singer of eld, 'They may +bear her from my presence, but they can never untie the knot which +unites my heart to her; for that heart, so tender and so constant, God +alone divides with my lady, and the portion which God possesses He holds +but as a part of her domain, and as her vassal.'" "This is blasphemy," +Prince Edward now retorted, "and for such observations alone you merit +death. Will you always talk and talk and talk? I perceive that the devil +is far more subtle than you, messire, and leads you, like a pig with a +ring in his nose, toward gross iniquity. Messire, I tell you that for +your soul's health I doubly mean to kill you now. So let us make an end +of this." + +De Gâtinais turned and took up his sword. "Since you will have it," he +rather regretfully said; "yet I reiterate that you play an absurd part. +Your wife has deserted you, has fled in abhorrence of you. For three +weeks she has been tramping God knows whither or in what company--" + +He was here interrupted. "What the Lady Ellinor has done," Prince Edward +crisply said, "was at my request. We were wedded at Burgos; it was +natural that we should desire our reunion to take place at Burgos; and +she came to Burgos with an escort which I provided." + +De Gâtinais sneered. "So that is the tale you will deliver to the +world?" + +"After I have slain you," the Prince said, "yes." + +"The reservation is wise. For if I were dead, Messire Edward, there +would be none to know that you risk all for a drained goblet, for an +orange already squeezed--quite dry, messire." + +"Face of God!" the Prince said. + +But de Gâtinais flung back both arms in a great gesture, so that he +knocked a flask of claret from the table at his rear. "I am candid, my +Prince. I would not see any brave gentleman slain in a cause so foolish. +In consequence I kiss and tell. In effect, I was eloquent, I was +magnificent, so that in the end her reserve was shattered like the +wooden flask yonder at our feet. Is it worth while, think you, that our +blood flow like this flagon's contents?" + +"Liar!" Prince Edward said, very softly. "O hideous liar! Already your +eyes shift!" He drew near and struck the Frenchman. "Talk and talk and +talk! and lying talk! I am ashamed while I share the world with a thing +as base as you." + +De Gâtinais hurled upon him, cursing, sobbing in an abandoned fury. In +an instant the place resounded like a smithy, for there were no better +swordsmen living than these two. The eavesdropper could see nothing +clearly. Round and round they veered in a whirl of turmoil. Presently +Prince Edward trod upon the broken flask, smashing it. His foot slipped +in the spilth of wine, and the huge body went down like an oak, his head +striking one leg of the table. + +"A candle!" de Gâtinais cried, and he panted now--"a hundred candles to +the Virgin of Beaujolais!" He shortened his sword to stab the Prince of +England. + +The eavesdropper came through the doorway, and flung herself between +Prince Edward and the descending sword. The sword dug deep into her +shoulder, so that she shrieked once with the cold pain of this wound. +Then she rose, ashen. "Liar!" she said. "Oh, I am shamed while I share +the world with a thing as base as you!" + +In silence de Gâtinais regarded her. There was a long interval before he +said, "Ellinor!" and then again, "Ellinor!" like a man bewildered. + +"_I was eloquent, I was magnificent_" she said, "_so that in the end her +reserve was shattered!_ Certainly, messire, it is not your death which I +desire, since a man dies so very, very quickly. I desire for you--I know +not what I desire for you!" the girl wailed. + +"You desire that I should endure this present moment," de Gâtinais +replied; "for as God reigns, I love you, of whom I have spoken infamy, +and my shame is very bitter." + +She said: "And I, too, loved you. It is strange to think of that." + +"I was afraid. Never in my life have I been afraid before to-day. But I +was afraid of this terrible and fair and righteous man. I saw all hope +of you vanish, all hope of Sicily--in effect, I lied as a cornered beast +spits out his venom." + +"I know," she answered. "Give me water, Etienne." She washed and bound +the Prince's head with a vinegar-soaked napkin. Ellinor sat upon the +floor, the big man's head upon her knee. "He will not die of this, for +he is of strong person. Look you, Messire de Gâtinais, you and I are not +strong. We are so fashioned that we can enjoy only the pleasant things +of life. But this man can enjoy--enjoy, mark you--the commission of any +act, however distasteful, if he think it to be his duty. There is the +difference. I cannot fathom him. But it is now necessary that I become +all which he loves--since he loves it,--and that I be in thought and +deed all which he desires. For I have heard the Tenson through." + +"You love him!" said de Gâtinais. + +She glanced upward with a pitiable smile. "No, it is you whom I love, my +Etienne. You cannot understand how at this very moment every fibre of +me--heart, soul, and body--may be longing just to comfort you, and to +give you all which you desire, my Etienne, and to make you happy, my +handsome Etienne, at however dear a cost. No; you will never understand +that. And since you may not understand, I merely bid you go and leave me +with my husband." + +And then there fell between these two an infinite silence. + +"Listen," de Gâtinais said; "grant me some little credit for what I do. +You are alone; the man is powerless. My fellows are within call. A word +secures the Prince's death; a word gets me you and Sicily. And I do not +speak that word, for you are my lady as well as his, and your will is my +one law." + +But there was no mercy in the girl, no more for him than for herself. +The big head lay upon her breast; she caressed the gross hair of it ever +so lightly. "These are tinsel oaths," she crooned, as if rapt with +incurious content; "these are the old empty protestations of all you +strutting poets. A word gets you what you desire! Then why do you not +speak that word? Why do you not speak many words, and become again as +eloquent and as magnificent as you were when you contrived that adultery +about which you were just now telling my husband?" + +De Gâtinais raised clenched hands. "I am shamed," he said; and then he +said, "It is just." + +He left the room and presently rode away with his men. I say that, here +at last, he had done a knightly deed, but she thought little of it, +never raised her head as the troop clattered from Mauléon, with a +lessening beat which lapsed now into the blunders of an aging fly who +doddered about the window yonder. + +She stayed thus, motionless, her meditations adrift in the future; and +that which she foreread left her not all sorry nor profoundly glad, for +living seemed by this, though scarcely the merry and colorful business +which she had esteemed it, yet immeasurably the more worth while. + +THE END OF THE SECOND NOVEL + + + + +III + +THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP + + + "Leixant a part le stil dels trobados, + Dos grans dezigs ban combatut ma pensa, + Mas lo voler vers un seguir dispensa: + Yo l'vos publich, amar dretament vos." + +THE THIRD NOVEL.--MEREGRETT OF FRANCE, THINKING TO PRESERVE A HOODWINKED +GENTLEMAN, ANNOYS A SPIDER; AND BY THE GRACE OF DESTINY THE WEB OF THAT +CUNNING INSECT ENTRAPS A BUTTERFLY, A WASP, AND THEN A GOD; WHO SHATTERS +IT. + + + + +_The Story of the Rat-Trap_ + + +In the year of grace 1298, a little before Candlemas (thus Nicolas +begins), came letters to the first King Edward of England from his +kinsman and ambassador to France, Earl Edmund of Lancaster. It was +perfectly apparent, the Earl wrote, that the French King meant to +surrender to the Earl's lord and brother neither the duchy of Guienne +nor the Lady Blanch. This lady, I must tell you, was now affianced to +King Edward, whose first wife, Dame Ellinor, had died eight years before +this time. + +The courier found Sire Edward at Ipswich, midway in celebration of his +daughter's marriage to the Count of Holland. The King read the letters +through and began to laugh; and presently broke into a rage such as was +possible (men whispered) only to the demon-tainted blood of Oriander's +descendants. Next day the keeper of the privy purse entered upon the +house-hold-books a considerable sum "to make good a large ruby and an +emerald lost out of his coronet when the King's Grace was pleased to +throw it into the fire"; and upon the same day the King recalled +Lancaster. The King then despatched yet another embassy into France to +treat about Sire Edward's marriage. This last embassy was headed by the +Earl of Aquitaine: his lieutenant was Lord Pevensey, the King's natural +son by Hawise Bulmer. + +The Earl got audience of the French King at Mezelais. Walking alone came +this Earl of Aquitaine, with a large retinue, into the hall where the +barons of France stood according to their rank; in unadorned russet were +the big Earl and his attendants, but upon the scarlets and purples of +the French lords many jewels shone: it was as though through a corridor +of gayly painted sunlit glass that the grave Earl came to the dais where +sat King Philippe. + +The King had risen at close sight of the new envoy, and had gulped once +or twice, and without speaking, had hurriedly waved his lords out of +ear-shot. The King's perturbation was very extraordinary. + +"Fair cousin," the Earl now said, without any prelude, "four years ago I +was affianced to your sister, Dame Blanch. You stipulated that Gascony +be given up to you in guaranty, as a settlement on any children I might +have by that incomparable lady. I assented, and yielded you the +province, upon the understanding, sworn to according to the faith of +loyal kings, that within forty days you assign to me its seignory as +your vassal. And I have had of you since then neither my province nor +my betrothed wife, but only excuses, Sire Philippe." + +With eloquence the Frenchman touched upon the emergencies to which the +public weal so often drives men of high station, and upon his private +grief over the necessity--unavoidable, alas!--of returning a hard answer +before the council; and became so voluble that Sire Edward merely +laughed in that big-lunged and disconcerting way of his, and afterward +lodged for a week at Mezelais, nominally passing by his minor title of +Earl of Aquitaine, and as his own ambassador. + +Negotiations became more swift of foot, since a man serves himself with +zeal. In addition, the French lords could make nothing of a politician +so thick-witted that he replied to every consideration of expediency +with a parrot-like reiteration of the circumstance that already the +bargain was signed and sworn to: in consequence, while daily they fumed +over his stupidity, daily he gained his point. During this period he +was, upon one pretext or another, very often in the company of his +affianced wife, Dame Blanch. + +This lady, I must tell you, was the handsomest of her day; there could +nowhere be found a creature more agreeable to every sense; and she +compelled the adoring regard of men, it is recorded, not gently but in +an imperious fashion. Sire Edward, who, till this, had loved her merely +by report, and, in accordance with the high custom of old, through many +perusals of her portrait, now appeared besotted. He was an aging man, +near sixty, huge and fair, with a crisp beard, and the bright unequal +eyes of Manuel of Poictesme. The better-read at Mezelais began to liken +this so candidly enamored monarch and his Princess to Sieur Hercules at +the feet of Queen Omphale. + +The court hunted and slew a stag of ten in the woods of Ermenoueïl, +which stand thick about the château; and at the hunt's end, these two +had dined at Rigon the forester's hut, in company with Dame Meregrett, +the French King's younger sister. She sat a little apart from the +betrothed, and stared through the hut's one window. We know, nowadays, +it was not merely the trees she was considering. + +Dame Blanch seemed undisposed to mirth. "We have slain the stag, beau +sire," she said, "and have made of his death a brave diversion. To-day +we have had our sport of death,--and presently the gay years wind past +us, as our cavalcade came toward the stag, and God's incurious angel +slays us, much as we slew the stag. And we shall not understand, and we +shall wonder, as the stag did, in helpless wonder. And Death will have +his sport of us, as if in atonement." Her big eyes shone, as when the +sun glints upon a sand-bottomed pool. "Ohé, I have known such happiness +of late, beau sire, that I am hideously afraid to die." + +The King answered, "I too have been very happy of late." + +"But it is profitless to talk about death thus drearily. Let us flout +him, instead, with some gay song." And thereupon she handed Sire Edward +a lute. + +The King accepted it. "Death is not reasonably mocked by any person," +Sire Edward said, "since in the end he conquers, and of the lips that +gibed at him remains but a little dust. Rather should I, who already +stand beneath a lifted sword, make for my destined and inescapable +conqueror a Sirvente, which is the Song of Service." + +Sang Sire Edward:[3] + + "I sing of Death, that comes unto the king, + And lightly plucks him from the cushioned throne; + And drowns his glory and his warfaring + In unrecorded dim oblivion; + And girds another with the sword thereof; + And sets another in his stead to reign; + And ousts the remnant, nakedly to gain + Styx' formless shore and nakedly complain + Midst twittering ghosts lamenting life and love. + + "For Death is merciless: a crack-brained king + He raises in the place of Prester John, + Smites Priam, and mid-course in conquering + Bids Caesar pause; the wit of Salomon, + The wealth of Nero and the pride thereof, + And battle-prowess--or of Tamburlaine + Darius, Jeshua, or Charlemaigne,-- + Wheedle and bribe and surfeit Death in vain, + And get no grace of him nor any love. + + "Incuriously he smites the armored king + And tricks his counsellors--" + +"True, O God!" murmured the tiny woman, who sat beside the window +yonder. With that, Dame Meregrett rose, and passed from the room. + +The two lovers started, and laughed, and afterward paid little heed to +her outgoing. Sire Edward had put aside the lute and sat now regarding +the Princess. His big left hand propped the bearded chin; his grave +countenance was flushed, and his intent eyes shone under their shaggy +brows, very steadily, although the left eye was now so nearly shut as to +reveal the merest spark. + +Irresolutely, Dame Blanch plucked at her gown; then rearranged a fold of +it, and with composure awaited the ensuing action, afraid at bottom, but +not at all ill-pleased; and she looked downward. + +The King said: "Never before were we two alone, madame. Fate is very +gracious to me this morning." + +"Fate," the lady considered, "has never denied much to the Hammer of the +Scots." + +"She has denied me nothing," he sadly said, "save the one thing that +makes this business of living seem a rational proceeding. Fame and power +and wealth fate has accorded me, no doubt, but never the common joys of +life. And, look you, my Princess, I am of aging person now. During some +thirty years I have ruled England according to my interpretation of +God's will as it was anciently made manifest by the holy Evangelists; +and during that period I have ruled England not without odd by-ends of +commendation: yet behold, to-day I forget the world-applauded, excellent +King Edward, and remember only Edward Plantagenet--hot-blooded and +desirous man!--of whom that much-commended king has made a prisoner all +these years." + +"It is the duty of exalted persons," Blanch unsteadily said, "to put +aside such private inclinations as their breasts may harbor--" + +He said, "I have done what I might for the happiness of every Englishman +within my realm saving only Edward Plantagenet; and now I think his turn +to be at hand." Then the man kept silence; and his hot appraisal daunted +her. + +"Lord," she presently faltered, "lord, you know that we are already +betrothed, and, in sober verity, Love cannot extend his laws between +husband and wife, since the gifts of love are voluntary, and husband and +wife are but the slaves of duty--" + +"Troubadourish nonsense!" Sire Edward said; "yet it is true that the +gifts of love are voluntary. And therefore--Ha, most beautiful, what +have you and I to do with all this chaffering over Guienne?" The two +stood very close to each other now. Blanch said, "It is a high +matter--" Then on a sudden the full-veined girl was aglow. "It is a +trivial matter." He took her in his arms, since already her cheeks +flared in scarlet anticipation of the event. + +Thus holding her, he wooed the girl tempestuously. Here, indeed, was +Sieur Hercules enslaved, burned by a fiercer fire than that of Nessus, +and the huge bulk of the unconquerable visibly shaken by his adoration. +In a disordered tapestry of verbiage, aflap in winds of passion, she +presently beheld herself prefigured by Balkis, the Judean's lure, and by +that Princess of Cyprus who reigned in Aristotle's time, and by +Nicolete, the King's daughter of Carthage,--since the first flush of +morning was as a rush-light before her resplendency, the man swore; and +in conclusion, he likened her to a modern Countess of Tripolis, for love +of whom he, like Rudel, had cleft the seas, and losing whom he must +inevitably die as did Rudel. Sire Edward snapped his fingers now over +any consideration of Guienne. He would conquer for her all Muscovy and +all Cataia, too, if she desired mere acreage. Meanwhile he wanted her, +and his hard and savage passion beat down opposition as if with a +bludgeon. + +"Heart's emperor," the trembling girl replied, "I think that you were +cast in some larger mould than we of France. Oh, none of us may dare +resist you! and I know that nothing matters, nothing in all the world, +save that you love me. Then take me, since you will it,--and take me +not as King, since you will otherwise, but as Edward Plantagenet. For +listen! by good luck you have this afternoon despatched Rigon for +Chevrieul, where to-morrow we were to hunt the great boar. So to-night +this hut will be unoccupied." + +The man was silent. He had a gift that way when occasion served. + +"Here, then, beau sire! here, then, at nine, you are to meet me with my +chaplain. Behold, he marries us, as glibly as though we two were +peasants. Poor king and princess!" cried Dame Blanch, and in a voice +which thrilled him, "shall ye not, then, dare to be but man and woman?" + +"Ha!" the King said. "So the chaplain makes a third! Well, the King is +pleased to loose his prisoner, that long-imprisoned Edward Plantagenet: +and I will do it." + +So he came that night, without any retinue, and habited as a forester, +with a horn swung about his neck, into the unlighted hut of Rigon the +forester, and he found a woman there, though not the woman whom he had +expected. + +"Treachery, beau sire! Horrible treachery!" she wailed. + +"I have encountered it before this," the big man said. + +"Presently will come to you not Blanch but Philippe, with many men to +back him. And presently they will slay you. You have been trapped, beau +sire. Ah, for the love of God, go! Go, while there is yet time!" Sire +Edward reflected. Undoubtedly, to light on Edward Longshanks alone in a +forest would appear to King Philippe, if properly attended, a tempting +chance to settle divers difficulties, once for all; and Sire Edward knew +the conscience of his old opponent to be invulnerable. The act would +violate the core of hospitality and knighthood, no doubt, but its +outcome would be a very definite gain to France, and for the rest, +merely a dead body in a ditch. Not a monarch in Christendom, Sire Edward +reflected, but feared and in consequence hated the Hammer of the Scots, +and in further consequence would not lift a finger to avenge him; and +not a being in the universe would rejoice more heartily at the success +of Philippe's treachery than would Sire Edward's son and immediate +successor, the young Prince Edward of Caernarvon. Taking matters by and +large, Philippe had all the powers of common-sense to back him in +contriving an assassination. + +What Sire Edward said was, "Dame Blanch, then, knew of this?" But +Meregrett's pitiful eyes had already answered him, and he laughed a +little. + +"In that event, I have to-night enregistered my name among the goodly +company of Love's Lunatics,--as yokefellow with Dan Merlin in his +thornbush, and with wise Salomon when he capered upon the high places of +Chemosh, and with Duke Ares sheepishly agrin in the net of Mulciber. +Rogues all, madame! fools all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and +allures the soul to such sensual delights as bar its passage toward the +eternal life wherein alone lies the empire and the heritage of the soul. +And why does this carnal prison so impede the soul? Because Satan once +ranked among the sons of God, and the Eternal Father, as I take it, has +not yet forgotten the antique relationship,--and hence it is permitted +even in our late time that always the flesh rebel against the spirit, +and that always these so tiny and so thin-voiced tricksters, these +highly tinted miracles of iniquity, so gracious in demeanor and so +starry-eyed--" + +Then he turned and pointed, no longer the orotund zealot but the +expectant captain now. "Look, my Princess!" In the pathway from which he +had recently emerged stood a man in full armor like a sentinel. "Mort de +Dieu, we can but try to get out of this," Sire Edward said. + +"You should have tried without talking so much," replied Meregrett. She +followed him. And presently, in a big splash of moonlight, the armed +man's falchion glittered across their way. "Back," he bade them, "for by +the King's orders, I can let no man pass." + +"It would be very easy now to strangle this herring," Sire Edward +reflected. + +"But it is not easy to strangle a whole school of herring," the fellow +retorted. "Hoh, Messire d'Aquitaine, the bushes of Ermenoueîl are alive +with my associates. The hut yonder, in effect, is girdled by them,--and +we have our orders to let no man pass." + +"Have you any orders concerning women?" the King said. + +The man deliberated. Sire Edward handed him three gold pieces. "There +was assuredly no specific mention of petticoats," the soldier now +recollected, "and in consequence I dare to pass the Princess, against +whom certainly nothing can be planned." + +"Why, in that event," Sire Edward said, "we two had as well bid each +other adieu." + +But Meregrett only said, "You bid me go?" + +He waved his hand. "Since there is no choice. For that which you have +done--however tardily--I thank you. Meantime I return to Rigon's hut to +rearrange my toga as King Caesar did when the assassins fell upon him, +and to encounter with due decorum whatever Dame Luck may prefer." + +She said, "You go to your death." + +He shrugged his broad shoulders. "In the end we necessarily die." + +Dame Meregrett turned, and without faltering passed back into the hut. + +When he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, Sire +Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation. "Presently come your +brother and his tattling lords. To be discovered here with me at night, +alone, means trouble for you. If Philippe chances to fall into one of +his Capetian rages it means death." + +She answered, as though she were thinking about other matters, "Yes." + +Now, for the first time, Sire Edward regarded her with profound +consideration. To the finger-tips this so-little lady showed a +descendant of the holy Lewis whom he had known and loved in old years. +Small and thinnish she was, with soft and profuse hair that, for all its +blackness, gleamed in the lamplight with stray ripples of brilliancy, as +you may see sparks shudder to extinction over burning charcoal. She had +the Valois nose, long and delicate in form, and overhanging a short +upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious in tint, and the whiteness of her +skin would have matched the Hyperborean snows tidily enough. As for her +eyes, the customary similes of the court poets were gigantic onyxes or +ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. These eyes were too big for +her little face: they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which +nervously endured each incident of life, like a foreigner uneasily +acquiescent to the custom of the country. + +Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. "Madame, I +do not understand." + +Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. "It means that I +love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for presently you die. +Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may hearten me to live." + +The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming to +Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful haze of +forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes a god and +transmutes whatever in corporeal man would have been a defect into some +divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must tell you in this +place, since no other occasion offers, that even until the end of her +life it was so. For to her what in other persons would have seemed +flagrant dulness showed somehow, in Sire Edward, as the majestic +deliberation of one that knows his verdict to be decisive, and therefore +appraises cautiously; and if sometimes his big, irregular calm eyes +betrayed no apprehension of the jest at which her lips were laughing, +and of which her brain approved, always within the instant her heart +convinced her that a god is not lightly moved to mirth. + +And now it was a god--_O deus certè!_--who had taken a woman's paltry +face between his hands, half roughly. "And the maid is a Capet!" Sire +Edward mused. + +"Blanch has never desired you any ill, beau sire. But she loves the +Archduke of Austria. And once you were dead, she might marry him. One +cannot blame her," Meregrett considered, "since he wishes to marry her, +and she, of course, wishes to make him happy." + +"And not herself, save in some secondary way!" the big King said. "In +part I comprehend, madame. Now I too hanker after this same happiness, +and my admiration for the cantankerous despoiler whom I praised this +morning is somewhat abated. There was a Tenson once--Lord, Lord, how +long ago! I learn too late that truth may possibly have been upon the +losing side--" Thus talking incoherencies, he took up Rigon's lute. + +Sang Sire Edward: + + "Incuriously he smites the armored king + And tricks his counsellors-- + +"yes, the jingle ran thus. Now listen, madame--listen, the while that I +have my singing out, whatever any little cut-throats may be planning in +corners." + +Sang Sire Edward: + + "As, later on, + Death will, half-idly, still our pleasuring, + And change for fevered laughter in the sun + Sleep such as Merlin's,--and excess thereof,-- + Whence we, divorceless Death our Viviaine + Implacable, may never more regain + The unforgotten rapture, and the pain + And grief and ecstasy of life and love. + + "For, presently, as quiet as the king + Sleeps now that planned the keeps of Ilion, + We, too, will sleep, whilst overhead the spring + Rules, and young lovers laugh--as we have done,-- + And kiss--as we, that take no heed thereof, + But slumber very soundly, and disdain + The world-wide heralding of winter's wane + And swift sweet ripple of the April rain + Running about the world to waken love. + + "We shall have done with Love, and Death be king + And turn our nimble bodies carrion, + Our red lips dusty;--yet our live lips cling + Despite that age-long severance and are one + Despite the grave and the vain grief thereof,-- + Which we will baffle, if in Death's domain + Fond memories may enter, and we twain + May dream a little, and rehearse again + In that unending sleep our present love. + + "Speed forth to her in halting unison, + My rhymes: and say no hindrance may restrain + Love from his aim when Love is bent thereon; + And that were love at my disposal lain-- + All mine to take!--and Death had said, 'Refrain, + Lest I, even I, exact the cost thereof,' + I know that even as the weather-vane + Follows the wind so would I follow Love." + +Sire Edward put aside the lute. "Thus ends the Song of Service," he +said, "which was made not by the King of England but by Edward +Plantagenet--hot-blooded and desirous man!--in honor of the one woman +who within more years than I care to think of has at all considered +Edward Plantagenet." + +"I do not comprehend," she said. And, indeed, she dared not. + +But now he held both tiny hands in his. "At best, your poet is an +egotist. I must die presently. Meantime I crave largesse, madame, and a +great almsgiving, so that in his unending sleep your poet may rehearse +our present love." And even in Rigon's dim light he found her kindling +eyes not niggardly. + +Sire Edward strode to the window and raised big hands toward the +spear-points of the aloof stars. "Master of us all!" he cried; "O Father +of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the Scourge of France, the +conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and the flail of the accursed +race that slew Thine only Son! the King of England am I, who have made +of England an imperial nation, and have given to Thy Englishmen new +laws! And to-night I crave my hire. Never, O my Father, have I had of +any person aught save reverence or hatred! never in my life has any +person loved me! And I am old, my Father--I am old, and presently I die. +As I have served Thee--as Jacob wrestled with Thee at the ford of +Jabbok--at the place of Peniel--" Against the tremulous blue and silver +of the forest the Princess saw how horribly the big man was shaken. "My +hire! my hire!" he hoarsely said. "Forty long years, my Father! And now +I will not let Thee go except Thou hear me, and grant me life and this +woman's love." + +He turned, stark and black in the rearward splendor of the moon. _"As a +prince hast thou power with God,"_ he calmly said, _"and thou hast +prevailed._ For the King of kings was never obdurate, my dear, to them +that have deserved well of Him. So He will attend to my request, and +will get us out of this pickle somehow." + +Even as he said this, Philippe the Handsome came into the room, and at +the heels of the French King were seven lords, armed cap-à -pie. + +The French King was an odd man. Subtly smiling, he came forward through +the twilight, with soft, long strides, and he made no outcry at +recognition of his sister. "Take the woman away, Victor," he said, +disinterestedly, to de Montespan. Afterward he sat down beside the table +and remained silent for a while, intently regarding Sire Edward and the +tiny woman who clung to Sire Edward's arm; and in the flickering gloom +of the hut Philippe smiled as an artist may smile who gazes on the +perfected work and knows it to be adroit. + +"You prefer to remain, my sister?" he said presently. "Hé bien! it +happens that to-night I am in a mood for granting almost any favor. A +little later and I will attend to your merits." The fleet disorder of +his visage had lapsed again into the meditative smile which was that of +Lucifer watching a toasted soul. "And so it ends," he said, "and England +loses to-night the heir that Manuel the Redeemer provided. Conqueror of +Scotland, Scourge of France! O unconquerable king! and will the worms of +Ermenoueïl, then, pause to-morrow to consider through what a glorious +turmoil their dinner came to them?" + +"Do you design to murder me?" Sire Edward said. + +The French King shrugged. "I design that within this moment my lords +shall slay you while I sit here and do not move a finger. Is it not good +to be a king, my cousin, and to sit quite still, and to see your +bitterest enemy hacked and slain,--and all the while to sit quite still, +quite unruffled, as a king should always be? Eh, eh! I never lived until +to-night!" + +"Now, by Heaven," said Sire Edward, "I am your kinsman and your guest, I +am unarmed--" + +Philippe bowed his head. "Undoubtedly," he assented, "the deed is foul. +But I desire Gascony very earnestly, and so long as you live you will +never permit me to retain Gascony. Hence it is quite necessary, you +conceive, that I murder you. What!" he presently said, "will you not beg +for mercy? I had hoped," the French King added, somewhat wistfully, +"that you might be afraid to die, O huge and righteous man! and would +entreat me to spare you. To spurn the weeping conqueror of Llewellyn, +say ... But these sins which damn one's soul are in actual performance +very tedious affairs; and I begin to grow aweary of the game. Hé bien! +now kill this man for me, messieurs." + +The English King strode forward. "Shallow trickster!" Sire Edward +thundered. _"Am I not afraid?_ You grimacing baby, do you think to +ensnare a lion with such a flimsy rat-trap? Wise persons do not hunt +lions with these contraptions: for it is the nature of a rat-trap, fair +cousin, to ensnare not the beast which imperiously desires and takes in +daylight, but the tinier and the filthier beast that covets meanly and +attacks under the cover of darkness--as do you and your seven skulkers!" +The man was rather terrible; not a Frenchman within the hut but had +drawn back a little. + +"Listen!" Sire Edward said, and he came yet farther toward the King of +France and shook at him one forefinger; "when you were in your cradle I +was leading armies. When you were yet unbreeched I was lord of half +Europe. For thirty years I have driven kings before me as did Fierabras. +Am I, then, a person to be hoodwinked by the first big-bosomed huzzy +that elects to waggle her fat shoulders and to grant an assignation in a +forest expressly designed for stabbings? You baby, is the Hammer of the +Scots the man to trust for one half moment a Capet? Ill-mannered +infant," the King said, with bitter laughter, "it is now necessary that +I summon my attendants and remove you to a nursery which I have prepared +in England." He set the horn to his lips and blew three blasts. There +came many armed warriors into the hut, bearing ropes. Here was the +entire retinue of the Earl of Aquitaine. Cursing, Sire Philippe sprang +upon the English King, and with a dagger smote at the impassive big +man's heart. The blade broke against the mail armor under the tunic. +"Have I not told you," Sire Edward wearily said, "that one may never +trust a Capet? Now, messieurs, bind these carrion and convey them +whither I have directed you. Nay, but, Roger--" He conversed apart with +his son, the Earl of Pevensey, and what Sire Edward commanded was done. +The French King and seven lords of France went from that hut trussed +like chickens ready for the oven. + +And now Sire Edward turned toward Meregrett and chafed his big hands +gleefully. "At every tree-bole a tethered horse awaits us; and a ship +awaits our party at Fécamp. To-morrow we sleep in England--and, Mort de +Dieu! do you not think, madame, that once within my very persuasive +Tower of London, your brother and I may come to some agreement over +Guienne?" + +She had shrunk from him. "Then the trap was yours? It was you that lured +my brother to this infamy!" + +"In effect, I planned it many months ago at Ipswich yonder," Sire Edward +gayly said. "Faith of a gentleman! your brother has cheated me of +Guienne, and was I to waste eternity in begging him to give me back my +province? Oh, no, for I have many spies in France, and have for some two +years known your brother and your sister to the bottom. Granted that I +came hither incognito, to forecast your kinfolk's immediate endeavors +was none too difficult; and I wanted Guienne--and, in consequence, the +person of your brother. Hah, death of my life! does not the seasoned +hunter adapt his snare to the qualities of his prey, and take the +elephant through his curiosity, as the snake through his notorious +treachery?" Now the King of England blustered. + +But the little Princess wrung her hands. "I am this night most hideously +shamed. Beau sire, I came hither to aid a brave man infamously trapped, +and instead I find an alert spider, snug in his cunning web, and +patiently waiting until the gnats of France fly near enough. Eh, the +greater fool was I to waste my labor on the shrewd and evil thing which +has no more need of me than I of it! And now let me go hence, sire, +unmolested, for the sake of chivalry. Could I have come to the brave man +I had dreamed of, I would have come cheerily through the murkiest lane +of hell; as the more artful knave, as the more judicious trickster"--and +here she thrust him from her--"I spit upon you. Now let me go hence." + +He took her in his brawny arms. "Fit mate for me," he said. "Little +vixen, had you done otherwise I would have devoted you to the devil." + +Still grasping her, and victoriously lifting Dame Meregrett, so that +her feet swung clear of the floor, Sire Edward said, again with that +queer touch of fanatic gravity: "My dear, you are perfectly right. I was +tempted, I grant you. But it was never reasonable that gentlefolk should +cheat at their dicing. Therefore I whispered Roger Bulmer my final +decision; and he is now loosing all my captives in the courtyard of +Mezelais, after birching the tails of every one of them as soundly as +these infants' pranks to-night have merited. So you perceive that I do +not profit by my trick; and that I lose Guienne, after all, in order to +come to you with hands--well! not intolerably soiled." + +"Oh, now I love you!" she cried, a-thrill with disappointment to find +him so unthriftily high-minded. "Yet you have done wrong, for Guienne is +a king's ransom." + +He smiled whimsically, and presently one arm swept beneath her knees, so +that presently he held her as one dandles a baby; and presently his +stiff and graying beard caressed her burning cheek. Masterfully he said: +"Then let Guienne serve as such and ransom for a king his glad and +common manhood. Now it appears expedient that I leave France without any +unwholesome delay, because these children may resent being spanked. More +lately--hé, already I have in my pocket the Pope's dispensation +permitting me to marry, in spite of our cousinship, the sister of the +King of France." + +Very shyly Dame Meregrett lifted her little mouth. She said nothing +because talk was not necessary. + +In consequence, after a deal of political tergiversation (Nicolas +concludes), in the year of grace 1299, on the day of our Lady's +nativity, and in the twenty-seventh year of King Edward's reign, came to +the British realm, and landed at Dover, not Dame Blanch, as would have +been in consonance with seasoned expectation, but Dame Meregrett, the +other daughter of King Philippe the Bold; and upon the following day +proceeded to Canterbury, whither on the next Thursday after came Edward, +King of England, into the Church of the Trinity at Canterbury, and +therein espoused the aforesaid Dame Meregrett. + +THE END OF THE THIRD NOVEL + + + + +IV + +THE STORY OF THE CHOICES + + + "Sest fable es en aquest mon + Semblans al homes que i son; + Que el mager sen qu'om pot aver + So es amar Dieu et sa mer, + E gardar sos comendamens." + +THE FOURTH NOVEL.--YSABEAU OF FRANCE, DESIROUS OF DISTRACTION, LOOKS FOR +RECREATION IN THE TORMENT OF A CERTAIN KNIGHT, WHOM SHE PROVES TO BE NO +MORE THAN HUMAN; BUT IN THE OUTCOME OF HER HOLIDAY HE CONFOUNDS THIS +QUEEN BY THE WIT OF HIS REPLY. + + + + +The Story of the Choices + + +In the year of grace 1327 (thus Nicolas begins) you could have found in +all England no couple more ardent in affection or in despair more +affluent than Rosamund Eastney and Sir Gregory Darrell. She was Lord +Berners' only daughter, a brown beauty, of extensive repute, thanks to a +retinue of lovers who were practitioners of the Gay Science, and who had +scattered broadcast innumerable Canzons in her honor; and Lord Berners +was a man to accept the world as he found it. + +"Dompnedex!" the Earl was wont to say; "in sincerity I am fond of +Gregory Darrell, and if he chooses to make love to my daughter that is +none of my affair. The eyes and the brain preserve a proverbial warfare, +which is the source of all amenity, for without lady-service there would +be no songs and tourneys, no measure and no good breeding; and a man +delinquent in domnei is no more to be valued than an ear of corn +without the grain. No, I am so profoundly an admirer of Love that I can +never willingly behold him slain, of a surfeit, by Matrimony; besides, +this rapscallion Gregory could not to advantage exchange purses with +Lazarus in the parable; and, moreover, Rosamund is to marry the Earl of +Sarum a little after All Saints' day." + +"Sarum!" people echoed. "Why, the old goat has had four wives already!" + +And the Earl would spread his hands. "These redundancies are permissible +to one of the wealthiest persons in England," he was used to submit. + +Thus it fell out that Sir Gregory came and went at his own discretion as +concerned Lord Berners' fief of Ordish, all through those choppy times +of warfare between Sire Edward and Queen Ysabeau. Lord Berners, for one, +vexed himself not inordinately over the outcome, since he protested the +King's armament to consist of fools and the Queen's of rascals; and had +with entire serenity declined to back either Dick or the devil. + +But at last the Queen got resistless aid from Count William of Hainault +(in a way to be told about hereafter), and the King was captured by her +forces, and was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle. There they held the +second Edward to reign in England, who was the unworthy son of Dame +Ellinor and of that first squinting King Edward about whom I have told +you in the two tales preceding this tale. It was in the September of +this year, a little before Michaelmas, that they brought Sir Gregory +Darrell to be judged by the Queen; notoriously the knight had been her +husband's adherent. "Death!" croaked Adam Orleton, who sat to the right +hand, and, "Young de Spencer's death!" amended the Earl of March, with +wild laughter; but Ysabeau leaned back in her great chair--a handsome +woman, stoutening now from gluttony and from too much wine,--and +regarded her prisoner with lazy amiability. + +"And what was your errand in Figgis Wood?" she demanded--"or are you +mad, then, Gregory Darrell, that you dare ride past my gates alone?" + +He curtly said, "I rode for Ordish." + +Followed silence. "Roger," the Queen ordered, "give me the paper which I +would not sign." + +The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of London +somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, like a person in shrewd and +epicurean amusement, while the Queen subscribed the parchment, with a +great scrawling flourish. + +"Take, in the devil's name, the hire of your dexterities," said Ysabeau. +She pushed this document with her wet pen-point toward March. "So! get +it over with, that necessary business with my husband at Berkeley. And +do the rest of you withdraw, saving only my prisoner." + +Followed another silence. Queen Ysabeau lolled in her carven chair, +considering the comely gentleman who stood before her, fettered, at the +point of shameful death. There was in the room a little dog which had +come to the Queen, and now licked the palm of her left hand, and the +soft lapping of its tongue was the only sound you heard. "So at peril of +your life you rode for Ordish, then, messire?" + +The tense man had flushed. "You have harried us of the King's party out +of England,--and in reason I might not leave England without seeing the +desire of my heart." + +"My friend," said Ysabeau, as if half in sorrow, "I would have pardoned +anything save that." She rose. Her face was dark and hot. "By God and +all His saints! you shall indeed leave England to-morrow and the world +also! but not without a final glimpse of this same Rosamund. Yet listen: +I, too, must ride with you to Ordish--as your sister, say--Gregory, did +I not hang, last April, the husband of your sister? Yes, Ralph de +Belomys, a thin man with eager eyes, the Earl of Farrington he was. As +his widow I will ride with you to Ordish, upon condition you disclose to +none at Ordish, saving only, if you will, this quite immaculate +Rosamund, any hint of our merry carnival. And to-morrow (you will swear +according to the nicest obligations of honor) you must ride back with me +to encounter--that which I may devise. For I dare to trust your naked +word in this, and, moreover, I shall take with me a sufficiency of +retainers to leave you no choice." + +Darrell knelt before her. "I can do no homage to Queen Ysabeau; yet the +prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die to-morrow and cunningly +contrives, for old time's sake, to hearten me with a sight of Rosamund, +I cannot but kiss." This much he did. "And I swear in all things to obey +your will." + +"O comely fool!" the Queen said, not ungently, "I contrive, it may be, +but to demonstrate that many tyrants of antiquity were only bunglers. +And, besides, I must have other thoughts than those which I have known +too long: I must this night take holiday from thinking them, lest I go +mad." + +Thus did the Queen arrange her holiday. + +"Either I mean to torture you to-morrow," Dame Ysabeau said, presently, +to Darrell, as these two rode side by side, "or else I mean to free you. +In sober verity I do not know. I am in a holiday humor, and it is as the +whim may take me. But do you indeed love this Rosamund Eastney? And of +course she worships you?" + +"It is my belief, madame, that when I see her I tremble visibly, and my +weakness is such that a child has more intelligence than I,--and toward +such misery any lady must in common reason be a little compassionate." + +Her hands had twitched so that the astonished palfrey reared. "I design +torture," the Queen said; "ah, I perfect exquisite torture, for you have +proven recreant, you have forgotten the maid Ysabeau,--Le Desir du +Cuer, was it not, my Gregory, that you were wont to call her, as +nowadays this Rosamund is the desire of your heart. You lack +inventiveness." + +His palms clutched at heaven. "That Ysabeau is dead! and all true joy is +destroyed, and the world lies under a blight from which God has averted +an unfriendly face in displeasure! yet of all wretched persons existent +I am he who endures the most grievous anguish, for daily I partake of +life without any relish, and I would in truth deem him austerely kind +who slew me now that the maiden Ysabeau is dead." + +She shrugged wearily. "I scent the raw stuff of a Planh," the Queen +observed; "_benedicite!_ it was ever your way, my friend, to love a +woman chiefly for the verses she inspired." And she began to sing, as +they rode through Baverstock Thicket. + +Sang Ysabeau: + + "Man's love hath many prompters, + But a woman's love hath none; + And he may woo a nimble wit + Or hair that shames the sun, + Whilst she must pick of all one man + And ever brood thereon-- + And for no reason, + And not rightly,-- + + "Save that the plan was foreordained + (More old than Chalcedon, + Or any tower of Tarshish + Or of gleaming Babylon), + That she must love unwillingly + And love till life be done,--. + He for a season, + And more lightly." + +So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a +retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell. Lord +Berners received the party with boisterous hospitality. + +"Age has not blinded Father to the fact that your sister is a very +handsome woman," was Rosamund Eastney's comment. The period appears to +have been after supper, and the girl sat with Gregory Darrell in not the +most brilliant corner of the main hall. + +The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then with a +tumbling rush of speech told of the sorry masquerade. "The she-devil +designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she plans I know not what." + +"Yet I--" said Rosamund. The girl had risen, and she continued with an +odd inconsequence: "You have told me you were Pembroke's squire when +long ago he sailed for France to fetch this woman into England--" + +"--Which you never heard!" Lord Berners shouted at this point. "Jasper, +a lute!" And then he halloaed, "Gregory, Madame de Farrington demands +that racy song you made against Queen Ysabeau during your last visit." +Thus did the Queen begin her holiday. + +It was a handsome couple which came forward, with hand quitting hand +tardily, and with blinking eyes yet rapt: these two were not overpleased +at being disturbed, and the man was troubled, as in reason he well might +be, by the task assigned him. + +"Is it, indeed, your will, my sister," he said, "that I should +sing--this song?" + +"It is my will," the Countess said. + +And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. "A truth, once +spoken, may not be disowned in any company. It is not, look you, of my +own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if Queen Ysabeau herself were to +bid me sing this song, I could not refuse, for, Christ aid me! the song +is true." + +Sang Sir Gregory: + + "Dame Ysabeau, la prophécie + Que li sage dit ne ment mie, + Que la royne sut ceus grever + Qui tantost laquais sot aymer--"[4] + +and so on. It was a lengthy ditty, and in its wording not oversqueamish; +the Queen's career in England was detailed without any stuttering, and +you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory delivered +it with an incisive gusto, desperately countersigning his own death +warrant. Her treacheries, her adulteries and her assassinations were +rendered in glowing terms whose vigor seemed, even now, to please their +contriver. Yet the minstrel added a new peroration. + +Sang Sir Gregory: + + "Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gémit-- + Peu pense à ce que la voix dit, + Car me membre du temps jadis + Et d'ung garson, d'amour surpris, + Et d'une fille--et la vois si-- + Et grandement suis esbahi." + +And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without +speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance caught +between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had annoyed her. +She drew the little dagger from her girdle and meditatively cut the +buzzing thing in two. She cast the fragments from her, and resting the +dagger's point upon the arm of her chair, one forefinger upon the summit +of the hilt, considerately twirled the brilliant weapon. + +"This song does not err upon the side of clemency," she said at last, +"nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau." + +"That she-wolf!" said Lord Berners, comfortably. "Hoo, Madame Gertrude! +since the Prophet Moses wrung healing waters from a rock there has been +no such miracle recorded." + +"We read, Messire de Berners, that when the she-wolf once acknowledges a +master she will follow him as faithfully as any dog. My brother, I do +not question your sincerity, yet everybody knows you sing with the voice +of an unhonored courtier. Suppose Queen Ysabeau had heard your song all +through as I have heard it, and then had said--for she is not as the run +of women--'Messire, I had thought until this that there was no thorough +man in England save tall Roger Mortimer. I find him tawdry now, and--I +remember. Come you, then, and rule the England that you love as you may +love no woman, and rule me, messire, since I find even in your +cruelty--For we are no pygmies, you and I! Yonder is squabbling Europe +and all the ancient gold of Africa, ready for our taking! and past that +lies Asia, too, and its painted houses hung with bells, and cloud-wrapt +Tartary, where we two may yet erect our equal thrones, upon which to +receive the tributary emperors! For we are no pygmies, you and I." She +paused. She shrugged. "Suppose Queen Ysabeau, who is not as the run of +women, had said this much, my brother?" + +Darrell was more pallid (as the phrase is) than a sheet, and the lute +had dropped unheeded, and his hands were clenched. + +"I would answer, my sister, that as she has found in England but one +man, I have found in England but one woman--the rose of all the world." +His eyes were turned at this toward Rosamund Eastney. "And yet," the man +stammered, "because I, too, remember--" + +"Hah, in God's name! I am answered," the Countess said. She rose, in +dignity almost a queen. "We have ridden far to-day, and to-morrow we +must travel a deal farther--eh, my brother? I am going to bed, Messire +de Berners." + +So the men and women parted. Madame de Farrington kissed her brother at +leaving him, as was natural; and under her caress his stalwart person +shuddered, but not in repugnance; and the Queen went away singing +hushedly. + +Sang Ysabeau: + + "Were the All-Mother wise, life (shaped anotherwise) + Would be all high and true; + Could I be otherwise I had been otherwise + Simply because of you, ... + With whom I have naught to do, + And who are no longer you! + + "Life with its pay to be bade us essay to be + What we became,--I believe + Were there a way to be what it was play to be + I would not greatly grieve ... + Hearts are not worn on the sleeve. + Let us neither laugh nor grieve!" + +Ysabeau would have slept that night within the chamber of Rosamund +Eastney had either slept. As concerns the older I say nothing. The girl, +though soon aware of frequent rustlings near at hand, lay quiet, +half-forgetful of the poisonous woman yonder. The girl was now fulfilled +with a great blaze of exultation: to-morrow Gregory must die, and then +perhaps she might find time for tears; meanwhile, before her eyes, the +man had flung away a kingdom and life itself for love of her, and the +least nook of her heart ached to be a shade more worthy of the +sacrifice. + +After it might have been an hour of this excruciate ecstasy the Countess +came to Rosamund's bed. "Ay," the woman began, "it is indisputable that +his hair is like spun gold and that his eyes resemble sun-drenched +waters in June. It is certain that when this Gregory laughs God is more +happy. Girl, I was familiar with the routine of your meditations before +you were born." + +Rosamund said, quite simply: "You have known him always. I envy the +circumstance, Madame Gertrude--you alone of all women in the world I +envy, since you, his sister, being so much older, must have known him +always." + +"I know him to the core, my girl," the Countess answered. For a while +she sat silent, one bare foot jogging restlessly. "Yet I am two years +his junior--Did you hear nothing, Rosamund?" "No, Madame Gertrude, I +heard nothing." + +"Strange!" the Countess said; "let us have lights, since I can no longer +endure this overpopulous twilight." She kindled, with twitching fingers, +three lamps. "It is as yet dark yonder, where the shadows quiver very +oddly, as though they would rise from the floor--do they not, my +girl?--and protest vain things. But, Rosamund, it has been done; in the +moment of death men's souls have travelled farther and have been +visible; it has been done, I tell you. And he would stand before me, +with pleading eyes, and would reproach me in a voice too faint to reach +my ears--but I would see him--and his groping hands would clutch at my +hands as though a dropped veil had touched me, and with the contact I +would go mad!" + +"Madame Gertrude!" the girl stammered, in communicated terror. + +"Poor innocent fool!" the woman said, "I am Ysabeau of France." And when +Rosamund made as though to rise, in alarm, Queen Ysabeau caught her by +the shoulder. "Bear witness when he comes that I never hated him. Yet +for my quiet it was necessary that it suffer so cruelly, the scented, +pampered body, and no mark be left upon it! Eia! even now he suffers! +No, I have lied. I hate the man, and in such fashion as you will +comprehend when you are Sarum's wife." + +"Madame and Queen!" the girl said, "you will not murder me!" "I am +tempted!" the Queen answered. "O little slip of girlhood, I am tempted, +for it is not reasonable you should possess everything that I have lost. +Innocence you have, and youth, and untroubled eyes, and quiet dreams, +and the fond graveness of a child, and Gregory Darrell's love--" Now +Ysabeau sat down upon the bed and caught up the girl's face between two +fevered hands. "Rosamund, this Darrell perceives within the moment, as I +do, that the love he bears for you is but what he remembers of the love +he bore a certain maid long dead. Eh, you might have been her sister, +Rosamund, for you are very like her. And she, poor wench--why, I could +see her now, I think, were my eyes not blurred, somehow, almost as +though Queen Ysabeau might weep! But she was handsomer than you, since +your complexion is not overclear, praise God!" + +Woman against woman they were. "He has told me of his intercourse with +you," the girl said, and this was a lie flatfooted. "Nay, kill me if you +will, madame, since you are the stronger, yet, with my dying breath, I +protest that Gregory has loved no woman truly in all his life except +me." + +The Queen laughed bitterly. "Do I not know men? He told you nothing. And +to-night he hesitated, and to-morrow, at the lifting of my finger, he +will supplicate. Since boyhood Gregory Darrell has loved me, O white, +palsied innocence! and he is mine at a whistle. And in that time to +come he will desert you, Rosamund--bidding farewell with a pleasing +Canzon,--and they will give you to the gross Earl of Sarum, as they gave +me to the painted man who was of late our King! and in that time to come +you will know your body to be your husband's makeshift when he lacks +leisure to seek out other recreation! and in that time to come you will +long for death, and presently your heart will be a flame within you, my +Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your God because He +made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you, +and hate all men because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whims! +and chiefly you will hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and +devastation only will you love in that strange time which is to come. It +is adjacent, my Rosamund." + +The girl kept silence. She sat erect in the tumbled bed, her hands +clasping her knees, and she appeared to deliberate what Dame Ysabeau had +said. Plentiful brown hair fell about this Rosamund's face, which was +white and shrewd. "A part of what you say, madame, I understand. I know +that Gregory Darrell loves me, yet I have long ago acknowledged he loves +me as one pets a child, or, let us say, a spaniel which reveres and +amuses one. I lack his wit, you comprehend, and so he never speaks to me +all that he thinks. Yet a part of it he tells me, and he loves me, and +with this I am content. Assuredly, if they give me to Sarum I shall hate +Sarum even more than I detest him now. And then, I think, Heaven help +me! that I would not greatly grieve--Oh, you are all evil!" Rosamund +said; "and you thrust into my mind thoughts which I may not understand!" + +"You will comprehend them," the Queen said, "when you know yourself a +chattel, bought and paid for." + +The Queen laughed. She rose, and her hands strained toward heaven. "You +are omnipotent, yet have You let me become that into which I am +transmuted," she said, very low. + +She began to speak as though a statue spoke through lips that seemed +motionless. "Men have long urged me, Rosamund, to a deed which by one +stroke would make me mistress of these islands. To-day I looked on +Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in love--and I had but to +crush a lewd soft worm to come to him. Eh, and I was tempted--!" + +The girl said: "Let us grant that Gregory loves you very greatly, and me +just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a cushioned infamy, a +colorful and brief delirium, and afterward demolishment of soul and +body; I offer him contentment and a level life, made up of small events, +it may be, and lacking both in abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love +a flame wherein the lover's soul must be purified; it is a flame which +assays high queens just as it does their servants: and thus, madame, to +judge between us I dare summon you." "Child, child!" the Queen said, +tenderly, and with a smile, "you are brave; and in your fashion you are +wise; yet you will never comprehend. But once I was in heart and soul +and body all that you are to-day; and now I am Queen Ysabeau--Did you in +truth hear nothing, Rosamund?" + +"Why, nothing save the wind." + +"Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with +you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and imprecations! But I, +too, grow cowardly, it may be--Nay, I know," she said, and in a resonant +voice, "that by this I am mistress of broad England, until my son--my +own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund--knows me for +what I am. For I have heard--Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!" the +Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I was but your +plaything!" + +"Madame Ysabeau--!" the girl answered vaguely, for she was puzzled and +was almost frightened by the other's strange talk. + +"To bed!" said Ysabeau; "and put out the lights lest he come presently. +Or perhaps he fears me now too much to come to-night. Yet the night +approaches, none the less, when I must lift some arras and find him +there, chalk-white, with painted cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very +terribly, or look into some mirror and behold there not myself but +him,--and in that instant I shall die. Meantime I rule, until my son +attains his manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and so +helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly, and +save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more fair--But I +must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, God orders matters +very shrewdly, my Rosamund." + +Timidly the girl touched Ysabeau's shoulder. "In part, I understand, +madame and Queen." + +"You understand nothing," said Ysabeau; "how should you understand whose +breasts are yet so tiny? So let us put out the light! though I dread +darkness, Rosamund--For they say that hell is poorly lighted--and they +say--" Then Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Pensively she blew out each lamp. + +"We know this Gregory Darrell," the Queen said in the darkness, "ah, to +the marrow we know him, however steadfastly we blink, and we know the +present turmoil of his soul; and in common-sense what chance have you of +victory?" + +"None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. For man is a +being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy orders, and his +life here is one unending warfare between that which is divine in him +and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of +the tourney. Always a man's judgment misleads him and his faculties +allure him to a truce, however brief, with iniquity. His senses raise a +mist about his goings, and there is not an endowment of the man but in +the end plays traitor to his interest, as of God's wisdom God intends; +so that when the man is overthrown, the Eternal Father may, in reason, +be neither vexed nor grieved if only the man takes heart to rise again. +And when, betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight out the +allotted battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors which +God Himself accorded, I think that the Saints hold festival in heaven." + +"A very pretty sermon," said the Queen. "Yet I do not think that our +Gregory could very long endure a wife given over to such high-minded +talking. He prefers to hear himself do the fine talking." + +Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but I +believe that neither of these two slept with profundity. + +About dawn one of the Queen's attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and +conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, where Ysabeau walked in +tranquil converse with Lord Berners. The old man was in high good-humor. + +"My lad," said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the shoulder, "you have, +I do protest, the very phoenix of sisters. I was never happier." And he +went away chuckling. + +The Queen said in a toneless voice, "We ride for Blackfriars now." + +Darrell responded, "I am content, and ask but leave to speak, briefly, +with Dame Rosamund before I die." + +Then the woman came more near to him. "I am not used to beg, but within +this hour you encounter death, and I have loved no man in all my life +saving only you, Sir Gregory Darrell. Nor have you loved any person as +you loved me once in France. Oh, to-day, I may speak freely, for with +you the doings of that boy and girl are matters overpast. Yet were it +otherwise--eh, weigh the matter carefully! for I am mistress of England +now, and England would I give you, and such love as that slim, white +innocence has never dreamed of would I give you, Gregory Darrell--No, +no! ah, Mother of God, not you!" The Queen clapped one hand upon his +lips. + +"Listen," she quickly said; "I spoke to tempt you. But you saw, and you +saw clearly, that it was the sickly whim of a wanton, and you never +dreamed of yielding, for you love this Rosamund Eastney, and you know me +to be vile. Then have a care of me! The strange woman am I, of whom we +read that her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of +death. Hoh, many strong men have been slain by me, and in the gray time +to come will many others be slain by me, it may be; but never you among +them, my Gregory, who are more wary, and more merciful, and who know +that I have need to lay aside at least one comfortable thought against +eternity." + +"I concede you to have been unwise--" he hoarsely began. + +About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air +of this new day seemed raw and chill. + +Then Rosamund came through the opening in the hedge. "Now, choose," she +said; "the woman offers life and high place and wealth, and it may be, a +greater love than I am capable of giving you. I offer a dishonorable +death within the moment." + +And again, with that peculiar and imperious gesture, the man flung back +his head, and he laughed. Said Gregory Darrell: + +"I am I! and I will so to live that I may face without shame not only +God, but also my own scrutiny." He wheeled upon the Queen and spoke +henceforward very leisurely. "I love you; all my life long I have loved +you, Ysabeau, and even now I love you: and you, too, dear Rosamund, I +love, though with a difference. And every fibre of my being lusts for +the power that you would give me, Ysabeau, and for the good which I +would do with it in the England which I or blustering Roger Mortimer +must rule; as every fibre of my being lusts for the man that I would be +could I choose death without debate. And I think also of the man that +you would make of me, my Rosamund. + +"The man! And what is this man, this Gregory Darrell, that his welfare +should be considered?--an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with +the archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts! This much I know, +at bottom. + +"Yet more clearly do I perceive that this same man, like all his +fellows, is a maimed god who walks the world dependent upon many wise +and evil counsellors. He must measure, to a hair's-breadth, every +content of the world by means of a bloodied sponge, tucked somewhere in +his skull, a sponge which is ungeared by the first cup of wine and +ruined by the touch of his own finger. He must appraise all that he +judges with no better instruments than two bits of colored jelly, with a +bungling makeshift so maladroit that the nearest horologer's apprentice +could have devised a more accurate device. In fine, each man is under +penalty condemned to compute eternity with false weights, to estimate +infinity with a yard-stick: and he very often does it, and chooses his +own death without debate. For though, 'If then I do that which I would +not I consent unto the law,' saith even an Apostle; yet a braver Pagan +answers him, 'Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better +and more divine than the things which cause the various effects and, as +it were, pull thee by the strings.' + +"There lies the choice which every man must face,--whether rationally, +as his reason goes, to accept his own limitations and make the best of +his allotted prison-yard? or stupendously to play the fool and swear +even to himself (while his own judgment shrieks and proves a flat +denial), that he is at will omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my +poor proud Ysabeau; and I choose now, and differently: for poltroon that +I am! being now in a cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am +not very much afraid, and I choose death without any more debate." + +It was toward Rosamund that the Queen looked, and smiled a little +pitifully. "Should Queen Ysabeau be angry or vexed or very cruel now, my +Rosamund? for at bottom she is glad." + +And the Queen said also: "I give you back your plighted word. I ride +homeward to my husks, but you remain. Or rather, the Countess of +Farrington departs for the convent of Ambresbury, disconsolate in her +widowhood and desirous to have done with worldly affairs. It is most +natural she should relinquish to her beloved and only brother all her +dower-lands--or so at least Messire de Berners acknowledges. Here, then, +is the grant, my Gregory, that conveys to you those lands of Ralph de +Belomys which last year I confiscated. And this tedious Messire de +Berners is willing now--he is eager to have you for a son-in-law." + +About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air +of this new day seemed raw and chill, while, very calmly, Dame Ysabeau +took Sir Gregory's hand and laid it upon the hand of Rosamund Eastney. +"Our paladin is, in the outcome, a mortal man, and therefore I do not +altogether envy you. Yet he has his moments, and you are capable. Serve, +then, not only his desires but mine also, dear Rosamund." + +There was a silence. The girl spoke as though it was a sacrament. "I +will, madame and Queen." + +Thus did the Queen end her holiday. + +A little later the Countess of Farrington rode from Ordish with all her +train save one; and riding from that place, where love was, she sang +very softly. + +Sang Ysabeau: + + "As with her dupes dealt Circe + Life deals with hers, for she + Reshapes them without mercy, + And shapes them swinishly, + To wallow swinishly, + And for eternity; + + "Though, harder than the witch was, + Life, changing not the whole, + Transmutes the body, which was + Proud garment of the soul, + And briefly drugs the soul, + Whose ruin is her goal; + + "And means by this thereafter + A subtler mirth to get, + And mock with bitterer laughter + Her helpless dupes' regret, + Their swinish dull regret + For what they half forget." + + +And within the hour came Hubert Frayne to Ordish, on a foam-specked +horse, as he rode to announce to the King's men the King's barbaric +murder overnight, at Berkeley Castle, by Queen Ysabeau's order. + +"Ride southward," said Lord Berners, and panted as they buckled on his +disused armor; "but harkee, Frayne! if you pass the Countess of +Farrington's company, speak no syllable of your news, since it is not +convenient that a lady so thoroughly and so praise-worthily--Lord, Lord, +how I have fattened!--so intent on holy things, in fine, should have her +meditations disturbed by any such unsettling tidings. Hey, son-in-law?" + +Sir Gregory Darrell laughed, very bitterly. "He that is without blemish +among you--" he said. Then they armed completely, and went forth to +battle against the murderous harlot. + +THE END OF THE FOURTH NOVEL + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: For this perplexing matter the curious may consult Paul +Verville's _Notice sur la vie de Nicolas de Caen, p. 93 et seq_. The +indebtedness to Antoine Riczi is, of course, conceded by Nicolas in his +"EPILOGUE."] + +[Footnote 2: She was the daughter of King Ferdinand of Leon and Castile, +whose conversion to sainthood the inquisitive may find recorded +elsewhere.] + +[Footnote 3: Not without indulgence in anachronism. But Nicolas, be it +repeated, was no Gradgrindian.] + +[Footnote 4: Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, for obvious +reasons, his translator would prefer to do otherwise.] + + + + +V + +THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE + + + "Selh que m blasma vostr' amor ni m defen + Non podon far en re mon cor mellor, + Ni'l dous dezir qu'ieu ai de vos major, + Ni l'enveya' ni'l dezir, ni'l talen." + +THE FIFTH NOVEL.--PHILIPPA OF HAINAULT DARES TO LOVE UNTHRIFTILY, AND +WITH THE PRODIGALITY OF HER AFFECTION SHAMES TREACHERY, AND +COMMON-SENSE, AND HIGH ROMANCE, QUITE STOLIDLY; BUT, AS LOVING GOES, +IS OVERTOPPED BY HER MORE STOLID SQUIRE. + + + + +_The Story of the Housewife_ + + +In the year of grace 1326, upon Walburga's Eve, some three hours after +sunset (thus Nicolas begins), had you visited a certain garden on the +outskirts of Valenciennes, you might there have stumbled upon a big, +handsome boy, prone on the turf, where by turns he groaned and vented +himself in sullen curses. His profanity had its palliation. Heir to +England though he was, you must know that this boy's father in the +flesh had hounded him from England, as more recently had the lad's +uncle Charles the Handsome driven him from France. Now had this boy +and his mother (the same Queen Ysabeau about whom I have told you in +the preceding tale) come as suppliants to the court of that stalwart +nobleman Sire William (Count of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand, and +Lord of Friesland), where their arrival had evoked the suggestion that +they depart at their earliest convenience. To-morrow, then, these +footsore royalties, the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales, +would be thrust out-of-doors to resume the weary beggarship, to knock +again upon the obdurate gates of this unsympathizing king or that deaf +emperor. + +Accordingly the boy aspersed his destiny. At hand a nightingale +carolled as though an exiled prince were the blithest spectacle the +moon knew. + +There came through the garden a tall girl, running, stumbling in her +haste. "Hail, King of England!" she said. + +"Do not mock me, Philippa!" the boy half-sobbed. Sulkily he rose to +his feet. + +"No mockery here, my fair sweet friend. No, I have told my father all +which happened yesterday. I pleaded for you. He questioned me very +closely. And when I had ended, he stroked his beard, and presently +struck one hand upon the table. 'Out of the mouth of babes!' he said. +Then he said: 'My dear, I believe for certain that this lady and her +son have been driven from their kingdom wrongfully. If it be for the +good of God to comfort the afflicted, how much more is it commendable +to help and succor one who is the daughter of a king, descended from +royal lineage, and to whose blood we ourselves are related!' And +accordingly he and your mother have their heads together yonder, +planning an invasion of England, no less, and the dethronement of your +wicked father, my Edward. And accordingly--hail, King of England!" The +girl clapped her hands gleefully. The nightingale sang. + +But the boy kept momentary silence. Not even in youth were the men of +his race handicapped by excessively tender hearts; yesterday in the +shrubbery the boy had kissed this daughter of Count William, in part +because she was a healthy and handsome person, and partly because +great benefit might come of an alliance with her father. Well! the +Prince had found chance-taking not unfortunate. With the episode as +foundation, Count William had already builded up the future queenship +of England. The strong Count could do--and, as it seemed, was now in +train to do--indomitable deeds to serve his son-in-law; and now the +beggar of five minutes since foresaw himself, with this girl's love as +ladder, mounting to the high habitations of the King of England, the +Lord of Ireland, and the Duke of Aquitaine. Thus they would herald +him. + +So he embraced the girl. "Hail, Queen of England!" said the Prince; +and then, "If I forget--" His voice broke awkwardly. "My dear, if ever +I forget--!" Their lips met now. The nightingale discoursed as if on a +wager. + +Presently was mingled with the bird's descant another kind of singing. +Beyond the yew-hedge as these two stood silent, breast to breast, +passed young Jehan Kuypelant, one of the pages, fitting to the +accompaniment of a lute his paraphrase of the song which Archilochus +of Sicyon very anciently made in honor of Venus Melaenis, the tender +Venus of the Dark. + +At a gap in the hedge the young Brabanter paused. His singing ended, +gulped. These two, who stood heart hammering against heart, saw for an +instant Jehan Kuypelant's lean face silvered by the moonlight, his +mouth a tiny abyss. Followed the beat of lessening footfalls, while +the nightingale improvised an envoi. + +But earlier Jehan Kuypelant also had sung, as though in rivalry with +the bird. + +Sang Jehan Kuypelant: + + "Hearken and heed, Melaenis! + For all that the litany ceased + When Time had pilfered the victim, + And flouted thy pale-lipped priest, + And set astir in the temple + Where burned the fires of thy shrine + The owls and wolves of the desert-- + Yet hearken, (the issue is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine! + + "For I have followed, nor faltered-- + Adrift in a land of dreams + Where laughter and pity and terror + Commingle as confluent streams, + I have seen and adored the Sidonian, + Implacable, fair and divine-- + And bending low, have implored thee + To hearken, (the issue is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine!" + +It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of other +matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the year of +grace 1346, Master John Copeland--as men now called Jehan Kuypelant, +now secretary to the Queen of England,--brought his mistress the +unhandsome tidings that David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty +thousand Scots to back him. The Brabanter found plump Queen Philippa +with the kingdom's arbitress--Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom King +Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring in +France, very notoriously adored and obeyed. + +This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they +narrate, to release the Countess' husband, William de Montacute, from +the French prison of the Châtelet. You may appraise her dominion by +this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had denied all to King Edward, and +in consequence he could deny her nothing; so she sent him to fetch +back her husband, whom she almost loved. That armament had sailed from +Southampton on Saint George's day. + +These two women, then, shared the Brabanter's execrable news. Already +Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the broken meats of King +David. + +The Countess presently exclaimed: "Let them weep for this that must! +My place is not here." + +Philippa said, half hopefully, "Do you forsake Sire Edward, +Catherine?" + +"Madame and Queen," the Countess answered, "in this world every man +must scratch his own back. My lord has entrusted to me his castle of +Wark, his fiefs in Northumberland. These, I hear, are being laid +waste. Were there a thousand men-at-arms left in England I would say +fight. As it is, our men are yonder in France and the island is +defenceless. Accordingly I ride for the north to make what terms I may +with the King of Scots." + +Now you might have seen the Queen's eye brighten. "Undoubtedly," said +she, "in her lord's absence it is the wife's part to defend his +belongings. And my lord's fief is England. I bid you God-speed, +Catherine." And when the Countess was gone, Philippa turned, her round +face somewhat dazed and flushed. "She betrays him! she compounds with +the Scot! Mother of Christ, let me not fail!" + +"A ship must be despatched to bid Sire Edward return," said the +secretary. "Otherwise all England is lost." + +"Not so, John Copeland! We must let Sire Edward complete his +overrunning of France, if such be the Trinity's will. You know +perfectly well that he has always had a fancy to conquer France; and +if I bade him return now he would be vexed." + +"The disappointment of the King," John Copeland considered, "is a +smaller evil than allowing all of us to be butchered." + +"Not to me, John Copeland," the Queen said. + +Now came many lords into the chamber, seeking Madame Philippa. "We +must make peace with the Scottish rascal!--England is lost!--A ship +must be sent entreating succor of Sire Edward!" So they shouted. + +"Messieurs," said Queen Philippa, "who commands here? Am I, then, some +woman of the town?" + +Ensued a sudden silence. John Copeland, standing by the seaward +window, had picked up a lute and was fingering the instrument +half-idly. Now the Marquess of Hastings stepped from the throng. +"Pardon, Highness. But the occasion is urgent." + +"The occasion is very urgent, my lord," the Queen assented, deep in +meditation. + +John Copeland flung back his head and without prelude began to carol +lustily. + +Sang John Copeland: + + "There are taller lads than Atys, + And many are wiser than he,-- + How should I heed them?--whose fate is + Ever to serve and to be + Ever the lover of Atys, + And die that Atys may dine, + Live if he need me--Then heed me, + And speed me, (the moment is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine! + + "Fair is the form unbeholden, + And golden the glory of thee + Whose voice is the voice of a vision + Whose face is the foam of the sea, + And the fall of whose feet is the flutter + Of breezes in birches and pine, + When thou drawest near me, to hear me, + And cheer me, (the moment is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine!" + + +I must tell you that the Queen shivered, as if with extreme cold. She +gazed toward John Copeland wonderingly. The secretary was fretting at +his lutestrings, with his head downcast. Then in a while the Queen +turned to Hastings. + +"The occasion is very urgent, my lord," the Queen assented. "Therefore +it is my will that to-morrow one and all your men be mustered at +Blackheath. We will take the field without delay against the King of +Scots." + +The riot began anew. "Madness!" they shouted; "lunar madness! We can +do nothing until our King returns with our army!" + +"In his absence," the Queen said, "I command here." + +"You are not Regent," the Marquess answered. Then he cried, "This is +the Regent's affair!" + +"Let the Regent be fetched," Dame Philippa said, very quietly. They +brought in her son, Messire Lionel, now a boy of eight years, and, in +the King's absence, Regent of England. + +Both the Queen and the Marquess held papers. "Highness," Lord Hastings +began, "for reasons of state which I lack time to explain, this +document requires your signature. It is an order that a ship be +despatched to ask the King's return. Your Highness may remember the +pony you admired yesterday?" The Marquess smiled ingratiatingly. "Just +here, your Highness--a crossmark." + +"The dappled one?" said the Regent; "and all for making a little +mark?" The boy jumped for the pen. + +"Lionel," said the Queen, "you are Regent of England, but you are also +my son. If you sign that paper you will beyond doubt get the pony, but +you will not, I think, care to ride him. You will not care to sit down +at all, Lionel." + +The Regent considered. "Thank you very much, my lord," he said in the +ultimate, "but I do not like ponies any more. Do I sign here, Mother?" + +Philippa handed the Marquess a subscribed order to muster the English +forces at Blackheath; then another, closing the English ports. "My +lords," the Queen said, "this boy is the King's vicar. In defying him, +you defy the King. Yes, Lionel, you have fairly earned a pot of jam +for supper." + +Then Hastings went away without speaking. That night assembled at his +lodgings, by appointment, Viscount Heringaud, Adam Frere, the Marquess +of Orme, Lord Stourton, the Earls of Neville and Gage, and Sir Thomas +Rokeby. These seven found a long table there littered with pens and +parchment; to the rear of it, with a lackey behind him, sat the +Marquess of Hastings, meditative over a cup of Bordeaux. + +Presently Hastings said: "My friends, in creating our womankind the +Maker of us all was beyond doubt actuated by laudable and cogent +reasons; so that I can merely lament my inability to fathom these +reasons. I shall obey the Queen faithfully, since if I did otherwise +Sire Edward would have my head off within a day of his return. In +consequence, I do not consider it convenient to oppose his vicar. +To-morrow I shall assemble the tatters of troops which remain to us, +and to-morrow we march northward to inevitable defeat. To-night I am +sending a courier into Northumberland. He is an obliging person, and +would convey--to cite an instance--eight letters quite as blithely as +one." + +Each man glanced furtively about. England was in a panic by this, and +knew itself to lie before the Bruce defenceless. The all-powerful +Countess of Salisbury had compounded with King David; now Hastings, +too, their generalissimo, compounded. What the devil! loyalty was a +sonorous word, and so was patriotism, but, after all, one had estates +in the north. + +The seven wrote in silence. I must tell you that when they had ended, +Hastings gathered the letters into a heap, and without glancing at the +superscriptures, handed all these letters to the attendant lackey. +"For the courier," he said. + +The fellow left the apartment. Presently you heard a departing clatter +of hoofs, and Hastings rose. He was a gaunt, terrible old man, +gray-bearded, and having high eyebrows that twitched and jerked. + +"We have saved our precious skins," said he. "Hey, you fidgeters, you +ferments of sour offal! I commend your common-sense, messieurs, and I +request you to withdraw. Even a damned rogue such as I has need of a +cleaner atmosphere in order to breathe comfortably." The seven went +away without further speech. + +They narrate that next day the troops marched for Durham, where the +Queen took up her quarters. The Bruce had pillaged and burned his way +to a place called Beaurepair, within three miles of the city. He sent +word to the Queen that if her men were willing to come forth from the +town he would abide and give them battle. + +She replied that she accepted his offer, and that the barons would +gladly risk their lives for the realm of their lord the King. The +Bruce grinned and kept silence, since he had in his pocket letters +from most of them protesting they would do nothing of the sort. + +Here is comedy. On one side you have a horde of half-naked savages, a +shrewd master holding them in leash till the moment be auspicious; on +the other, a housewife at the head of a tiny force lieutenanted by +perjurers, by men already purchased. God knows what dreams she had of +miraculous victories, while her barons trafficked in secret with the +Bruce. It is recorded that, on the Saturday before Michaelmas, when +the opposing armies marshalled in the Bishop's Park, at Auckland, not +a captain on either side believed the day to be pregnant with battle. +There would be a decent counterfeit of resistance; afterward the +little English army would vanish pell-mell, and the Bruce would be +master of the island. The farce was prearranged, the actors therein +were letter-perfect. + +That morning at daybreak John Copeland came to the Queen's tent, and +informed her quite explicitly how matters stood. He had been drinking +overnight with Adam Frere and the Earl of Gage, and after the third +bottle had found them candid. "Madame and Queen, we are betrayed. The +Marquess of Hastings, our commander, is inexplicably smitten with a +fever. He will not fight to-day. Not one of your lords will fight +to-day." Master Copeland laid bare such part of the scheme as +yesterday's conviviality had made familiar. "Therefore I counsel +retreat. Let the King be summoned out of France." + +Queen Philippa shook her head, as she cut up squares of toast and +dipped them in milk for the Regent's breakfast. "Sire Edward would be +vexed. He has always wanted to conquer France. I shall visit the +Marquess as soon as Lionel is fed,--do you know, John Copeland, I am +anxious about Lionel; he is irritable and coughed five times during +the night,--and then I will attend to this affair." + +She found the Marquess in bed, groaning, the coverlet pulled up to his +chin. "Pardon, Highness," said Lord Hastings, "but I am an ill man. I +cannot rise from this couch." + +"I do not question the gravity of your disorder," the Queen retorted, +"since it is well known that the same illness brought about the death +of Iscariot. Nevertheless, I bid you get up and lead our troops +against the Scot." + +Now the hand of the Marquess veiled his countenance. "I am an ill +man," he muttered, doggedly. "I cannot rise from this couch." + +There was a silence. + +"My lord," the Queen presently began, "without is an army +prepared--yes, and quite able--to defend our England. The one +requirement of this army is a leader. Afford them that, my lord--ah, I +know that our peers are sold to the Bruce, yet our yeomen at least are +honest. Give them, then, a leader, and they cannot but conquer, since +God also is honest and incorruptible. Pardieu! a woman might lead +these men, and lead them to victory!" + +Hastings answered: "I am ill. I cannot rise from this couch." + +"There is no man left in England," said the Queen, "since Sire Edward +went into France. Praise God, I am his wife!" She went away without +flurry. + +Through the tent-flap Hastings beheld all that which followed. The +English force was marshalled in four divisions, each commanded by a +bishop and a baron. You could see the men fidgeting, puzzled by the +delay; as a wind goes about a corn-field, vague rumors were going +about those wavering spears. Toward them rode Philippa, upon a white +palfrey, alone and perfectly tranquil. Her eight lieutenants were now +gathered about her in voluble protestation, and she heard them out. +Afterward she spoke, without any particular violence, as one might +order a strange cur from his room. Then the Queen rode on, as though +these eight declaiming persons had ceased to be of interest. She +reined up before her standard-bearer, and took the standard in her +hand. She began again to speak, and immediately the army was in an +uproar; the barons were clustering behind her, in stealthy groups of +two or three whisperers each; all were in the greatest amazement and +knew not what to do; but the army was shouting the Queen's name. + +"Now is England shamed," said Hastings, "since a woman alone dares to +encounter the Scot. She will lead them into battle--and by God! there +is no braver person under heaven than yonder Dutch Frau! Friend David, +I perceive that your venture is lost, for those men would follow her +to storm hell if she desired it." + +He meditated, and shrugged. "And so would I," said Hastings. + +A little afterward a gaunt and haggard old man, bareheaded and very +hastily dressed, reined his horse by the Queen's side. "Madame and +Queen," said Hastings, "I rejoice that my recent illness is departed. +I shall, by God's grace, on this day drive the Bruce from England." + +Philippa was not given to verbiage. Doubtless she had her emotions, +but none was visible upon the honest face. She rested one plump hand +upon the big-veined hand of Hastings. That was all. "I welcome back +the gallant gentleman of yesterday. I was about to lead your army, my +friend, since there was no one else to do it, but I was hideously +afraid. At bottom every woman is a coward." + +"You were afraid to do it," said the Marquess, "but you were going to +do it, because there was no one else to do it! Ho, madame! had I an +army of such cowards I would drive the Scot not past the Border but +beyond the Orkneys." + +The Queen then said, "But you are unarmed." + +"Highness," he replied, "it is surely apparent that I, who have played +the traitor to two monarchs within the same day, cannot with either +decency or comfort survive that day." He turned upon the lords and +bishops twittering about his horse's tail. "You merchandise, get back +to your stations, and if there was ever an honest woman in any of your +families, the which I doubt, contrive to get yourselves killed this +day, as I mean to do, in the cause of the honestest and bravest woman +our time has known." Immediately the English forces marched toward +Merrington. + +Philippa returned to her pavilion and inquired for John Copeland. She +was informed that he had ridden off, armed, in company with five of +her immediate retainers. She considered this strange, but made no +comment. + +You picture her, perhaps, as spending the morning in prayer, in +beatings upon her breast, and in lamentations. Philippa did nothing of +the sort. She considered her cause to be so clamantly just that to +expatiate to the Holy Father upon its merits would be an impertinence; +it was not conceivable that He would fail her; and in any event, she +had in hand a deal of sewing which required immediate attention. +Accordingly she settled down to her needlework, while the Regent of +England leaned his head against her knee, and his mother told him that +ageless tale of Lord Huon, who in a wood near Babylon encountered the +King of Faëry, and subsequently bereaved an atrocious Emir of his +beard and daughter. All this the industrious woman narrated in a low +and pleasant voice, while the wide-eyed Regent attended and at the +proper intervals gulped his cough-mixture. + +You must know that about noon Master John Copeland came into the tent. +"We have conquered," he said. "Now, by the Face!"--thus, scoffingly, +he used her husband's favorite oath,--"now, by the Face! there was +never a victory more complete! The Scottish army is fled, it is as +utterly dispersed from man's seeing as are the sands which dried the +letters King Ahasuerus gave the admirable Esther!" + +"I rejoice," the Queen said, looking up from her sewing, "that we have +conquered, though in nature I expected nothing else--Oh, horrible!" +She sprang to her feet with a cry of anguish. Here in little you have +the entire woman; the victory of her armament was to her a thing of +course, since her cause was just, whereas the loss of two front teeth +by John Copeland was a calamity. + +He drew her toward the tent-flap, which he opened. Without was a +mounted knight, in full panoply, his arms bound behind him, surrounded +by the Queen's five retainers. "In the rout I took him," said John +Copeland; "though, as my mouth witnesses, I did not find this David +Bruce a tractable prisoner." + +"Is that, then, the King of Scots?" Philippa demanded, as she mixed +salt and water for a mouthwash. "Sire Edward should be pleased, I +think. Will he not love me a little now, John Copeland?" + +John Copeland lifted both plump hands toward his lips. "He could not +choose," John Copeland said; "madame, he could no more choose but love +you than I could choose." + +Philippa sighed. Afterward she bade John Copeland rinse his gums and +then take his prisoner to Hastings. He told her the Marquess was dead, +slain by the Knight of Liddesdale. "That is a pity," the Queen said. +She reflected a while, reached her decision. "There is left alive in +England but one man to whom I dare entrust the keeping of the King of +Scots. My barons are sold to him; if I retain Messire David by me, one +or another lord will engineer his escape within the week, and Sire +Edward will be vexed. Yet listen, John--" She unfolded her plan. + +"I have long known," he said, when she had done, "that in all the +world there was no lady more lovable. Twenty years I have loved you, +my Queen, and yet it is only to-day I perceive that in all the world +there is no lady more wise than you." + +Philippa touched his cheek, maternally. "Foolish boy! You tell me the +King of Scots has an arrow-wound in his nose? I think a bread poultice +would be best." She told him how to make this poultice, and gave other +instructions. Then John Copeland left the tent and presently rode away +with his company. + +Philippa saw that the Regent had his dinner, and afterward mounted her +white palfrey and set out for the battle-field. There the Earl of +Neville, as second in command, received her with great courtesy. God +had shown to her Majesty's servants most singular favor: despite the +calculations of reasonable men,--to which, she might remember, he had +that morning taken the liberty to assent,--some fifteen thousand Scots +were slain. True, her gallant general was no longer extant, though +this was scarcely astounding when one considered the fact that he had +voluntarily entered the mêlée quite unarmed. A touch of age, perhaps; +Hastings was always an eccentric man: in any event, as epilogue, this +Neville congratulated the Queen that--by blind luck, he was forced to +concede,--her worthy secretary had made a prisoner of the Scottish +King. Doubtless, Master Copeland was an estimable scribe, and yet--Ah, +yes, Lord Neville quite followed her Majesty--beyond doubt, the +wardage of a king was an honor not lightly to be conferred. Oh, yes, +he understood; her Majesty desired that the office should be given +some person of rank. And pardie! her Majesty was in the right. Eh? +said the Earl of Neville. + +Intently gazing into the man's shallow eyes, Philippa assented. Master +Copeland had acted unwarrantably in riding off with his captive. Let +him be sought at once. She dictated to Neville's secretary a letter, +which informed John Copeland that he had done what was not agreeable +in purloining her prisoner. Let him without delay deliver the King to +her good friend the Earl of Neville. + +To Neville this was satisfactory, since he intended that once in his +possession David Bruce should escape forthwith. The letter, I repeat, +suited this smirking gentleman in its tiniest syllable, and the single +difficulty was to convey it to John Copeland, for as to his +whereabouts neither Neville nor any one else had the least notion. + +This was immaterial, however, for they narrate that next day a letter +signed with John Copeland's name was found pinned to the front of +Neville's tent. I cite a passage therefrom: "I will not give up my +royal prisoner to a woman or a child, but only to my own lord, Sire +Edward, for to him I have sworn allegiance, and not to any woman. Yet +you may tell the Queen she may depend on my taking excellent care of +King David. I have poulticed his nose, as she directed." + +Here was a nonplus, not without its comical side. Two great realms had +met in battle, and the king of one of them had vanished like a +soap-bubble. Philippa was in a rage,--you could see that both by her +demeanor and by the indignant letters she dictated; true, none of +these letters could be delivered, since they were all addressed to +John Copeland. Meanwhile, Scotland was in despair, whereas the traitor +English barons were in a frenzy, because they did not know what had +become of their fatal letters to the Bruce, or of him either. The +circumstances were unique, and they remained unchanged for three +feverish weeks. + +We will now return to affairs in France, where on the day of the +Nativity, as night gathered about Calais, John Copeland came +unheralded to the quarters of King Edward, then besieging that city. +Master Copeland entreated audience, and got it readily enough, since +there was no man alive whom Sire Edward more cordially desired to lay +his fingers upon. + +A page brought Master Copeland to the King, that stupendous, blond and +incredibly big person. With Sire Edward were that careful Italian, +Almerigo di Pavia, who afterward betrayed Sire Edward, and a lean +soldier whom Master Copeland recognized as John Chandos. These three +were drawing up an account of the recent victory at Créçi, to be +forwarded to all mayors and sheriffs in England, with a cogent +postscript as to the King's incidental and immediate need of money. + +Now King Edward sat leaning far back in his chair, a hand on either +hip, and with his eyes narrowing as he regarded Master Copeland. Had +the Brabanter flinched, the King would probably have hanged him within +the next ten minutes; finding his gaze unwavering, the King was +pleased. Here was a novelty; most people blinked quite honestly under +the scrutiny of those fierce big eyes, which were blue and cold and of +an astounding lustre. The lid of the left eye drooped a little: this +was Count Manuel's legacy, they whispered. + +The King rose with a jerk and took John Copeland's hand. "Ha!" he +grunted, "I welcome the squire who by his valor has captured the King +of Scots. And now, my man, what have you done with Davie?" + +John Copeland answered: "Highness, you may find him at your +convenience safely locked in Bamborough Castle. Meanwhile, I entreat +you, sire, do not take it amiss if I did not surrender King David to +the orders of my lady Queen, for I hold my lands of you, and not of +her, and my oath is to you, and not to her, unless indeed by choice." + +"John," the King sternly replied, "the loyal service you have done us +is considerable, whereas your excuse for kidnapping Davie is a farce. +Hey, Almerigo, do you and Chandos avoid the chamber! I have something +in private with this fellow." When they had gone, the King sat down +and composedly said, "Now tell me the truth, John Copeland." + +"Sire," Copeland began, "it is necessary you first understand I bear a +letter from Madame Philippa--" + +"Then read it," said the King. "Heart of God! have I an eternity to +waste on you slow-dealing Brabanters!" + +John Copeland read aloud, while the King trifled with a pen, half +negligent, and in part attendant. + +Read John Copeland: + +"My DEAR LORD,--_recommend me to your lordship with soul and body and +all my poor might, and with all this I thank you, as my dear lord, +dearest and best beloved of all earthly lords I protest to me, and +thank you, my dear lord, with all this as I say before. Your +comfortable letter came to me on Saint Gregory's day, and I was never +so glad as when I heard by your letter that ye were strong enough in +Ponthieu by the grace of God for to keep you from your enemies. Among +them I estimate Madame Catherine de Salisbury, who would have betrayed +you to the Scot. And, dear lord, if it be pleasing to your high +lordship that as soon as ye may that I might hear of your gracious +speed, which may God Almighty continue and increase, I shall be glad, +and also if ye do continue each night to chafe your feet with a rag of +woollen stuff, as your physician directed. And, my dear lord, if it +like you for to know of my fare, John Copeland will acquaint you +concerning the Bruce his capture, and the syrup he brings for our son +Lord Edward's cough, and the great malice-workers in these shires +which would have so despitefully wrought to you, and of the manner of +taking it after each meal. I am lately informed that Madame Catherine +is now at Stirling with Robert Stewart and has lost all her good looks +through a fever. God is invariably gracious to His servants. Farewell, +my dear lord, and may the Holy Trinity keep you from your adversaries +and ever send me comfortable tidings of you. Written at York, in the +Castle, on Saint Gregory's day last past, by your own poor_ + +"PHILIPPA. + +_"To my true lord."_ + +"H'm!" said the King; "and now give me the entire story." + +John Copeland obeyed. I must tell you that early in the narrative King +Edward arose and strode toward a window. "Catherine!" he said. He +remained motionless while Master Copeland went on without any manifest +emotion. When he had ended, King Edward said, "And where is Madame de +Salisbury now?" + +At this the Brabanter went mad. As a leopard springs he leaped upon +the King, and grasping him by each shoulder, shook that monarch as one +punishing a child. + +"Now by the splendor of God--!" King Edward began, very terrible in +his wrath. He saw that John Copeland held a dagger to his breast, and +he shrugged. "Well, my man, you perceive I am defenceless." + +"First you will hear me out," John Copeland said. + +"It would appear," the King retorted, "that I have little choice." + +At this time John Copeland began: "Sire, you are the mightiest monarch +your race has known. England is yours, France is yours, conquered +Scotland lies prostrate at your feet. To-day there is no other man in +all the world who possesses a tithe of your glory; yet twenty years +ago Madame Philippa first beheld you and loved you, an outcast, an +exiled, empty-pocketed prince. Twenty years ago the love of Madame +Philippa, great Count William's daughter, got for you the armament +with which England was regained. Twenty years ago but for Madame +Philippa you had died naked in some ditch." + +"Go on," the King said presently. + +"Afterward you took a fancy to reign in France. You learned then that +we Brabanters are a frugal people: Madame Philippa was wealthy when +she married you, and twenty years had quadrupled her private fortune. +She gave you every penny of it that you might fit out this expedition; +now her very crown is in pawn at Ghent. In fine, the love of Madame +Philippa gave you France as lightly as one might bestow a toy upon a +child who whined for it." + +The King fiercely said, "Go on." + +"Eh, sire, I intend to. You left England undefended that you might +posture a little in the eyes of Europe. And meanwhile a woman +preserves England, a woman gives you Scotland as a gift, and in return +asks nothing--God have mercy on us!--save that you nightly chafe your +feet with a bit of woollen. You hear of it--and inquire, '_Where is +Madame de Salisbury?_' Here beyond doubt is the cock of Aesop's +fable," snarled John Copeland, "who unearthed a gem and grumbled that +his diamond was not a grain of corn." + +"You shall be hanged at dawn," the King replied. "Meanwhile spit out +your venom." + +"I say to you, then," John Copeland continued, "that to-day you are +master of Europe. I say to you that, but for this woman whom for +twenty years you have neglected, you would to-day be mouldering in some +pauper's grave. Eh, without question, you most magnanimously loved +that shrew of Salisbury! because you fancied the color of her eyes, +Sire Edward, and admired the angle between her nose and her forehead. +Minstrels unborn will sing of this great love of yours. Meantime I say +to you"--now the man's rage was monstrous--"I say to you, go home to +your too-tedious wife, the source of all your glory! sit at her feet! +and let her teach you what love is!" He flung away the dagger. "There +you have the truth. Now summon your attendants, my très beau sire, and +have me hanged." + +The King made no movement. "You have been bold--" he said at last. + +"But you have been far bolder, sire. For twenty years you have dared +to flout that love which is God's noblest heritage to His children." + +King Edward sat in meditation for a long while. The squinting of his +left eye was now very noticeable. "I consider my wife's clerk," he +drily said, "to discourse of love in somewhat too much the tone of a +lover." And a flush was his reward. + +But when this Copeland spoke he was like one transfigured. His voice +was grave and very tender, and he said: + +"As the fish have their life in the waters, so I have and always shall +have mine in love. Love made me choose and dare to emulate a lady, +long ago, through whom I live contented, without expecting any other +good. Her purity is so inestimable that I cannot say whether I derive +more pride or sorrow from its preeminence. She does not love me, and +she will never love me. She would condemn me to be hewed in fragments +sooner than permit her husband's finger to be injured. Yet she +surpasses all others so utterly that I would rather hunger in her +presence than enjoy from another all which a lover can devise." + +Sire Edward stroked the table through this while, with an inverted +pen. He cleared his throat. He said, half-fretfully: + +"Now, by the Face! it is not given every man to love precisely in this +troubadourish fashion. Even the most generous person cannot render to +love any more than that person happens to possess. I have read in an +old tale how the devil sat upon a cathedral spire and white doves flew +about him. Monks came and told him to begone. 'Do not the spires show +you, O son of darkness' they clamored, 'that the place is holy?' And +Satan (in this old tale) replied that these spires were capable of +various interpretations. I speak of symbols, John. Yet I also have +loved, in my own fashion,--and, it would seem, I win the same reward +as you." + +The King said more lately: "And so she is at Stirling now? hobnob with +my armed enemies, and cajoling that red lecher Robert Stewart?" He +laughed, not overpleasantly. "Eh, yes, it needed a bold person to +bring all your tidings! But you Brabanters are a very thorough-going +people." + +The King rose and flung back his high head. "John, the loyal service +you have done us and our esteem for your valor are so great that they +may well serve you as an excuse. May shame fall on those who bear you +any ill-will! You will now return home, and take your prisoner, the +King of Scotland, and deliver him to my wife, to do with as she may +elect. You will convey to her my entreaty--not my orders, John,--that +she come to me here at Calais. As remuneration for this evening's +insolence, I assign lands as near your house as you can choose them to +the value of £500 a year for you and for your heirs." + +You must know that John Copeland fell upon his knees before King +Edward. "Sire--" he stammered. + +But the King raised him. "No, no," he said, "you are the better man. +Were there any equity in fate, John Copeland, your lady had loved you, +not me. As it is, I must strive to prove not altogether unworthy of my +fortune. But I make no large promises," he added, squinting horribly, +"because the most generous person cannot render to love any more than +that person happens to possess. So be off with you, John +Copeland,--go, my squire, and bring me back my Queen!" + +Presently he heard John Copeland singing without. And through that +instant, they say, his youth returned to Edward Plantagenet, and all +the scents and shadows and faint sounds of Valenciennes on that +ancient night when a tall girl came to him, running, stumbling in her +haste to bring him kingship. "She waddles now," he thought forlornly. +"Still, I am blessed." But Copeland sang, and the Brabanter's heart +was big with joy. + +Sang John Copeland: + + "Long I besought thee, nor vainly, + Daughter of Water and Air-- + Charis! Idalia! Hortensis! + Hast thou not heard the prayer, + When the blood stood still with loving, + And the blood in me leapt like wine, + And I cried on thy name, Melaenis?-- + That heard me, (the glory is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine! + + "Falsely they tell of thy dying, + Thou that art older than Death, + And never the Hörselberg hid thee, + Whatever the slanderer saith, + For the stars are as heralds forerunning, + When laughter and love combine + At twilight, in thy light, Melaenis-- + That heard me, (the glory is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine!" + + +THE END OF THE FIFTH NOVEL + + + + +VI + +THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS + + + "Je suis voix au désert criant + Que chascun soyt rectifiant + La voye de Sauveur; non suis, + Et accomplir je ne le puis." + +THE SIXTH NOVEL.--ANNE OF BOHEMIA HAS ONE SOLE FRIEND, AND BY HIM +PLAYS THE FRIEND'S PART; AND IN DOING SO ACHIEVES THEIR COMMON +ANGUISH, AS WELL AS THE CONFUSION OF STATECRAFT AND THE POULTICING OF +A GREAT DISEASE. + + + + +_The Story of the Satraps_ + + +In the year of grace 1381 (Nicolas begins) was Dame Anne magnificently +fetched from remote Bohemia, and at Westminster married to Sire +Richard, the second monarch of that name to reign in England. This +king, I must tell you, had succeeded while he was yet an infant, to +the throne of his grandfather, the third King Edward, about whom I +have told you in the story preceding this. + +Queen Anne had presently noted a certain priest who went forbiddingly +about her court, where he was accorded a provisional courtesy, and who +went also into many hovels, where pitiable wrecks of humankind +received his alms and ministrations. + +Queen Anne made inquiries. This young cleric was amanuensis to the +Duke of Gloucester, she learned, and was notoriously a by-blow of the +Duke's brother, dead Lionel of Clarence. She sent for this Edward +Maudelain. When he came her first perception was, "How wonderful is +his likeness to the King!" while the thought's commentary ran, +unacknowledged, "Yes, as an eagle resembles a falcon!" For here, to +the observant eye, was a more zealous person, already passion-wasted, +and a far more dictatorial and stiff-necked person than the lazy and +amiable King; also, this Maudelain's face and nose were somewhat too +long and high: the priest was, in a word, the less comely of the pair +by a very little, and to an immeasurable extent the more kinglike. + +"You are my cousin now, messire," the Queen told him, and innocently +offered to his lips her own. + +He never moved; but their glances crossed, and for that instant she +saw the face of a man who has just stepped into a quicksand. She grew +red, without knowing why. Then he spoke, composedly, of trivial +matters. + +Thus began the Queen's acquaintance with Edward Maudelain. She was by +this time the loneliest woman in the island. Her husband granted her a +bright and fresh perfection of form and color, but desiderated any +appetizing tang, and lamented, in his phrase, a certain kinship to the +impeccable loveliness of some female saint in a jaunty tapestry; +bright as ice in sunshine, just so her beauty chilled you, he +complained: moreover, this daughter of the Caesars had been fetched +into England, chiefly, to breed him children, and this she had never +done. Undoubtedly he had made a bad bargain,--he was too easy-going, +people presumed upon it. His barons snatched their cue and esteemed +Dame Anne to be negligible; whereas the clergy, finding that she +obstinately read the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, under the +irrelevant plea of not comprehending Latin, began to denounce her from +their pulpits as a heretic and as the evil woman prophesied by +Ezekiel. + +It was the nature of this desolate child to crave affection, as a +necessary, and pitifully she tried to purchase it through almsgiving. +In the attempt she could have found no coadjutor more ready than +Edward Maudelain. Giving was with these two a sort of obsession, +though always he gave in a half scorn of his fellow creatures which +was not more than half concealed. This bastard was charitable and +pious because he knew his soul, conceived in double sin, to be doubly +evil, and therefore doubly in need of redemption through good works. + +Now in and about the Queen's lonely rooms the woman and the priest met +daily to discuss now this or that point of theology, or now (to cite a +single instance) Gammer Tudway's obstinate sciatica. Considerate +persons found something of the pathetic in their preoccupation by +these matters while, so clamantly, the dissension between the young +King and his uncles gathered to a head. The King's uncles meant to +continue governing England, with the King as their ward, as long as +they could; he meant to relieve himself of this guardianship, and them +of their heads, as soon as he was able. War seemed inevitable, the air +was thick with portents; and was this, then, an appropriate time, the +judicious demanded of high Heaven, for the Queen of imperilled England +to concern herself about a peasant's toothache? + +Long afterward was Edward Maudelain to remember this quiet and amiable +period of his life, and to wonder over the man that he had been +through this queer while. Embittered and suspicious she had found him, +noted for the carping tongue he lacked both power and inclination to +bridle; and she had, against his nature, made Maudelain see that every +person is at bottom lovable, and that human vices are but the stains +of a traveller midway in a dusty journey; and had incited the priest +no longer to do good for his soul's health, but simply for his +fellow's benefit. + +In place of that monstrous passion which had at first view of her +possessed the priest, now, like a sheltered taper, glowed an adoration +which made him yearn, in defiance of common-sense, to suffer somehow +for this beautiful and gracious comrade; though very often pity for +her loneliness and knowledge that she dared trust no one save him +would throttle Maudelain like two assassins, and would move the +hot-blooded young man to a rapture of self-contempt and exultation. + +Now Maudelain made excellent songs, it was a matter of common report. +Yet but once in their close friendship did the Queen command him to +make a song for her. This had been at Dover, about vespers, in the +starved and tiny garden overlooking the English Channel, upon which +her apartments faced; and the priest had fingered his lute for an +appreciable while before he sang, more harshly than was his custom. + +Sang Maudelain: + + "Ave Maria! now cry we so + That see night wake and daylight go. + + "Mother and Maid, in nothing incomplete, + This night that gathers is more light and fleet + Than twilight trod alway with stumbling feet, + Agentes semper uno animo. + + "Ever we touch the prize we dare not take! + Ever we know that thirst we dare not slake! + Yet ever to a dreamed-of goal we make-- + Est tui coeli in palatio! + + "Long, long the road, and set with many a snare; + And to how small sure knowledge are we heir + That blindly tread, with twilight everywhere! + Volo in toto; sed non valeo! + + "Long, long the road, and very frail are we + That may not lightly curb mortality, + Nor lightly tread together steadfastly, + Et parvum carmen unum facio: + + "Mater, ora filium, + Ut post hoc exilium + Nobis donet gaudium + Beatorum omnium!" + +Dame Anne had risen. She said nothing. She stayed in this posture for +a lengthy while, one hand yet clasping each breast. Then she laughed, +and began to speak of Long Simon's recent fever. Was there no method +of establishing him in another cottage? No, the priest said, the +peasants, like the cattle, were always deeded with the land, and Simon +could not lawfully be taken away from his owner. + +One day, about the hour of prime, in that season of the year when +fields smell of young grass, the Duke of Gloucester sent for Edward +Maudelain. The court was then at Windsor. The priest came quickly to +his patron. He found the Duke in company with the King's other uncle +Edmund of York and bland Harry of Derby, who was John of Gaunt's +oldest son, and in consequence the King's cousin. Each was a proud and +handsome man: Derby alone (who was afterward King of England) had +inherited the squint that distinguished this family. To-day Gloucester +was gnawing at his finger nails, big York seemed half-asleep, and the +Earl of Derby appeared patiently to await something as yet ineffably +remote. + +"Sit down!" snarled Gloucester. His lean and evil countenance was that +of a tired devil. The priest obeyed, wondering that so high an honor +should be accorded him in the view of three great noblemen. Then +Gloucester said, in his sharp way: "Edward, you know, as England +knows, the King's intention toward us three and our adherents. It has +come to our demolishment or his. I confess a preference in the matter. +I have consulted with the Pope concerning the advisability of taking +the crown into my own hands. Edmund here does not want it, and my +brother John is already achieving one in Spain. Eh, in imagination I +was already King of England, and I had dreamed--Well! to-day the +prosaic courier arrived. Urban--the Neapolitan swine!--dares give me +no assistance. It is decreed I shall never reign in these islands. And +I had dreamed--Meanwhile, de Vere and de la Pole are at the King day +and night, urging revolt. As matters go, within a week or two, the +three heads before you will be embellishing Temple Bar. You, of +course, they will only hang." + +"We must avoid England, then, my noble patron," the priest considered. + +Angrily the Duke struck a clenched fist upon the table. "By the Cross! +we remain in England, you and I and all of us. Others avoid. The Pope +and the Emperor will have none of me. They plead for the Black +Prince's heir, for the legitimate heir. Dompnedex! they shall have +him!" + +Maudelain recoiled, for he thought this twitching man insane. + +"Besides, the King intends to take from me my fief at Sudbury," said +the Duke of York, "in order to give it to de Vere. That is both absurd +and monstrous and abominable." + +Openly Gloucester sneered. "Listen!" he rapped out toward Maudelain; +"when they were drawing up the Great Peace at Brétigny, it happened, +as is notorious, that the Black Prince, my brother, wooed in this town +the Demoiselle Alixe Riczi, whom in the outcome he abducted. It is not +so generally known, however, that, finding this sister of the Vicomte +de Montbrison a girl of obdurate virtue, my brother had prefaced the +action by marriage." + +"And what have I to do with all this?" said Edward Maudelain. + +Gloucester retorted: "More than you think. For this Alixe was conveyed +to Chertsey, here in England, where at the year's end she died in +childbirth. A little before this time had Sir Thomas Holland seen his +last day,--the husband of that Joane of Kent whom throughout life my +brother loved most marvellously. The disposition of the late +Queen-Mother is tolerably well known. I make no comment save that to +her moulding my brother was as so much wax. In fine, the two lovers +were presently married, and their son reigns to-day in England. The +abandoned son of Alixe Riczi was reared by the Cistercians at +Chertsey, where some years ago I found you." + +He spoke with a stifled voice, wrenching forth each sentence; and now +with a stiff forefinger flipped a paper across the table. "_In +extremis_ my brother did more than confess. He signed,--your Majesty," +said Gloucester. The Duke on a sudden flung out his hands, like a +wizard whose necromancy fails, and the palms were bloodied where his +nails had cut the flesh. + +"Moreover, my daughter was born at Sudbury," said the Duke of York. + +And of Maudelain's face I cannot tell you. He made pretence to read +the paper carefully, but his eyes roved, and he knew that he stood +among wolves. The room was oddly shaped, with eight equal sides: the +ceiling was of a light and brilliant blue, powdered with many golden +stars, and the walls were hung with smart tapestries which +commemorated the exploits of Theseus. "Then I am King," this Maudelain +said aloud, "of France and England, and Lord of Ireland, and Duke of +Aquitaine! I perceive that Heaven loves a jest." He wheeled upon +Gloucester and spoke with singular irrelevance, "And what is to be +done with the present Queen?" + +Again the Duke shrugged. "I had not thought of the dumb wench. We have +many convents." + +Now Maudelain twisted the paper between his long, wet fingers and +appeared to meditate. + +"It would be advisable, your Grace," observed the Earl of Derby, +suavely, and breaking his silence for the first time, "that you +yourself should wed Dame Anne, once the Apostolic See has granted the +necessary dispensation. Treading too close upon the fighting requisite +to bring about the dethronement and death of our nominal lord the +so-called King, a war with Bohemia, which would be only too apt to +follow this noble lady's assassination, would be highly inconvenient, +and, lacking that, we would have to pay back her dowry." + +Then these three princes rose and knelt before the priest; they were +clad in long bright garments, and they glittered with gold and many +jewels. He standing among them shuddered in his sombre robe. "Hail, +King of England!" cried these three. + +"Hail, ye that are my kinsmen!" he answered; "hail, ye that spring of +an accursed race, as I! And woe to England for that hour wherein +Manuel of Poictesme held traffic with the Sorceress of Provence, and +the devil's son begot an heir for England! Of ice and of lust and of +hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and fickle and +cold and ravenous and without shame are all our race until the end. Of +your brother's dishonor ye make merchandise to-day, and to-day +fratricide whispers me, and leers, and, Heaven help me! I attend. O +God of Gods! wilt Thou dare bid a man live stainless, having aforetime +filled his veins with such a venom? Then haro, will I cry from Thy +deepest hell.... Oh, now let the adulterous Redeemer of Poictesme +rejoice in his tall fires, to note that his descendants know of what +wood to make a crutch! You are very wise, my kinsmen. Take your +measures, messieurs who are my kinsmen! Though were I of any other +race, with what expedition would I now kill you, I that recognize +within me the strength to do it! Then would I slay you! without any +animosity, would I slay you then, just as I would kill as many +splendid snakes!" + +He went away, laughing horribly. Gloucester drummed upon the table, +his brows contracted. But the lean Duke said nothing; big York seemed +to drowse; and Henry of Derby smiled as he sounded a gong for that +scribe who would draw up the necessary letters. The Earl's time was +not yet come, but it was nearing. + +In the antechamber the priest encountered two men-at-arms dragging a +dead body from the castle. The Duke of Kent, Maudelain was informed, +had taken a fancy to a peasant girl, and in remonstrance her misguided +father had actually tugged at his Grace's sleeve. + +Maudelain went into the park of Windsor, where he walked for a long +while alone. It was a fine day in the middle spring; and now he seemed +to understand for the first time how fair was his England. For all +England was his fief, held in vassalage to God and to no man alive, +his heart now sang; allwhither his empire spread, opulent in grain and +metal and every revenue of the earth, and in stalwart men (his +chattels), and in strong orderly cities, where the windows would be +adorned with scarlet hangings, and women (with golden hair and red lax +lips) would presently admire as King Edward rode slowly by at the head +of a resplendent retinue. And always the King would bow, graciously +and without haste, to his shouting people.... He laughed to find +himself already at rehearsal of the gesture. + +It was strange, though, that in this glorious fief of his so many +persons should, as yet, live day by day as cattle live, suspicious of +all other moving things (with reason), and roused from their incurious +and filthy apathy only when some glittering baron, like a resistless +eagle, swept uncomfortably near as he passed on some by-errand of the +more bright and windy upper-world. East and north they had gone +yearly, for so many centuries, these dumb peasants, to fight out their +master's uncomprehended quarrel, and to manure with their carcasses +the soil of France and of Scotland. Give these serfs a king, now, who +(being absolute), might dare to deal in perfect equity with rich and +poor, who with his advent would bring Peace into England as his bride, +as Trygaeus did very anciently in Athens--"And then," the priest +paraphrased, "may England recover all the blessings she has lost, and +everywhere the glitter of active steel will cease." For everywhere men +would crack a rustic jest or two, unhurriedly. Virid fields would +heave brownly under their ploughs; they would find that with practice +it was almost as easy to chuckle as it was to cringe. + +Meanwhile on every side the nobles tyrannized in their degree, well +clothed and nourished, but at bottom equally comfortless in condition. +As illuminate by lightning Maudelain saw the many factions of his +barons squabbling for gross pleasures, like wolves over a corpse, and +blindly dealing death to one another to secure at least one more +delicious gulp before that inevitable mangling by the teeth of some +burlier colleague. The complete misery of England showed before +Maudelain like a winter landscape. The thing was questionless. He must +tread henceforward without fear among frenzied beasts, and to their +ultimate welfare. On a sudden Maudelain knew himself to be invincible +and fine, and hesitancy ebbed. + +True, Richard, poor fool, must die. Squarely the priest faced that +stark and hideous circumstance; to spare Richard was beyond his power, +and the boy was his brother; yes, this oncoming King Edward would be a +fratricide, and after death would be irrevocably damned. To burn, and +eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the torment was +eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of Richard's ignoble +life and of Edward's inconsiderable soul, to win so many men to +manhood was not a bargain to be refused. + +The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden which +adjoined Dame Anne's apartments. He found the Queen there, alone, as +nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused to wonder at her +bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd was this beauty, he +reflected, too; how alien in its effect to that of any other woman in +sturdy England, and how associable it was, somehow, with every wild +and gracious denizen of the woods which blossomed yonder. + +In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but undiluted. +They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short to ripple, +which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and left, birds +sang as if in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint and radiant +blue throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the zenith, so +that the Queen's brows cast honey-colored shadows upon either cheek. +The priest was greatly troubled by the proud and heatless +brilliancies, the shrill joys, of every object within the radius of +his senses. + +She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, tinted +like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and wore over all a gown +of white, cut open on each side as far as the hips. This garment was +embroidered with golden leopards and was trimmed with ermine. About +her yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein emeralds glowed. Her +blue eyes were as large and shining and changeable (he thought) as two +oceans in midsummer; and Maudelain stood motionless and seemed to +himself but to revere, as the Earl Ixion did, some bright unstable +wisp of cloud, while somehow all elation departed from him as water +does from a wetted sponge compressed. He laughed discordantly. + +"Wait--! O my only friend--!" said Maudelain. Then in a level voice he +told her all, unhurriedly and without any apparent emotion. + +She had breathed once, with a deep inhalation. She had screened her +countenance from his gaze the while you might have counted fifty. +Presently she said: "This means more war, for de Vere and Tressilian +and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons know that the +King's fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands die to-morrow." + +He answered, "It means a war which will make me King of England, and +will make you my wife." + +"In that war the nobles will ride abroad with banners and gay +surcoats, and will kill and ravish in the pauses of their songs; while +daily in that war the naked peasants will kill the one the other, +without knowing why." + +His thought had forerun hers. "Yes, some must die, so that in the end +I may be King, and the general happiness may rest at my disposal. The +adventure of this world is wonderful, and it goes otherwise than under +the strict tutelage of reason." + +"It would not be yours, but Gloucester's and his barons'. Friend, they +would set you on the throne to be their puppet and to move only as +they pulled the strings. Thwart them in their maraudings and they will +fling you aside, as the barons have pulled down every king that dared +oppose them. No, they desire to live pleasantly, to have fish on +Fridays, and white bread and the finest wine the whole year through, +and there is not enough for all, say they. Can you alone contend +against them? and conquer them? for not unless you can do this may I +dare bid you reign." + +The sun had grown too bright, too merciless, but as always she drew +the truth from him. "I could not venture to oppose in anything the +barons who supported my cause: for if I did, I would not endure a +fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor I nor any one may transform +through any personal force this bitter world, this piercing, cruel +place of frost and sun. Charity and Truth are excommunicate, and a +king is only an adorned and fearful person who leads wolves toward +their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and devour him. Everywhere +the powerful labor to put one another out of worship, and each to +stand the higher with the other's corpse as his pedestal; and Lechery +and Greed and Hatred sway these proud and inconsiderate fools as winds +blow at will the gay leaves of autumn. We walk among shining vapors, +we aspire to overpass a mountain of unstable sparkling sand! We two +alone in all the scuffling world! Oh, it is horrible, and I think that +Satan plans the jest! We dream for a while of refashioning this bright +desolation, and know that we alone can do it! we are as demigods, you +and I, in those gallant dreams! and at the end we can but poultice +some dirty rascal!" + +The Queen answered sadly: "Once and only once did God tread this +tangible world, for a very little while, and, look you, to what +trivial matters He devoted that brief space! Only to chat with +fishermen, and to talk with light women, and to consort with rascals, +and at last to die between two cutpurses, ignominiously! If Christ +Himself achieved so little that seemed great and admirable, how should +we two hope to do any more?" + +He answered: "It is true. Of anise and of cumin the Master gets His +tithe--" Maudelain broke off with a yapping laugh. "Puf! Heaven is +wiser than we. I am King of England. It is my heritage." + +"It means war. Many will die, thousands will die, and to no betterment +of affairs." + +"I am King of England. I am Heaven's satrap here, and answerable to +Heaven alone. It is my heritage." And now his large and cruel eyes +were aflame as he regarded her. + +And visibly beneath their glare the woman changed. "My friend, must I +not love you any longer? You would be content with happiness? Then I +am jealous of that happiness! for you are the one friend that I have +had, and so dear to me--Look you!" she said, with a light, wistful +laugh, "there have been times when I was afraid of everything you +touched, and I hated everything you looked at. I would not have you +stained; I desired to pass my whole life between the four walls of +some dingy and eternal gaol, forever alone with you, lest you become +like other men. I would in that period have been the very bread you +eat, the least perfume which delights you, the clod you touch in +crushing it, and I have often loathed some pleasure I derived from +life because I might not transfer it to you undiminished. For I wanted +somehow to make you happy to my own anguish.... It was wicked, I +suppose, for the imagining of it made me happy, too." + +Now while he listened to this dear and tranquil speaking, Edward +Maudelain's raised hands had fallen like so much lead, and remembering +his own nature, he longed for annihilation, before she had appraised +his vileness. He said: + +"With reason Augustine crieth out against the lust of the eyes. 'For +pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, and +soft; but this disease those contrary as well, not for the sake of +suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of making trial of them!' Ah! +ah! too curiously I planned my own damnation, too presumptuously I had +esteemed my soul a worthy scapegoat, and I had gilded my enormity with +many lies. Yet indeed, indeed, I had believed brave things, I had +planned a not ignoble bargain--! Ey, say, is it not laughable, +madame?--as my birth-right Heaven accords me a penny, and with that +only penny I must presently be seeking to bribe Heaven." + +Then he said: "Yet are we indeed God's satraps, as but now I cried in +my vainglory, and we hold within our palms the destiny of many +peoples. Depardieux! God is wiser than we are. Still, Satan offers no +unhandsome bribes--bribes that are tangible and sure. For Satan, too, +is wiser than we are." + +They stood like effigies, lit by the broad, unsparing splendor of the +morning, but again their kindling eyes had met, and again the man +shuddered. "Decide! oh, decide very quickly, my only friend!" he said, +"for throughout I am all filth!" + +Closer she drew to him, and laid one hand upon each shoulder. "O my +only friend!" she breathed, with red lax lips which were very near to +his, "through these six years I have ranked your friendship as the +chief of all my honors! and I pray God with an entire heart that I may +die so soon as I have done what I must do to-day!" + +Now Maudelain was trying to smile, but he could not quite manage it. +"God save King Richard!" said the priest. "For by the cowardice and +greed and ignorance of little men is Salomon himself confounded, and +by them is Hercules lightly unhorsed. Were I Leviathan, whose bones +were long ago picked clean by pismires, I could perform nothing +against the will of many human pismires. Therefore do you pronounce my +doom." + +"O King," then said Dame Anne, "I bid you go forever from the court +and live forever a landless man, friendless, and without even any +name. Otherwise, you can in no way escape being made an instrument to +bring about the misery and death of many thousands. This doom I dare +adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's satraps, you +and I." + +Twice or thrice his dry lips moved before he spoke. He was aware of +innumerable birds that carolled with a piercing and intolerable +sweetness. "O Queen!" he hoarsely said, "O fellow satrap! Heaven has +many fiefs. A fair province is wasted and accords to Heaven no +revenue. So wastes beauty, and a shrewd wit, and an illimitable +charity, which of their pride go in fetters and achieve no increase. +To-day the young King junkets with his flatterers, and but rarely +thinks of England. You have that beauty by which men are lightly +conquered, and the mere sight of which may well cause a man's voice to +tremble as my voice trembles now, and through desire of which--But I +tread afield! Of that beauty you have made no profit. O daughter of +the Caesars, I bid you now gird either loin for an unlovely traffic. +Old Legion must be fought with fire. True that the age is sick, true +that we may not cure, we can but salve the hurt--" His hand had torn +open his sombre gown, and the man's bared breast shone in the +sunlight, and on his breast heaved sleek and glittering beads of +sweat. Twice he cried the Queen's name. In a while he said: "I bid you +weave incessantly such snares of brain and body as may lure King +Richard to be swayed by you, until against his will you daily guide +this shallow-hearted fool to some commendable action. I bid you live +as other folk do hereabouts. Coax! beg! cheat! wheedle! lie!" he +barked like a teased dog, "and play the prostitute for him that wears +my crown, till you achieve in part the task which is denied me. This +doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's +satraps, you and I." + +She answered with a tiny, wordless sound. But presently, "I take my +doom," the Queen proudly said. "I shall be lonely now, my only friend, +and yet--it does not matter," the Queen said, with a little shiver. +"No, nothing will ever greatly matter now, I think, now that I may not +ever see you any more, my dearest." + +Her eyes had filled with tears; she was unhappy, and, as always, this +knowledge roused in Maudelain a sort of frenzied pity and a hatred, +quite illogical, of all other things existent. She was unhappy, that +only he comprehended: and for her to be made unhappy was unjust. + +So he stood thus for an appreciable silence, staying motionless save +that behind his back his fingers were bruising one another. Everywhere +was this or that bright color and an incessant melody. It was +unbearable. Then it was over; the ordered progress of all happenings +was apparent, simple, and natural; and contentment came into his heart +like a flight of linnets over level fields at dawn. He left her, and +as he went he sang. + +Sang Maudelain: + + "Christ save us all, as well He can, + A solis ortus cardine! + For He is both God and man, + Qui natus est de virgine, + And we but part of His wide plan + That sing, and heartily sing we, + 'Gloria Tibi, Domine!' + + "Between a heifer and an ass + Enixa est puerpera; + In ragged woollen clad He was + Qui régnât super aethera, + And patiently may we then pass + That sing, and heartily sing we, + 'Gloria Tibi, Domine!'" + +The Queen shivered in the glad sunlight. "I am, it must be, pitiably +weak," she said at last, "because I cannot sing as he does. And, since +I am not very wise, were he to return even now--But he will not +return. He will never return," the Queen repeated, carefully. "It is +strange I cannot comprehend that he will never return! Ah, Mother of +God!" she cried, with a steadier voice, "grant that I may weep! nay, +of thy infinite mercy let me presently find the heart to weep!" And +about the Queen of England many birds sang joyously. + +She sent for the King that evening, after supper, and they may well +have talked of many matters, for he did not return to his own +apartments that night. Next day the English barons held a council, and +in the midst of it King Richard demanded to be told his age. + +"Your Grace is in your twenty-second year," said the uneasy +Gloucester, who was now with reason troubled, since he had been vainly +seeking everywhere for the evanished Maudelain. + +"Then I have been under tutors and governors longer than any other +ward in my dominion. My lords, I thank you for your past services, but +I need them no more." They had no check handy, and Gloucester in +particular foreread his death-warrant, but of necessity he shouted +with the others, "Hail, King of England!" + +That afternoon the King's assumption of all royal responsibility was +commemorated by a tournament, over which Dame Anne presided. Sixty of +her ladies led as many knights by silver chains into the +tilting-grounds at Smithfield, and it was remarked that the Queen +appeared unusually mirthful. The King was in high good humor, a +pattern of conjugal devotion; and the royal pair retired at dusk to +the Bishop of London's palace at Saint Paul's, where was held a merry +banquet, with dancing both before and after supper. + +THE END OF THE SIXTH NOVEL + + + + +VII + +THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE + + + "Pour vous je suis en prison mise, + En ceste chambre à voulte grise, + Et traineray ma triste vie + Sans que jamais mon cueur varie, + Car toujours seray vostre amye." + +THE SEVENTH NOVEL.--ISABEL OF VALOIS, BEING FORSAKEN BY ALL OTHERS, IS +BEFRIENDED BY A PRIEST, WHO IN CHIEF THROUGH A CHILD'S INNOCENCE, +CONTRIVES AND EXECUTES A LAUDABLE IMPOSTURE, AND WINS THEREBY TO +DEATH. + + + + +_The Story of the Heritage_ + + +In the year of grace 1399 (Nicolas begins) dwelt in a hut near Caer +Dathyl in Arvon, as he had dwelt for some five years, a gaunt hermit, +notoriously consecrate, whom neighboring Welshmen revered as the +Blessed Evrawc. There had been a time when people called him Edward +Maudelain, but this period he dared not often remember. + +For though in macerations of the flesh, in fasting, and in hour-long +prayers he spent his days, this holy man was much troubled by devils. +He got little rest because of them. Sometimes would come into his hut +Belphegor in the likeness of a butler, and whisper, "Sire, had you +been King, as was your right, you had drunk to-day not water but the +wines of Spain and Hungary." Or Asmodeus saying, "Sire, had you been +King, as was your right, you had lain now not upon the bare earth but +on cushions of silk." + +One day in early spring, they say, the spirit called Orvendile sent +the likeness of a fair woman with yellow hair and large blue eyes. She +wore a massive crown which seemed too heavy for her frailness to +sustain. Soft tranquil eyes had lifted from her book. "You are my +cousin now, messire," this phantom had appeared to say. + +That was the worst, and Maudelain began to fear he was a little mad +because even this he had resisted with many aves. + +There came also to his hut, through a sullen snowstorm, upon the +afternoon of All Soul's day, a horseman in a long cloak of black. He +tethered his black horse and he came noiselessly through the doorway +of the hut, and upon his breast and shoulders the snow was white as +the bleached bones of those women that died in Merlin's youth. + +"Greetings in God's name, Messire Edward Maudelain," the stranger +said. + +Since the new-comer spoke intrepidly of holy things a cheerier +Maudelain knew that this at least was no demon. "Greetings!" he +answered. "But I am Evrawc. You name a man long dead." + +"But it is from a certain Bohemian woman I come. What matter, then, if +the dead receive me?" And thus speaking, the stranger dropped his +cloak. + +He was clad, as you now saw, in flame-colored satin, which shimmered +with each movement like a high flame. He had the appearance of a tall, +lean youngster, with crisp, curling, very dark red hair. He now +regarded Maudelain. He displayed peculiarly wide-set brown eyes; and +their gaze was tender, and the tears somehow had come to Maudelain's +eyes because of his great love for this tall stranger. "Eh, from the +dead to the dead I travel, as ever," said the new-comer, "with a +message and a token. My message runs, _Time is, O fellow satrap!_ and +my token is this." + +In this packet, wrapped with white parchment and tied with a golden +cord, was only a lock of hair. It lay like a little yellow serpent in +Maudelain's palm. "And yet five years ago," he mused, "this hair was +turned to dust. God keep us all!" Then he saw the tall lean emissary +puffed out like a candle-flame; and upon the floor he saw the huddled +cloak waver and spread like ink, and he saw the white parchment slowly +dwindle, as snow melts under the open sun. But in his hand remained +the lock of yellow hair. + +"O my only friend," said Maudelain, "I may not comprehend, but I know +that by no unhallowed art have you won back to me." Hair by hair he +scattered upon the floor that which he held. "_Time is!_ and I have +not need of any token to spur my memory." He prized up a corner of the +hearthstone, took out a small leather bag, and that day purchased a +horse and a sword. + +At dawn the Blessed Evrawc rode eastward in secular apparel. Two weeks +later he came to Sunninghill; and it happened that the same morning +the Earl of Salisbury, who had excellent reason to consider ... + +_Follows a lacuna of fourteen pages. Maudelain's successful imposture +of his half-brother, Richard the Second, so strangely favored by their +physical resemblance, and the subsequent fiasco at Circencester, are +now, however, tolerably well known to students of history._ + +_In one way or another, Maudelain contrived to take the place of his +now dethroned brother, and therewith also the punishment designed for +Richard. It would seem evident, from the Argument of the story in +hand, that Nicolas de Caen attributes a large part of this mysterious +business to the co-operancy of Isabel of Valois, King Richard's eleven +year old wife. And (should one have a taste for the deductive) the +foregoing name of Orvendile, when compared with "THE STORY OF THE +SCABBARD," would certainly hint that Owain Glyndwyr had a finger in +the affair._ + +_It is impossible to divine by what method, according to Nicolas, this +Edward Maudelain was substituted for his younger brother. Nicolas, if +you are to believe his "EPILOGUE," had the best of reasons for knowing +that the prisoner locked up in Pontefract Castle in the February of +1400, after Harry of Derby had seized the crown of England, was not +Richard Plantagenet: as is attested, also, by the remaining fragment +of this same_ "STORY OF THE HERITAGE." + +... and eight men-at-arms followed him. + +Quickly Maudelain rose from the table, pushing his tall chair aside, +and as he did this, one of the soldiers closed the door securely. +"Nay, eat your fill, Sire Richard," said Piers Exton, "since you will +not ever eat again." + +"Is it so?" the trapped man answered quietly. "Then indeed you come in +a good hour." Once only he smote upon his breast. "_Mea culpa!_ O +Eternal Father, do Thou shrive me very quickly of all those sins I +have committed, both in thought and deed, for now the time is very +short." + +And Exton spat upon the dusty floor. "Foh, they had told me I would +find a king here. I discover only a cat that whines." + +"Then 'ware his claws!" As a viper leaps Maudelain sprang upon the +nearest fellow and wrested away his halberd. "Then 'ware his claws, my +men! For I come of an accursed race. And now let some of you lament +that hour wherein the devil's son begot an heir for England! For of +ice and of lust and of hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest +it; and fickle and cold and ravenous and without fear are all our race +until the end. Hah, until the end! O God of Gods!" this Maudelain +cried, with a great voice, "wilt Thou dare bid a man die patiently, +having aforetime filled his veins with such a venom? For I lack the +grace to die as all Thy saints have died, without one carnal blow +struck in my own defence. I lack the grace, my Father, for even at the +last the devil's blood You gave me is not quelled. I dare atone for +that old sin done by my father in the flesh, but yet I must atone as +befits the race of Oriander!" + +Then it was he and not they who pressed to the attack. Their meeting +was a bloody business, for in that dark and crowded room Maudelain +raged among his nine antagonists like an angered lion among wolves. + +They struck at random and cursed shrilly, for they were now +half-afraid of this prey they had entrapped; so that presently he was +all hacked and bleeding, though as yet he had no mortal wound. Four of +these men he had killed by this time, and Piers Exton also lay at his +feet. + +Then the other four drew back a little. "Are ye tired so soon?" said +Maudelain, and he laughed terribly. "What, even you! Why, look ye, my +bold veterans, I never killed before to-day, and I am not breathed as +yet." + +Thus he boasted, exultant in his strength. But the other men saw that +behind him Piers Exton had crawled into the chair from which (they +thought) King Richard had just risen, and they saw Exton standing +erect in this chair, with both arms raised. They saw this Exton strike +the King with his pole-axe, from behind, once only, and they knew no +more was needed. + +"By God!" said one of them in the ensuing stillness, and it was he who +bled the most, "that was a felon's blow." + +But the dying man who lay before them made as though to smile. "I +charge you all to witness," he faintly said, "how willingly I render +to Caesar's daughter that which was ever hers." + +Then Exton fretted, as if with a little trace of shame: "Who would +have thought the rascal had remembered that first wife of his so long? +Caesar's daughter, saith he! and dares in extremis to pervert Holy +Scripture like any Wycliffite! Well, he is as dead as that first +Caesar now, and our gracious King, I think, will sleep the better for +it. And yet--God only knows! for they are an odd race, even as he +said--these men that have old Manuel's blood in them." + +THE END OF THE SEVENTH NOVEL + + + + +VIII + +THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD + + + "Ainsi il avait trouvé sa mie + Si belle qu'on put souhaiter. + N'avoit cure d'ailleurs plaider, + Fors qu'avec lui manoir et estre. + Bien est Amour puissant et maistre." + +THE EIGHTH NOVEL.--BRANWEN OF WALES GETS A KING'S LOVE UNWITTINGLY, +AND IN ALL INNOCENCE CONVINCES HIM OF THE LITTLENESS OF HIS KINGDOM; +SO THAT HE BESIEGES AND IN DUE COURSE OCCUPIES ANOTHER REALM AS YET +UNMAPPED. + + + + +_The Story of the Scabbard_ + + +In the year of grace 1400 (Nicolas begins) King Richard, the second +monarch of that name to rule in England, wrenched his own existence, +and nothing more, from the close wiles of his cousin, Harry of Derby, +who was now sometimes called Henry of Lancaster, and sometimes +Bolingbroke. The circumstances of this evasion having been recorded in +the preceding tale, it suffices here to record that this Henry was +presently crowned King of England in Richard's place. All persons, +saving only Owain Glyndwyr and Henry of Lancaster, believed King +Richard dead at that period when Richard attended his own funeral, as +a proceeding taking to the fancy, and, among many others, saw the body +of Edward Maudelain interred with every regal ceremony in the chapel +at Langley Bower. Then alone Sire Richard crossed the seas, and at +thirty-three set out to inspect a transformed and gratefully +untrammelling world wherein not a foot of land belonged to him. + +Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his half-brothers; and +to detail his Asian wanderings would be tedious and unprofitable. But +at the end of each four months would come to him a certain messenger +from Glyndwyr, supposed by Richard to be the imp Orvendile, who +notoriously ran every day around the world upon the Welshman's +business. It was in the Isle of Taprobane, where the pismires are as +great as hounds, and mine and store the gold of which the inhabitants +afterward rob them through a very cunning device, that this emissary +brought the letter which read simply, "Now is England fit pasture for +the White Hart." Presently Richard Holland was in Wales, and then he +rode to Sycharth. + +There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long +stewardship. It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless +machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the +barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their +squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester, +Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open revolt. +"By the God I do not altogether serve," Owain ended, "you have but to +declare yourself, sire, and within the moment England is yours." + +Richard spoke with narrowed eyes. "You forget that while Henry of +Lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign tranquilly in +these islands. Come then! the hour strikes; and we will coax the devil +for once in a way to serve God." + +"Oh, but there is a boundary appointed," Glyndwyr moodily returned. +"You, too, forget that in cold blood this Henry stabbed my best-loved +son. But I do not forget this, and I have tried divers methods which +we need not speak of,--I who can at will corrupt the air, and cause +sickness and storms, raise heavy mists, and create plagues and fires +and shipwrecks; yet the life itself I cannot take. For there is a +boundary appointed, sire, and beyond that frontier the Master of our +Sabbaths cannot serve us even though he would." + +Richard crossed himself. "You horribly mistake my meaning. Your +practices are your own affair, and in them I decline to dabble. I +merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait. For you have +a fief at Caer Idion, I think?--Very well! I intend to herd your sheep +there, for a week or two, after the honorable example of Apollo. It is +your part to see that Henry knows I am living disguised and +defenceless at Caer Idion." + +The gaunt Welshman chuckled. "Yes, squinting Henry of Lancaster would +cross the world, much less the Severn, to make quite sure of Richard's +death. He would come in his own person with at most some twenty +trustworthy followers. I will have a hundred there; and certain aging +scores will then be settled in that place." Glyndwyr meditated +afterward, very evilly. "Sire," he said without prelude, "I do not +recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have garnered much in travelling!" + +"Why, look you," Richard returned, "I have garnered so much that I do +not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. With age I begin +to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing +very seriously. You barons here believe it an affair of importance who +may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you +take sides between Henry and me. I tell you frankly that neither of +us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can +ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything +save discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the +discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking +disaster. No, Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, +depend upon it, to the burden of _Fools All_. For I am as liberally +endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my +performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would +appraise those of another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive +that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself +about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least, +impossible." + +"I have known the thought," said Owain,--"though rarely since I found +the Englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son, +my Gruffyd, was murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than +the others, people said.... You are as yet the empty scabbard, +powerless alike for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword, +sire, that informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we +are as gods." + +"Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms." + +"We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the +second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at +all." + +"--And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the devil." + +"I greatly fear," said Owain with a sigh, "lest it may be your +irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike. +No, you consider things with both eyes open, with an unmanly +rationality: whereas Sire Henry views all matters with that heroic +squint which came into your family from Poictesme." + +"Be off with your dusty scandals!" said Richard, laughing. + +So then Glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of Caerdyf, +while at Caer Idion Richard Holland abode tranquilly for some three +weeks. There was in this place only Caradawc (the former shepherd), +his wife Alundyne, and their sole daughter Branwen. They gladly +perceived Sire Richard was no more a peasant than he was a curmudgeon; +as Caradawc observed: "It is perfectly apparent that the robe of +Padarn Beisrudd, which refuses to adjust itself to any save highborn +persons, would fit him as a glove does the hand; but we will ask no +questions, since it is not wholesome to dispute the orderings of Owain +Glyndwyr." + +Now day by day would Richard Holland drive the flocks to pasture near +the Severn, and loll there in the shade, and make songs to his lute. +He grew to love this leisured life of bright and open spaces; and its +long solitudes, grateful with the warm odors of growing things and +with poignant bird-noises; and the tranquillity of these meadows, that +were always void of hurry, bedrugged the man through many fruitless +and contented hours. + +Each day at noon Branwen would bring his dinner, and she would +sometimes chat with him while he ate. After supper he would discourse +to Branwen of remote kingdoms, through which, as aimlessly as a wind +veers, he had ridden at adventure, among sedate and alien peoples who +adjudged him a madman; and she, in turn, would tell him curious tales +from the _Red Book of Hergest_,--telling of Gwalchmai, and Peredur, +and Geraint, in each one of which fine heroes she had presently +discerned an inadequate forerunnership of Richard's existence. + +This Branwen was a fair wench, slender and hardy. She had the bold +demeanor of a child who is ignorant of evil and in consequence of +suspicion. Happily, though, had she been named for that unhappy lady +of old, the wife of King Matholwch, for this Branwen, too, had a +white, thin, wistful face, like that of an empress on a silver coin +which is a little worn. Her eyes were large and brilliant, colored +like clear emeralds, and her abundant hair was so much cornfloss, only +it was more brightly yellow and was of immeasurably finer texture. In +full sunlight her cheeks were frosted like the surface of a peach, but +the underlying cool pink of them was rather that of a cloud just after +sunset, Richard decided. In all, a taking morsel! though her shapely +hands were hard with labor, and she rarely laughed; for, as if in +recompense, her heart was tender, and she rarely ceased to smile as +though she were thinking of some peculiar and wonderful secret which +she intended, in due time, to share with you and with nobody else. +Branwen had many lovers, and preferred among them young Gwyllem ap +Llyr, a portly lad, who was handsome enough, though he had tiny and +piggish eyes, and who sang divinely. + +One day this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. "Saxon," +he said, "you appear a stout man. Take your pick of these, then, and +have at you." + +"Such are not the weapons I would have named," Richard answered: "yet +in reason, Messire Gwyllem, I can deny you nothing that means nothing +to me." + +With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In these +unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated, +but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and he managed +somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he contrived +this he never ascertained. + +"I have forgotten what we are fighting about," he observed, after ten +minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; "or, to be perfectly exact, I +never knew. But we will fight no more in this place. Come and go with +me to Welshpool, Messire Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a +conclusion over good sack and claret." + +"Content!" cried Gwyllem; "but only if you yield me Branwen." + +"Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?" +Richard demanded; "like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any +one particular toy? Then devil take me if I am not heartily ashamed of +my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I would speak naught save +commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long +as one is able to approach them in a becoming spirit of levity: it is +only their not infrequent misuse which I would condemn; and in my +opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them +has only himself to blame if his chosen goddess will accept no +burnt-offering except his honor and happiness. Yet since time's youth +have many fine men been addicted to this insane practice, as, for +example, were Hercules and Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and, +indeed, the more I reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of +other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I +ashamed of my sex." + +Gwyllem said: "This lazy gabbling of yours is all very fine. Perhaps +it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not reason." + + +"I was endeavoring to prove that," said Richard gently. Then they went +to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem's horse. Tongue loosened by the +claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to +each rapture Richard affably assented. In his heart he likened the boy +to Dionysos at Naxos, and could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover, +the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the +windows, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content. + +"She does not love me?" Gwyllem cried. "It is well enough. I do not +come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered. +Listen, Saxon!" He caught up Richard's lute. The strings shrieked +beneath Gwyllem's fingers as he fashioned his rude song. + +Sang Gwyllem: + + "Love me or love me not, it is enough + That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is + Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,-- + My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred + With tavern-catches, which that pity of his + Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word, + O Branwen! + + "I have accorded you incessant praise + And song and service, dear, because of this; + And always I have dreamed incessantly + Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days + This man or that shall love you, and at last + This man or that shall win you, it must be + That, loving him, you will have pity on me + When happiness engenders memory + And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past, + O Branwen! + + "Of this I know not surely, who am sure + That I shall always love you while I live, + And that, when I am dead, with naught to give + Of song or service, Love will yet endure, + And yet retain his last prerogative, + When I lie still, and sleep out centuries, + With dreams of you and the exceeding love + I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof, + And give God thanks for all, and so find peace, + O Branwen!" + +"Now, were I to get as tipsy as that," Richard enviously thought, +midway in a return to his stolid sheep, "I would simply go to sleep +and wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep +in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, rather, as he hurls himself with +a splurge, I would perform--I wonder, now, what miracle?" + +For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so +earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so untroubled by +forethought: each least desire controlled him, as varying winds sport +with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the +boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was +superb. "And heigho!" said Richard, "I am attestedly a greater fool +than he, but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded." + +The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He declared +himself a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who perfectly +recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker crossed over +into England. + +Richard whistled. "Now my cousin will be quite sure, and now my +anxious cousin will come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux. And now, +by every saint in the calendar! I am as good as King of England." + +He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades of +grass between his fingers while he meditated. Undoubtedly he would +kill this squinting Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience and +even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort of +vermin, but, hand upon heart, Richard was unable to avow any +particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel's death. Thus crudely to +demolish the knave's adroit and year-long schemings savored actually +of grossness. The spider was venomous, and his destruction laudable; +granted, but in crushing him you ruined his web, a miracle of patient +machination, which, despite yourself, compelled hearty admiring and +envy. True, the process would recrown a certain Richard, but then, as +Richard recalled it, being King was rather tedious. Richard was not +now quite sure that he wanted to be King, and, in consequence, be +daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons. "I +shall miss the little huzzy, too," he thought. + +"Heigho!" said Richard, "I shall console myself with purchasing all +beautiful things that can be touched and handled. Life is a flimsy +vapor which passes and is not any more: presently Branwen will be +married to this Gwyllem and will be grown fat and old, and I shall be +remarried to little Dame Isabel, and shall be King of England: and a +trifle later all four of us shall be dead. Pending this deplorable +consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself." + +Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the latter +send the promised implements to Caer Idion. Richard, returning to the +hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, and grovelling at +the threshold. Her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and +through tearless sobs told of what had happened. A half-hour earlier, +while she and Branwen were intent upon their milking, Gwyllem had +ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. Branwen had called him sot, +had bidden him go home. "That I will do," said Gwyllem and suddenly +caught up the girl. Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist +Gwyllem struck her twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away +with Branwen. + +Richard made no observation. In silence he fetched his horse, and did +not pause to saddle it. Quickly he rode to Gwyllem's house, and broke +in the door. Against the farther wall stood lithe Branwen fighting +silently: her breasts and shoulders were naked, where Gwyllem had torn +away her garments. He wheedled, laughed, swore, and hiccoughed, turn +by turn, but she was silent. + +"On guard!" Richard barked. Gwyllem wheeled. His head twisted toward +his left shoulder, and one corner of his mouth convulsively snapped +upward, so that his teeth were bared. There was a knife at Richard's +girdle, which he now unsheathed and flung away. He stepped eagerly +toward the snarling Welshman, and with both hands seized the thick and +hairy throat. What followed was brutal. + +For many minutes Branwen stood with averted face, shuddering. She very +dimly heard the sound of Gwyllem's impotent fists as they beat against +the countenance and body of Richard, and heard the thin splitting +vicious noise of torn cloth as Gwyllem clutched at Richard's tunic and +tore it many times. Richard did not utter any articulate word, and +Gwyllem could not. There was entire silence for a heart-beat, and the +thudding fall of something ponderous and limp. + +"Come!" Richard said then. Through the hut's twilight he came, as +glorious in her eyes as Michael fresh from that primal battle with old +Satan. Tall Richard came to her, his face all blood, and lifted her in +his arms lest Branwen's skirt be soiled by the demolished thing which +sprawled across their path. She never spoke. She could not speak. In +his arms she rode homeward, passive, and content. The horse trod with +deliberation. In the east the young moon was taking heart as the +darkness thickened, and innumerable stars awoke. Branwen noted these +things incuriously. + +Richard was horribly afraid. He it had been, in sober verity it had +been Richard of Bordeaux, that some monstrous force had seized, and +had lifted, and had curtly utilized as its handiest implement. He had +been, and in the moment had known himself to be, the thrown spear as +yet in air, about to kill and quite powerless to refrain from killing. +It was a full three minutes before he had got the better of his +bewilderment and laughed, very softly, lest he disturb this Branwen, +who was so near his heart.... + +Next day she came to him at noon, bearing as always the little basket. +It contained to-day a napkin, some garlic, a ham, and a small soft +cheese; some shalots, salt, nuts, wild apples, lettuce, onions, and +mushrooms. "Behold a feast!" said Richard. He noted then that she +carried also a blue pitcher filled with thin wine, and two cups of +oak-bark. She thanked him for last night's performance, and drank a +mouthful of wine to his health. + +"Decidedly, I shall be sorry to have done with shepherding," said +Richard as he ate. + +Branwen answered, "I too shall be sorry, lord, when the masquerade is +ended." And it seemed to Richard that she sighed, and he was the +happier. + +But he only shrugged. "I am the wisest person unhanged, since I +comprehend my own folly. Yet I grant you that he was wise, too, the +minstrel of old time that sang: 'Over wild lands and tumbling seas +flits Love, at will, and maddens the heart and beguiles the senses of +all whom he attacks, whether his quarry be some monster of the ocean +or some fierce denizen of the forest, or man; for thine, O Love, thine +alone is the power to make playthings of us all.'" + +"Your bard was wise, no doubt, yet it was not in such terms that +Gwyllem sang of this passion. Lord," she demanded shyly, "how would +you sing of love?" + +Richard was replete and contented with the world. He took up the lute, +in full consciousness that his compliance was in large part cenatory. +"In courtesy, thus--" + +Sang Richard: + + "The gods in honor of fair Branwen's worth + Bore gifts to her:--and Jove, Olympus' lord, + Co-rule of Earth and Heaven did accord, + And Hermes brought that lyre he framed at birth, + And Venus her famed girdle (to engirth + A fairer beauty now), and Mars his sword, + And wrinkled Plutus half the secret hoard + And immemorial treasure of mid-earth;-- + + "And while the careful gods were pondering + Which of these goodly gifts the goodliest was, + Young Cupid came among them carolling + And proffered unto her a looking-glass, + Wherein she gazed, and saw the goodliest thing + That Earth had borne, and Heaven might not surpass." + +"Three sounds are rarely heard," said Branwen; "and these are the song +of the birds of Rhiannon, an invitation to feast with a miser, and a +speech of wisdom from the mouth of a Saxon. The song you have made of +courtesy is tinsel. Sing now in verity." + +Richard laughed, though he was sensibly nettled and perhaps a shade +abashed. Presently he sang again. + +Sang Richard: + + "Catullus might have made of words that seek + With rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways, + The perfect song, or in remoter days + Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek; + But I am not as they,--and dare not speak + Of you unworthily, and dare not praise + Perfection with imperfect roundelays, + And desecrate the prize I dare to seek. + + "I do not woo you, then, by fashioning + Vext analogues 'twixt you and Guenevere, + Nor do I come with agile lips that bring + The sugared periods of a sonneteer, + And bring no more--but just with, lips that cling + To yours, in murmuring, 'I love you, dear!'" + +Richard had resolved that Branwen should believe him. Tinsel, indeed! +then here was yet more tinsel which she must receive as gold. He was +very angry, because his vanity was hurt, and the pin-prick spurred him +to a counterfeit so specious that consciously he gloried in it. He was +superb, and she believed him now; there was no questioning the fact, +he saw it plainly, and with exultant cruelty; then curt as lightning +came the knowledge that what Branwen believed was the truth. + +Richard had taken just two strides toward this fair girl. Branwen +stayed motionless, her lips a little parted. The affairs of earth and +heaven were motionless throughout the moment, attendant, it seemed to +him; and to him his whole life was like a wave that trembled now at +full height, and he was aware of a new world all made of beauty and of +pity. Then the lute fell from his spread out hands, and Richard +sighed, and shrugged. + +"There is a task set me," he said--"it is God's work, I think. But I +do not know--I only know that you are very beautiful, Branwen," he +said, and in the name he found a new and piercing loveliness. + +And he said also: "Go! For I have loved many women, and, God help me! +I know that I have but to wheedle you and you, too, will yield! Yonder +is God's work to be done, and within me rages a commonwealth of +devils. Child! child!" he cried, "I am, and ever was, a coward, too +timid to face life without reserve, and always I laughed because I was +afraid to concede that anything is serious!" + +For a long while Richard lay at his ease in the lengthening shadows of +the afternoon. + +"I love her. She thinks me an elderly imbecile with a flat and reedy +singing-voice, and she is perfectly right. She has never even +entertained the notion of loving me. That is well, for to-morrow, or, +it may be, the day after, we must part forever. I would not have the +parting make her sorrowful--or not, at least, too unalterably +sorrowful. It is very well that Branwen does not love me. + +"Why should she? I am almost twice her age, an aging fellow now, +battered and selfish and too indolent to love her--say, as Gwyllem +loved her. I did well to kill that Gwyllem. I am profoundly glad I +killed him, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it; but, after all, the man +loved her in his fashion, and to the uttermost reach of his gross +nature. I love her in a rather more decorous and acceptable fashion, +it is true, but only a half of me loves her. The other half of me +remembers that I am aging, that Caradawc's hut is leaky, that, in +fine, bodily comfort is the single luxury of which one never tires. I +am a very contemptible creature, the empty scabbard of a man, +precisely as Owain said." This settled, Richard whistled to his dog. + +The sun had set. There were no shadows anywhere as Richard and his +sheep went homeward, but on every side the colors of the world were +more sombre. Twice his flock roused a covey of partridges which had +settled for the night. The screech-owl had come out of his hole, and +bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. There was +as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and this was +very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical that he +trudged away from this star. + +Next morning the Welshmen came, and now the trap was ready for Henry +of Lancaster. + +It befell just two days later, about noon, that while Richard idly +talked with Branwen a party of soldiers, some fifteen in number, rode +down the river's bank from the ford above. Their leader paused, then +gave an order. The men drew rein. He cantered forward. + +"God give you joy, fair sir," said Richard, when the cavalier was near +him. + +The new-comer raised his visor. "God give you eternal joy, my fair +cousin," he said, "and very soon. Now send away this woman before that +happens which must happen." + +"Do you plan," said Richard, "to disfigure the stage of our quiet +pastorals with murder?" + +"I design my own preservation," King Henry answered, "for while you +live my rule is insecure." + +"I am sorry," Richard said, "that in part my blood is yours." + +Twice he sounded his horn, and everywhere from rustling underwoods +arose the half-naked Welshmen. Said Richard: "You should read history +more carefully, Cousin Henry. You might have profited, as I have done, +by considering the trick which our grandfather, old Edward Longshanks, +played on the French King at Mezelais. As matters stand, your men are +one to ten. You are impotent. Now, now we balance our accounts! These +persons here will first deal with your followers. Then they will +conduct you to Glyndwyr, who has long desired to deal with you +himself, in privacy, since that Whit-Monday when you murdered his +son." + +The King began, "In mercy, sire--!" and Richard laughed a little, +saying: + +"That virtue is not overabundant among us of Oriander's blood, as we +both know. No, cousin, Fate and Time are merry jesters. See, now, +their latest mockery! You the King of England ride to Sycharth to your +death, and I the tender of sheep depart into London, without any +hindrance, to reign henceforward over these islands. To-morrow you are +worm's-meat, Cousin Henry: to-morrow, as yesterday, I am King of +England." + +Then Branwen gave one sharp, brief cry, and Richard forgot all things +saving this girl, and strode to her. He had caught up her hard, lithe +hands; against his lips he strained them close and very close. + +"Branwen--!" he said. His eyes devoured her. + +"Yes, King," she answered. "O King of England! O fool that I have been +to think you less!" + +In a while Richard said: "Well, I at least am not fool enough to think +of making you a king's whore. So I must choose between a peasant wench +and England. Now I choose, and how gladly! Branwen, help me to be more +than King of England!" + +Low and very low he spoke, and long and very long he gazed at her, and +neither seemed to breathe. Of what she thought I cannot tell you; but +in Richard there was no power of thought, only a great wonderment. +Why, between this woman's love and aught else there was no choice for +him, he knew upon a sudden. Perhaps he would thus worship her always, +he reflected: and then again, perhaps he would be tired of her before +long, just as all other persons seemed to abate in these infatuations: +meanwhile it was certain that he was very happy. No, he could not go +back to the throne and to the little French girl who was in law his +wife. + +And, as if from an immense distance, came to Richard the dogged voice +of Henry of Lancaster. "It is of common report in these islands that I +have a better right to the throne than you. As much was told our +grandfather, King Edward of happy memory, when he educated you and had +you acknowledged heir to the crown, but his love was so strong for his +son the Prince of Wales that nothing could alter his purpose. And +indeed if you had followed even the example of the Black Prince you +might still have been our King; but you have always acted so +contrarily to his admirable precedents as to occasion the rumor to be +generally believed throughout England that you were not, after all, +his son--" + +Richard had turned impatiently. "For the love of Heaven, truncate your +abominable periods. Be off with you. Yonder across that river is the +throne of England, which you appear, through some lunacy, to consider +a desirable possession. Take it, then; for, praise God! the sword has +found its sheath." + +The King answered: "I do not ask you to reconsider your dismissal, +assuredly--Richard," he cried, a little shaken, "I perceive that until +your death you will win contempt and love from every person." + +"Yes, yes, for many years I have been the playmate of the world," said +Richard; "but to-day I wash my hands, and set about another and more +laudable business. I had dreamed certain dreams, indeed--but what had +I to do with all this strife between the devil and the tiger? No, +Glyndwyr will set up Mortimer against you now, and you two must fight +it out. I am no more his tool, and no more your enemy, my +cousin--Henry," he said with quickening voice, "there was a time when +we were boys and played together, and there was no hatred between us, +and I regret that time!" + +"As God lives, I too regret that time!" the bluff, squinting King +replied. He stared at Richard for a while wherein each understood. +"Dear fool," Sire Henry said, "there is no man in all the world but +hates me saving only you." Then the proud King clapped spurs to his +proud horse and rode away. + +More lately Richard dismissed his wondering marauders. Now he and +Branwen were alone and a little troubled, since each was afraid of +that oncoming moment when their eyes must meet. + +So Richard laughed. "Praise God!" he wildly cried, "I am the greatest +fool unhanged!" + +She answered: "I am the happier for your folly. I am the happiest of +God's creatures." + +And Richard meditated. "Faith of a gentleman!" he declared; "but you +are nothing of the sort, and of this fact I happen to be quite +certain." Their lips met then and afterward their eyes; and each of +these ragged peasants was too glad for laughter. + +THE END OF THE EIGHTH NOVEL + + + + +IX + +THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE + + + "J'ay en mon cueur joyeusement + Escript, afin que ne l'oublie, + Ce refrain qu'ayme chierement, + C'estes vous de qui suis amye." + +THE NINTH NOVEL.--JEHANE OF NAVARRE, AFTER A WITHSTANDING OF ALL OTHER +ASSAULTS, IS IN A LONG DUEL, WHEREIN TIME AND COMMON-SENSE ARE +FLOUTED, AND KINGDOMS ARE SHAKEN, DETHRONED AND RECOMPENSED BY AN +ENDURING LUNACY. + + + + +_The Story of the Navarrese_ + + +In the year of grace 1386, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew (thus +Nicolas begins), came to the Spanish coast Messire Peyre de Lesnerac, +in a war-ship sumptuously furnished and manned by many persons of +dignity and wealth, in order suitably to escort the Princess Jehane +into Brittany, where she was to marry the Duke of that province. There +were now rejoicings throughout Navarre, in which the Princess took but +a nominal part and young Antoine Riczi none at all. + +This Antoine Riczi came to Jehane that August twilight in the hedged +garden. "King's daughter!" he sadly greeted her. "Duchess of Brittany! +Countess of Rougemont! Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of +Toufon and Guerche!" + +She answered, "No, my dearest,--I am that Jehane, whose only title is +the Constant Lover." And in the green twilight, lit as yet by one +low-hanging star alone, their lips and desperate young bodies clung, +now, it might be, for the last time. + +Presently the girl spoke. Her soft mouth was lax and tremulous, and +her gray eyes were more brilliant than the star yonder. The boy's arms +were about her, so that neither could be quite unhappy, yet. + +"Friend," said Jehane, "I have no choice. I must wed with this de +Montfort. I think I shall die presently. I have prayed God that I may +die before they bring me to the dotard's bed." + +Young Riczi held her now in an embrace more brutal. "Mine! mine!" he +snarled toward the obscuring heavens. + +"Yet it may be I must live. Friend, the man is very old. Is it wicked +to think of that? For I cannot but think of his great age." + +Then Riczi answered: "My desires--may God forgive me!--have clutched +like starving persons at that sorry sustenance. Friend! ah, fair, +sweet friend! the man is human and must die, but love, we read, is +immortal. I am wishful to kill myself, Jehane. But, oh, Jehane! dare +you to bid me live?" + +"Friend, as you love me, I entreat you to live. Friend, I crave of the +Eternal Father that if I falter in my love for you I may be denied +even the one bleak night of ease which Judas knows." The girl did not +weep; dry-eyed she winged a perfectly sincere prayer toward +incorruptible saints. Riczi was to remember the fact, and through long +years of severance. + +For even now, as Riczi went away from Jehane, a shrill singing-girl +was rehearsing, yonder behind the yew-hedge, the song which she was to +sing at Jehane's bridal feast. + +Sang this joculatrix: + + "When the Morning broke before us + Came the wayward Three astraying, + Chattering in babbling chorus, + (Obloquies of Aether saying),-- + Hoidens that, at pegtop playing, + Flung their Top where yet it whirls + Through the coil of clouds unstaying, + For the Fates are captious girls!" + +And upon the next day de Lesnerac bore young Jehane from Pampeluna and +presently to Saillé, where old Jehan the Brave took her to wife. She +lived as a queen, but she was a woman of infrequent laughter. + +She had Duke Jehan's adoration, and his barons' obeisancy, and his +villagers applauded her passage with stentorian shouts. She passed +interminable days amid bright curious arrasses and trod listlessly +over pavements strewn with flowers. She had fiery-hearted jewels, and +shimmering purple cloths, and much furniture adroitly carven, and many +tapestries of Samarcand and Baldach upon which were embroidered, by +brown fingers that time had turned long ago to Asian dust, innumerable +asps and deer and phoenixes and dragons and all the motley inhabitants +of air and of the thicket; but her memories, too, she had, and for a +dreary while she got no comfort because of them. Then ambition +quickened. + +Young Antoine Riczi likewise nursed his wound as best he might; but at +the end of the second year after Jehane's wedding his uncle, the +Vicomte de Montbrison--a gaunt man, with preoccupied and troubled +eyes--had summoned Antoine into Lyonnois and, after appropriate +salutation, had informed the lad that, as the Vicomte's heir, he was +to marry the Demoiselle Gerberge de Nérac upon the ensuing Michaelmas. + +"That I may not do," said Riczi; and since a chronicler that would +tempt fortune should never stretch the fabric of his wares too thin +(unlike Sir Hengist), I merely tell you these two dwelt together at +Montbrison for a decade: and the Vicomte swore at his nephew and +predicted this or that disastrous destination as often as Antoine +declined to marry the latest of his uncle's candidates,--in whom the +Vicomte was of an astonishing fertility. + +In the year of grace 1401 came the belated news that Duke Jehan had +closed his final day. "You will be leaving me!" the Vicomte growled; +"now, in my decrepitude, you will be leaving me! It is abominable, and +I shall in all likelihood disinherit you this very night." + +"Yet it is necessary," Riczi answered; and, filled with no unhallowed +joy, he rode for Vannes, in Brittany, where the Duchess-Regent held +her court. Dame Jehane had within that fortnight put aside her +mourning. She sat beneath a green canopy, gold-fringed and powdered +with many golden stars, when Riczi came again to her, and the rising +saps of spring were exercising their august and formidable influence. +She sat alone, by prearrangement, to one end of the high-ceiled and +radiant apartment; midway in the hall her lords and divers ladies were +gathered about a saltatrice and a jongleur, who were diverting the +courtiers, to the mincing accompaniment of a lute; but Jehane sat +apart from these, frail, and splendid with many jewels, and a little +sad. + +And Antoine Riczi found no power of speech within him at the first. +Silent he stood before her, still as an effigy, while meltingly the +jongleur sang. + +"Jehane!" said Antoine Riczi, in a while, "have you, then, forgotten, +O Jehane?" + +The resplendent woman had not moved at all. It was as though she were +some tinted and lavishly adorned statue of barbaric heathenry, and he +her postulant; and her large eyes appeared to judge an immeasurable +path, beyond him. Now her lips fluttered somewhat. "I am the Duchess +of Brittany," she said, in the phantom of a voice. "I am the Countess +of Rougemont. The Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of +Toufon and Guerche!... Jehane is dead." + +The man had drawn one audible breath. "You are that Jehane, whose only +title is the Constant Lover!" + +"Friend, the world smirches us," she said half-pleadingly, "I have +tasted too deep of wealth and power. I am drunk with a deadly wine, +and ever I thirst--I thirst--" + +"Jehane, do you remember that May morning in Pampeluna when first I +kissed you, and about us sang many birds? Then as now you wore a gown +of green, Jehane." + +"Friend, I have swayed kingdoms since." + +"Jehane, do you remember that August twilight in Pampeluna when last I +kissed you? Then as now you wore a gown of green, Jehane." + +"But I wore no such chain as this about my neck," the woman answered, +and lifted a huge golden collar garnished with emeralds and sapphires +and with many pearls. "Friend, the chain is heavy, yet I lack the will +to cast it off. I lack the will, Antoine." And now with a sudden shout +of mirth her courtiers applauded the evolutions of the saltatrice. + +"King's daughter!" said Riczi then; "O perilous merchandise! a god +came to me and a sword had pierced his breast. He touched the gold +hilt of it and said, 'Take back your weapon.' I answered, 'I do not +know you.' 'I am Youth' he said; 'take back your weapon.'" + +"It is true," she responded, "it is lamentably true that after +to-night we are as different persons, you and I." + +He said: "Jehane, do you not love me any longer? Remember old years +and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God abhors nothing +so much as unfaith. For your own sake, Jehane,--ah, no, not for your +sake nor for mine, but for the sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, so +you tell me, time has slain!" + +Once or twice she blinked, as if dazzled by a light of intolerable +splendor, but otherwise she stayed rigid. "You have dared, messire, to +confront me with the golden-hearted, clean-eyed Navarrese that once +was I! and I requite." The austere woman rose. "Messire, you swore to +me, long since, eternal service. I claim my right in domnei. +Yonder--gray-bearded, the man in black and silver--is the Earl of +Worcester, the King of England's ambassador, in common with whom the +wealthy dowager of Brittany has signed a certain contract. Go you, +then, with Worcester into England, as my proxy, and in that island, as +my proxy, become the wife of the King of England. Messire, your +audience is done." + +Riczi said this: "Can you hurt me any more, Jehane?--no, even in hell +they cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face +I fling faith like a glove--old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,--and +I will go, Jehane." + +Her heart raged. "Poor, glorious fool!" she thought; "had you but the +wit even now to use me brutally, even now to drag me from this +daïs--!" Instead he went away from her smilingly, treading through the +hall with many affable salutations, while the jongleur sang. + +Sang the jongleur: + + "There is a land those hereabout + Ignore ... Its gates are barred + By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt. + These mercifully guard + That land we seek--the land so fair!-- + And all the fields thereof, + Where daffodils flaunt everywhere + And ouzels chant of love,-- + Lest we attain the Middle-Land, + Whence clouded well-springs rise, + And vipers from a slimy strand + Lift glittering cold eyes. + + "Now, the parable all may understand, + And surely you know the name of the land! + Ah, never a guide or ever a chart + May safely lead you about this land,-- + The Land of the Human Heart!" + +And the following morning, being duly empowered, Antoine Riczi sailed +for England in company with the Earl of Worcester; and upon Saint +Richard's day the next ensuing was, at Eltham, as proxy of Jehane, +married in his own person to the bloat King Henry, the fourth of that +name to reign. This king was that same squinting Harry of Derby +(called also Henry of Lancaster and Bolingbroke) who stole his +cousin's crown, and about whom I have told you in the preceding story. +First Sire Henry placed the ring on Riczi's finger, and then spoke +Antoine Riczi, very loud and clear: + +"I, Antoine Riczi,--in the name of my worshipful lady, Dame Jehane, +the daughter of Messire Charles until lately King of Navarre, the +Duchess of Brittany and the Countess of Rougemont,--do take you, Sire +Henry of Lancaster, King of England and in title of France, and Lord +of Ireland, to be my husband; and thereto I, Antoine Riczi, in the +spirit of my said lady"--the speaker paused here to regard the gross +hulk of masculinity before him, and then smiled very sadly--"in +precisely the spirit of my said lady, I plight you my troth." + +Afterward the King made him presents of some rich garments of scarlet +trimmed with costly furs, and of four silk belts studded with silver +and gold, and with valuable clasps, of which the owner might well be +proud, and Riczi returned to Lyonnois. "Depardieux!" his uncle said; +"so you return alone!" + +"I return as did Prince Troilus," said Riczi--"to boast to you of +liberal entertainment in the tent of Diomede." + +"You are certainly an inveterate fool," the Vicomte considered after a +prolonged appraisal of his face, "since there is always a deal of +other pink-and-white flesh as yet unmortgaged--Boy with my brother's +eyes!" the Vicomte said, in another voice; "I have heard of the task +put upon you: and I would that I were God to punish as is fitting! But +you are welcome home, my lad." + +So these two abode together at Montbrison for a long time, and in the +purlieus of that place hunted and hawked, and made sonnets once in a +while, and read aloud from old romances some five days out of the +seven. The verses of Riczi were in the year of grace 1410 made public, +not without acclamation; and thereafter the stripling Comte de +Charolais, future heir to all Burgundy and a zealous patron of rhyme, +was much at Montbrison, and there conceived for Antoine Riczi such +admiration as was possible to a very young man only. + +In the year of grace 1412 the Vicomte, being then bedridden, died +without any disease and of no malady save the inherencies of his age. +"I entreat of you, my nephew," he said at last, "that always you use +as touchstone the brave deed you did at Eltham. It is necessary for a +gentleman to serve his lady according to her commandments, but you +performed the most absurd and the most cruel task which any woman ever +imposed upon her lover and servitor in domnei. I laugh at you, and I +envy you." Thus he died, about Martinmas. + +Now was Antoine Riczi a powerful baron, but he got no comfort of his +lordship, because that old incendiary, the King of Darkness, daily +added fuel to a smouldering sorrow until grief quickened into vaulting +flames of wrath and of disgust. + +"What now avail my riches?" said the Vicomte. "How much wealthier was +I when I was loved, and was myself an eager lover! I relish no other +pleasures than those of love. I am Love's sot, drunk with a deadly +wine, poor fool, and ever I thirst. All my chattels and my acres +appear to me to be bright vapors, and the more my dominion and my +power increase, the more rancorously does my heart sustain its +bitterness over having been robbed of that fair merchandise which is +the King of England's. To hate her is scant comfort and to despise her +none at all, since it follows that I who am unable to forget the +wanton am even more to be despised than she. I will go into England +and execute what mischief I may against her." + +The new Vicomte de Montbrison set forth for Paris, first to do homage +for his fief, and secondly to be accredited for some plausible mission +into England. But in Paris he got disquieting news. Jehane's husband +was dead, and her stepson Henry, the fifth monarch of that name to +reign in Britain, had invaded France to support preposterous claims +which the man advanced to the crown of that latter kingdom; and as the +earth is altered by the advent of winter, so was the appearance of +France transformed by King Henry's coming, and everywhere the nobles +were stirred up to arms, the castles were closed, the huddled cities +were fortified, and on every side arose entrenchments. + +Thus through this sudden turn was the new Vicomte, the dreamer and the +recluse, caught up by the career of events, as a straw is borne away +by a torrent, when the French lords marched with their vassals to +Harfleur, where they were soundly drubbed by the King of England; as +afterward at Agincourt. + +But in the year of grace 1417 there was a breathing space for +discredited France, and presently the Vicomte de Montbrison was sent +into England, as ambassador. He got in London a fruitless audience of +King Henry, whose demands were such as rendered a renewal of the war +inevitable; and afterward got, in the month of April, about the day of +Palm Sunday, at the Queen's dower-palace of Havering-Bower, an +interview with Queen Jehane.[*] + +[*Nicolas unaccountably omits to mention that during the French +wars she had ruled England as Regent with signal capacity,--although +this fact, as you will see more lately, is the pivot of his +chronicle.] + +A curled pert page took the Vicomte to where she sat alone, by +prearrangement, in a chamber with painted walls, profusely lighted by +the sun, and made pretence to weave a tapestry. When the page had gone +she rose and cast aside the shuttle, and then with a glad and wordless +cry stumbled toward the Vicomte. "Madame and Queen--!" he coldly said. + +His judgment found in her a quite ordinary, frightened woman, aging +now, but still very handsome in these black and shimmering gold robes; +but all his other faculties found her desirable: and with a contained +hatred he had perceived, as if by the terse illumination of a +thunderbolt, that he could never love any woman save the woman whom he +most despised. + +She said: "I had forgotten. I had remembered only you, Antoine, and +Navarre, and the clean-eyed Navarrese--" Now for a little, Jehane +paced the gleaming and sun-drenched apartment as a bright leopardess +might tread her cage. Then she wheeled. "Friend, I think that God +Himself has deigned to avenge you. All misery my reign has been. First +Hotspur, then prim Worcester harried us. Came Glyndwyr afterward to +prick us with his devils' horns. Followed the dreary years that linked +me to the rotting corpse which God's leprosy devoured while the poor +furtive thing yet moved, and endured its share in the punishment of +Manuel's poisonous blood. All misery, Antoine! And now I live beneath +a sword." + +"You have earned no more," he said. "You have earned no more, O +Jehane! whose only title is the Constant Lover!" He spat it out. + +She came uncertainly toward him, as though he had been some not +implacable knave with a bludgeon. "For the King hates me," she +plaintively said, "and I live beneath a sword. The big, fierce-eyed +boy has hated me from the first, for all his lip-courtesy. And now he +lacks the money to pay his troops, and I am the wealthiest person +within his realm. I am a woman and alone in a foreign land. So I must +wait, and wait, and wait, Antoine, till he devises some trumped-up +accusation. Friend, I live as did Saint Damoclus, beneath a sword. +Antoine!" she wailed--for now the pride of Queen Jehane was shattered +utterly--"I am held as a prisoner for all that my chains are of gold." + +"Yet it was not until of late," he observed, "that you disliked the +metal which is the substance of all crowns." + +And now the woman lifted toward him her massive golden necklace, +garnished with emeralds and sapphires and with many pearls, and in the +sunlight the gems were tawdry things. "Friend, the chain is heavy, and +I lack the power to cast it off. The Navarrese we know of wore no such +perilous fetters. Ah, you should have mastered me at Vannes. You could +have done so, very easily. But you only talked--oh, Mary pity us! you +only talked!--and I could find only a servant where I had sore need to +find a master. Let all women pity me!" + +But now came many armed soldiers into the apartment. With spirit Queen +Jehane turned to meet them, and you saw that she was of royal blood, +for now the pride of many emperors blazed and informed her body as +light occupies a lantern. "At last you come for me, messieurs?" + +"Whereas," the leader of these soldiers read from a +parchment--"whereas the King's stepmother, Queen Jehane, is accused by +certain persons of an act of witch-craft that with diabolical and +subtile methods wrought privily to destroy the King, the said Dame +Jehane is by the King committed (all her attendants being removed) to +the custody of Sir John Pelham, who will, at the King's pleasure, +confine her within Pevensey Castle, there to be kept under Sir John's +control: the lands and other properties of the said Dame Jehane being +hereby forfeit to the King, whom God preserve!" + +"Harry of Monmouth!" said Jehane,--"ah, my tall stepson, could I but +come to you, very quietly, with a knife--!" She shrugged her +shoulders, and the gold about her person glittered in the sunlight. +"Witchcraft! ohimé, one never disproves that. Friend, now are you +avenged the more abundantly." + +"Young Riczi is avenged," the Vicomte said; "and I came hither +desiring vengeance." + +She wheeled, a lithe flame (he thought) of splendid fury. "And in the +gutter Jehane dares say what Queen Jehane upon the throne might never +say. Had I reigned all these years as mistress not of England but of +Europe,--had nations wheedled me in the place of barons,--young Riczi +had been none the less avenged. Bah! what do these so-little persons +matter? Take now your petty vengeance! drink deep of it! and know that +always within my heart the Navarrese has lived to shame me! Know that +to-day you despise Jehane, the purchased woman! and that Jehane loves +you! and that the love of proud Jehane creeps like a beaten cur toward +your feet, in the sight of common men! and know that Riczi is +avenged,--you milliner!" + +"Into England I came desiring vengeance--Apples of Sodom! O bitter +fruit!" the Vicomte thought; "O fitting harvest of a fool's assiduous +husbandry!" + +They took her from him: and that afternoon, after long meditation, the +Vicomte de Montbrison entreated a second private audience of King +Henry, and readily obtained it. "Unhardy is unseely," the Vicomte said +at this interview's conclusion. The tale tells that the Vicomte +returned to France and within this realm assembled all such lords as +the abuses of the Queen-Regent Isabeau had more notoriously +dissatisfied. + +The Vicomte had upon occasion an invaluable power of speech; and now, +so great was the devotion of love's dupe, so heartily, so hastily, did +he design to remove the discomforts of Queen Jehane, that now his +eloquence was twin to Belial's insidious talking when that fiend +tempts us to some proud iniquity. + +Then presently these lords had sided with King Henry, as did the +Vicomte de Montbrison, in open field. Next, as luck would have it, +Jehan Sans-Peur was slain at Montereau; and a little later the new +Duke of Burgundy, who loved the Vicomte as he loved no other man, had +shifted his coat, forsaking France. These treacheries brought down the +wavering scales of warfare, suddenly, with an aweful clangor; and now +in France clean-hearted persons spoke of the Vicomte de Montbrison as +they would speak of Ganelon or of Iscariot, and in every market-place +was King Henry proclaimed as governor of the realm. + +Meantime Queen Jehane had been conveyed to prison and lodged therein. +She had the liberty of a tiny garden, high-walled, and of two scantily +furnished chambers. The brace of hard-featured females whom Pelham had +provided for the Queen's attendance might speak to her of nothing that +occurred without the gates of Pevensey, and she saw no other persons +save her confessor, a triple-chinned Dominican; had men already lain +Jehane within the massive and gilded coffin of a queen the outer world +would have made as great a turbulence in her ears. + +But in the year of grace 1422, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew, +and about vespers--for thus it wonderfully fell out,--one of those +grim attendants brought to her the first man, save the fat confessor, +whom the Queen had seen within five years. The proud, frail woman +looked and what she saw was the inhabitant of all her dreams. + +Said Jehane: "This is ill done. Time has avenged you. Be contented +with that knowledge, and, for Heaven's sake, do not endeavor to +moralize over the ruin which Heaven has made, and justly made, of +Queen Jehane, as I perceive you mean to do." She leaned backward in +the chair, very coarsely clad in brown, but knowing that her coloring +was excellent, that she had miraculously preserved her figure, and +that she did not look her real age by a good ten years. Such +reflections beget spiritual comfort even in a prison. + +"Friend," the lean-faced man now said, "I do not come with such +intent, as my mission will readily attest, nor to any ruin, as your +mirror will attest. Instead, madame, I come as the emissary of King +Henry, now dying at Vincennes, and with letters to the lords and +bishops of his council. Dying, the man restores to you your liberty +and your dower-lands, your bed and all your movables, and six gowns of +such fashion and such color as you may elect." + +Then with hurried speech he told her of five years' events: of how +within that period King Henry had conquered France, and had married +the French King's daughter, and had begotten a boy who would presently +inherit the united realms of France and England, since in the supreme +hour of triumph King Henry had been stricken with a mortal sickness, +and now lay dying, or perhaps already dead, at Vincennes; and of how +with his penultimate breath the prostrate conqueror had restored to +Queen Jehane all properties and all honors which she formerly enjoyed. + +"I shall once more be Regent," the woman said when the Vicomte had +made an end; "Antoine, I shall presently be Regent both of France and +of England, since Dame Katharine is but a child." Jehane stood +motionless save for the fine hands that plucked the air. "Mistress of +Europe! absolute mistress, and with an infant ward! now, may God have +mercy on my unfriends, for they will soon perceive great need of it!" + +"Yet was mercy ever the prerogative of royal persons," the Vicomte +suavely said, "and the Navarrese we know of was both royal and very +merciful, O Constant Lover." + +The speech was as a whip-lash. Abruptly suspicion kindled in her +shrewd gray eyes. "Harry of Monmouth feared neither man nor God. It +needed more than any death-bed repentance to frighten him into +restoring my liberty." There was a silence. "You, a Frenchman, come as +the emissary of King Henry who has devastated France! are there no +English lords, then, left alive of his, army?" + +The Vicomte de Montbrison said; "There is at all events no person +better fitted to patch up this dishonorable business of your +captivity, in which no clean man would care to meddle." + +She appraised this, and said with entire irrelevance: "The world has +smirched you, somehow. At last you have done something save consider +how badly I treated you. I praise God, Antoine, for it brings you +nearer." + +He told her all. King Henry, it appeared, had dealt with him at +Havering in perfect frankness. The King needed money for his wars in +France, and failing the seizure of Jehane's enormous wealth, had +exhausted every resource. "And France I mean to have," the King said. +"Now the world knows you enjoy the favor of the Comte de Charolais; so +get me an alliance with Burgundy against my imbecile brother of +France, and Dame Jehane shall repossess her liberty. There you have my +price." + +"And this price I paid," the Vicomte sternly said, "for 'Unhardy is +unseely,' Satan whispered, and I knew that Duke Philippe trusted me. +Yea, all Burgundy I marshalled under your stepson's banner, and for +three years I fought beneath his loathed banner, until at Troyes we +had trapped and slain the last loyal Frenchman. And to-day in France +my lands are confiscate, and there is not an honest Frenchman but +spits upon my name. All infamy I come to you for this last time, +Jehane! as a man already dead I come to you, Jehane, for in France +they thirst to murder me, and England has no further need of +Montbrison, her blunted and her filthy instrument!" + +The woman nodded here. "You have set my thankless service above your +life, above your honor. I find the rhymester glorious and very vile." + +"All vile," he answered; "and outworn! King's daughter, I swore to +you, long since, eternal service. Of love I freely gave you yonder in +Navarre, as yonder at Eltham I crucified my innermost heart for your +delectation. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face I fling +faith like a glove--outworn, it may be, and God knows, unclean! Yet I, +at least, keep faith! Lands and wealth have I given, up for you, O +king's daughter, and life itself have I given you, and lifelong +service have I given you, and all that I had save honor; and at the +last I give you honor, too. Now let the naked fool depart, Jehane, for +he has nothing more to give." + +While the Vicomte de Montbrison spoke thus, she had leaned upon the +sill of an open casement. "Indeed, it had been better," she said, +still with her face averted, and gazing downward at the tree-tops +beneath, "it had been far better had we never met. For this love of +ours has proven a tyrannous and evil lord. I have had everything, and +upon each feast of will and sense the world afforded me this love has +swept down, like a harpy--was it not a harpy you called the bird in +that old poem of yours?--to rob me of delight. And you have had +nothing, for he has pilfered you of life, giving only dreams in +exchange, my poor Antoine, and he has led you at the last to infamy. +We are as God made us, and--I may not understand why He permits this +despotism." + +Thereafter, somewhere below, a peasant sang as he passed supperward +through the green twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging star alone. + +Sang the peasant: + + "King Jesus hung upon the Cross, + 'And have ye sinned?' quo' He,--. + 'Nay, Dysmas, 'tis no honest loss + When Satan cogs the dice ye toss, + And thou shall sup with Me,-- + Sedebis apud angelos, + Quia amavisti!' + + "At Heaven's Gate was Heaven's Queen, + 'And have ye sinned?' quo' She,-- + 'And would I hold him worth a bean + That durst not seek, because unclean, + My cleansing charity?-- + Speak thou that wast the Magdalene, + Quia amavisti!'" + +"It may be that in some sort the jingle answers me!" then said Jehane; +and she began with an odd breathlessness, "Friend, when King Henry +dies--and even now he dies--shall I not as Regent possess such power +as no woman has ever wielded in Europe? can aught prevent this?" + +"It is true," he answered. "You leave this prison to rule over England +again, and over conquered France as well, and naught can prevent it." + +"Unless, friend, I were wedded to a Frenchman. Then would the stern +English lords never permit that I have any finger in the government." +She came to him with conspicuous deliberation and rested her hands +upon his breast. "Friend, I am weary of these tinsel splendors. What +are this England and this France to me, who crave the real kingdom?" + +Her mouth was tremulous and lax, and her gray eyes were more brilliant +than the star yonder. The man's arms were about her, and of the man's +face I cannot tell you. "King's daughter! mistress of half Europe! I +am a beggar, an outcast, as a leper among honorable persons." + +But it was as though he had not spoken. "Friend, it was for this I +have outlived these garish, fevered years, it was this which made me +glad when I was a child and laughed without knowing why. That I might +to-day give up this so-great power for love of you, my all-incapable +and soiled Antoine, was, as I now know, the end to which the Eternal +Father created me. For, look you," she pleaded, "to surrender absolute +dominion over half Europe is a sacrifice. Assure me that it is a +sacrifice, Antoine! O glorious fool, delude me into the belief that I +surrender much in choosing you! Nay, I know it is as nothing beside +what you have given up for me, but it is all I have--it is all I have, +Antoine!" + +He drew a deep and big-lunged breath that seemed to inform his being +with an indomitable vigor; and grief and doubtfulness went quite away +from him. "Love leads us," he said, "and through the sunlight of the +world Love leads us, and through the filth of it Love leads us, but +always in the end, if we but follow without swerving, Love leads +upward. Yet, O God upon the Cross! Thou that in the article of death +didst pardon Dysmas! as what maimed warriors of life, as what bemired +travellers in muddied byways, must we presently come to Thee!" + +"Ah, but we will come hand in hand," she answered; "and He will +comprehend." + +THE END OF THE NINTH NOVEL + + + + +X + +THE STORY OF THE FOX-BRUSH + + + "Dame serez de mon cueur, sans debat, + Entierement, jusques mort me consume. + Laurier souëf qui pour mon droit combat, + Olivier franc, m'ostant toute amertume." + +THE TENTH NOVEL.--KATHARINE OF VALOIS IS LOVED BY A HUNTSMAN, AND +LOVES HIM GREATLY; THEN FINDS HIM, TO HER HORROR, AN IMPOSTOR; AND FOR +A SUFFICIENT REASON CONSENTS TO MARRY QUITE ANOTHER PERSON, NOT ALL +UNWILLINGLY. + + + + +_The Story of the Fox-Brush_ + + +In the year of grace 1417, about Martinmas (thus Nicolas begins), +Queen Isabeau fled with her daughter the Lady Katharine to Chartres. +There the Queen was met by the Duke of Burgundy, and these two laid +their heads together to such good effect that presently they got back +into Paris, and in its public places massacred some three thousand +Armagnacs. That, however, is a matter which touches history; the root +of our concernment is that, when the Queen and the Duke rode off to +attend to this butcher's business, the Lady Katharine was left behind +in the Convent of Saint Scholastica, which then stood upon the +outskirts of Chartres, in the bend of the Eure just south of that +city. She dwelt for a year in this well-ordered place. + +There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint John the +Baptist, the fine August morning that starts the tale. Katharine the +Fair, men called her, with considerable show of reason. She was very +tall, and slim as a rush. Her eyes were large and black, having an +extreme lustre, like the gleam of undried ink,--a lustre at some times +uncanny. Her abundant hair, too, was black, and to-day seemed doubly +sombre by contrast with the gold netting which confined it. Her mouth +was scarlet, all curves, and her complexion was famous for its +brilliancy; only a precisian would have objected that she possessed +the Valois nose, long and thin and somewhat unduly overhanging the +mouth. + +To-day as she came through the orchard, crimson garbed, she paused +with lifted eyebrows. Beyond the orchard wall there was a hodgepodge +of noises, among which a nice ear might distinguish the clatter of +hoofs, a yelping and scurrying, and a contention of soft bodies, and +above all a man's voice commanding the turmoil. She was seventeen, so +she climbed into the crotch of an apple-tree and peered over the wall. + +He was in rusty brown and not unshabby; but her regard swept over this +to his face, and there noted how his eyes shone like blue winter stars +under the tumbled yellow hair, and noted the flash of his big teeth as +he swore between them. He held a dead fox by the brush, which he was +cutting off; two hounds, lank and wolfish, were scaling his huge body +in frantic attempts to get at the carrion. A horse grazed close at +hand. + +So for a heart-beat she saw him. Then he flung the tailless body to +the hounds, and in the act spied two black eyes peeping through the +apple-leaves. He laughed, all mirth to the heels of him. +"Mademoiselle, I fear we have disturbed your devotions. But I had not +heard that it was a Benedictine custom to rehearse aves in tree-tops." +Then, as she leaned forward, both elbows resting more comfortably upon +the wall, and thereby disclosing her slim body among the foliage like +a crimson flower green-calyxed, he said, "You are not a nun--Blood of +God! you are the Princess Katharine!" + +The nuns, her present guardians, would have declared the ensuing +action horrific, for Katharine smiled frankly at him and asked how +could he thus recognise her at one glance. + +He answered slowly: "I have seen your portrait. Hah, your portrait!" +he jeered, head flung back and big teeth glinting in the sunlight. +"There is a painter who merits crucifixion." + +She considered this indicative of a cruel disposition, but also of a +fine taste in the liberal arts. Aloud she stated: + +"You are not a Frenchman, messire. I do not understand how you can +have seen my portrait." + +The man stood for a moment twiddling the fox-brush. "I am a harper, my +Princess. I have visited the courts of many kings, though never that +of France. I perceive I have been woefully unwise." + +This trenched upon insolence--the look of his eyes, indeed, carried it +well past the frontier,--but she found the statement interesting. +Straightway she touched the kernel of those fear-blurred legends +whispered about Dom Manuel's reputed descendants. + +"You have, then, seen the King of England?" + +"Yes, Highness." + +"Is it true that in him, the devil blood of Oriander has gone mad, and +that he eats children--like Agrapard and Angoulaffre of the Broken +Teeth?" + +His gaze widened. "I have heard a deal of scandal concerning the man. +But certainly I never heard that." + +Katharine settled back, luxuriously, in the crotch of the apple-tree. +"Tell me about him." + +Composedly he sat down upon the grass and began to acquaint her with +his knowledge and opinions concerning Henry, the fifth of that name to +reign in England, and the son of that squinting Harry of Derby about +whom I have told you so much before. + +Katharine punctuated the harper's discourse with eager questionings, +which are not absolutely to our purpose. In the main, this harper +thought the man now buffeting France a just king, and he had heard, +when the crown was laid aside, Sire Henry was sufficiently jovial, and +even prankish. The harper educed anecdotes. He considered that the +King would manifestly take Rouen, which the insatiable man was now +besieging. Was the King in treaty for the hand of the Infanta of +Aragon? Yes, he undoubtedly was. + +Katharine sighed her pity for this ill-starred woman. "And now tell me +about yourself." + +He was, it appeared, Alain Maquedonnieux, a harper by vocation, and by +birth a native of Ireland. Beyond the fact that it was a savage +kingdom adjoining Cataia, Katharine knew nothing of Ireland. The +harper assured her that in this she was misinformed, since the kings +of England claimed Ireland as an appanage, though the Irish themselves +were of two minds as to the justice of these pretensions; all in all, +he considered that Ireland belonged to Saint Patrick, and that the +holy man had never accredited a vicar. + +"Doubtless, by the advice of God," Alain said: "for I have read in +Master Roger de Wendover's Chronicles of how at the dread day of +judgment all the Irish are to muster before the high and pious +Patrick, as their liege lord and father in the spirit, and by him be +conducted into the presence of God; and of how, by virtue of Saint +Patrick's request, all the Irish will die seven years to an hour +before the second coming of Christ, in order to give the blessed saint +sufficient time to marshal his company, which is considerable." +Katharine admitted the convenience of this arrangement, as well as the +neglect of her education. Alain gazed up at her for a long while, as +if in reflection, and presently said: "Doubtless the Lady Heleine of +Argos also was thus starry-eyed and found in books less diverting +reading than in the faces of men." It flooded Katharine's cheeks with +a livelier hue, but did not vex her irretrievably; if she chose to +read this man's face, the meaning was plain enough. + +I give you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is +trivial. But it was a day when one entered love's wardship with a +plunge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by bit, as +though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a long while, +with laughter mutually provoked and shared, with divers eloquent and +dangerous pauses. The harper squatted upon the ground, the Princess +leaned over the wall; but to all intent they sat together upon the +loftiest turret of Paradise, and it was a full two hours before +Katharine hinted at departure. + +Alain rose, approaching the wall. "To-morrow I ride for Milan to take +service with Duke Filippo. I had broken my journey these three days +past at Châteauneuf yonder, where this fox has been harrying my host's +chickens. To-day I went out to slay him, and he led me, his murderer, +to the fairest lady earth may boast. Do you not think that, in +returning good for evil, this fox was a true Christian, my Princess?" + +Katharine said: "I lament his destruction. Farewell, Messire Alain! +And since chance brought you hither--" + +"Destiny brought me hither," Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his +eyes. "Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she +continue so." But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be, +Alain shook his tawny head. "Presently you shall know, Highness, but +not now. I return to Châteauneuf on certain necessary businesses; +to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti's livery. +Farewell!" He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the +hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus +Tristran de Léonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, +thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. +She went to her apartments, singing an inane song about the amorous +and joyful time of spring when everything and everybody is happy,-- + + "El tems amoreus plein de joie, + El tems où tote riens s'esgaie,--" + +and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were born every day, +she reflected, such hosts of women-children, who were not princesses, +and therefore compelled to marry detestable kings. + +Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a +cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant +trees. In the slaty twilight the garden's verdure was lustreless, the +grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed +like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere +a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, +two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers +swaddled by ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional +scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest +as much; and presently came a singing, less musical than that of many +a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart +in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely. + +Sang Alain: + + "O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, + Be not too obdurate to us who pray + That this our transient grant of youth be spent + In laughter as befits a holiday, + From which the evening summons us away, + From which to-morrow wakens us to strife + And toil and grief and wisdom,--and to-day + Grudge us not life! + + "O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, + Why need our elders trouble us at play? + We know that very soon we shall repent + The idle follies of our holiday, + And being old, shall be as wise as they: + But now we are not wise, and lute and fife + Plead sweetlier than axioms,--so to-day + Grudge us not life! + + "O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, + You have given us youth--and must we cast away + The cup undrained and our one coin unspent + Because our elders' beards and hearts are gray? + They have forgotten that if we delay + Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife + Or cord or fever flouts the prayer we pray-- + 'Grudge us not life!' + + "Madam, recall that in the sun we play + But for an hour, then have the worm for wife, + The tomb for habitation--and to-day + Grudge us not life!" + +Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the crotch +of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but the +Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort. + +"You came!" this harper said, transfigured; and then again, "You +came!" + +She breathed, "Yes." + +So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found +adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man's mind not +a grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to leer at his +unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man and woman, +meeting, knew no sweeter terror. + +It was by the minstrel that a familiar earth and the grating speech of +earth were earlier regained. "The affair is of the suddenest," Alain +observed, and he now swung the lute behind him. He indicated no +intention of touching her, though he might easily have done so as he +sat there exalted by the height of his horse. "A meteor arrives with +more prelude. But Love is an arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has +seized it, and accordingly I would now brave hell to come to you, and +finding you there, would esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already +made my prayer to Destiny that she concede me love. Now of God, our +Father and Master, I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For, +God willing, I shall come to you again, even if in order to do this I +have to split the world like a rotten orange." + +"Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!" Katharine said. "You are a +minstrel and I am a king's daughter." + +"Is it madness? Why, then, I think sane persons are to be +commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this some design. Across half +the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Hey, God's face!" Alain swore; +"the foxes which Samson, that old sinewy captain, loosed among the +corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as this fox has set +afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and olives spoilt, a bushel +or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin. +There will be martial argument shortly if you bid me come again." + +"I bid you come," said Katharine; and after they had stared at each +other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It was through a dank +and tear-flawed world that she stumbled conventward, while out of the +east the sun came bathed in mists, a watery sun no brighter than a +silver coin. + +And for a month the world seemed no less dreary, but about Michaelmas +the Queen-Regent sent for her. At the Hôtel de Saint-Pol matters were +much the same. Katharine found her mother in foul-mouthed rage over +the failure of a third attempt to poison the Dauphin of Vienne, as +Queen Isabeau had previously poisoned her two elder sons; I might here +trace out a curious similitude between the Valois and that +dragon-spawned race which Jason very anciently slew at Colchis, since +the world was never at peace so long as any two of them existed. But +King Charles greeted his daughter with ampler deference, esteeming her +to be the wife of Presbyter John, the tyrant of Aethiopia. However, +ingenuity had just suggested card-playing for King Charles' amusement, +and he paid little attention nowadays to any one save his opponent at +this new game. + +So the French King chirped his senile jests over the card-table, while +the King of England was besieging the French city of Rouen sedulously +and without mercy. In late autumn an armament from Ireland joined +Henry's forces. The Irish fought naked, it was said, with long knives. +Katharine heard discreditable tales of these Irish, and reflected how +gross are the exaggerations of rumor. + +In the year of grace 1419, in January, the burgesses of Rouen, having +consumed their horses, and finding frogs and rats unpalatable, yielded +the town. It was the Queen-Regent who brought the news to Katharine. + +"God is asleep," the Queen said; "and while He nods, the Butcher of +Agincourt has stolen our good city of Rouen." She sat down and +breathed heavily. "Never was any poor woman so pestered as I! The +puddings to-day were quite uneatable, as you saw for yourself, and on +Sunday the Englishman entered Rouen in great splendor, attended by his +chief nobles; but the Butcher rode alone, and before him went a page +carrying a fox-brush on the point of his lance. I put it to you, is +that the contrivance of a sane man? Euh! euh!" Dame Isabeau squealed +on a sudden; "you are bruising me." + +Katharine had gripped her by the shoulder. "The King of England--a +tall, fair man? with big teeth? a tiny wen upon his neck--here--and +with his left cheek scarred? with blue eyes, very bright, bright as +tapers?" She poured out her questions in a torrent, and awaited the +answer, seeming not to breathe at all. + +"I believe so," the Queen said, "and they say, too, that he has the +damned squint of old Manuel the Redeemer." + +"O God!" said Katharine. + +"Ay, our only hope now. And may God show him no more mercy than has +this misbegotten English butcher shown us!" the good lady desired, +with fervor. "The hog, having won our Normandy, is now advancing on +Paris itself. He repudiated the Aragonish alliance last August; and +until last August he was content with Normandy, they tell us, but now +he swears to win all France. The man is a madman, and Scythian +Tamburlaine was more lenient. And I do not believe that in all France +there is a cook who understands his business." She went away +whimpering, and proceeded to get tipsy. + +The Princess remained quite still, as Dame Isabeau had left her; you +may see a hare crouch so at sight of the hounds. Finally the girl +spoke aloud. "Until last August!" Katharine said. "Until last August! +_Poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin, now that you bid me come +to you again_. And I bade this devil's grandson come to me, as my +lover!" Presently she went into her oratory and began to pray. + +In the midst of her invocation she wailed: "Fool, fool! How could I +have thought him less than a king!" + +You are to imagine her breast thus adrum with remorse and hatred of +herself, the while that town by town fell before the invader like +card-houses. Every rumor of defeat--and the news of some fresh defeat +came daily--was her arraignment; impotently she cowered at God's +knees, knowing herself a murderess, whose infamy was still afoot, +outpacing her prayers, whose victims were battalions. Tarpeia and +Pisidicé and Rahab were her sisters; she hungered in her abasement for +Judith's nobler guilt. + +In May he came to her. A truce was patched up, and French and English +met amicably in a great plain near Meulan. A square space was staked +out and on three sides boarded in, the fourth side being the river +Seine. This enclosure the Queen-Regent, Jehan of Burgundy, and +Katharine entered from the French side. Simultaneously the English +King appeared, accompanied by his brothers the Dukes of Clarence and +Gloucester, and followed by the Earl of Warwick. Katharine raised her +eyes with I know not what lingering hope; but it was he, a young Zeus +now, triumphant and uneager. In his helmet in place of a plume he wore +a fox-brush spangled with jewels. + +These six entered the tent pitched for the conference--the hanging of +blue velvet embroidered with fleurs-de-lys of gold blurred before the +girl's eyes,--and there the Earl of Warwick embarked upon a sea of +rhetoric. His French was indifferent, his periods were interminable, +and his demands exorbitant; in brief, the King of England wanted +Katharine and most of France, with a reversion at the French King's +death of the entire kingdom. Meanwhile Sire Henry sat in silence, his +eyes glowing. + +"I have come," he said, under cover of Warwick's oratory--"I have come +again, my lady." + +Katharine's gaze flickered over him. "Liar!" she said, very softly. +"Has God no thunders remaining in His armory that this vile thief +still goes unblasted? Would you steal love as well as kingdoms?" + +His ruddy face was now white. "I love you, Katharine." + +"Yes," she answered, "for I am your pretext. I can well believe, +messire, that you love your pretext for theft and murder." + +Neither spoke after this, and presently the Earl of Warwick having +come to his peroration, the matter was adjourned till the next day. +The party separated. It was not long before Katharine had informed her +mother that, God willing, she would never again look upon the King of +England's face uncoffined. Isabeau found her a madwoman. The girl +swept opposition before her with gusts of demoniacal fury, wept, +shrieked, tore at her hair, and eventually fell into a sort of +epileptic seizure; between rage and terror she became a horrid, +frenzied beast. I do not dwell upon this, for it is not a condition in +which the comeliest maid shows to advantage. But, for the Valois, +insanity always lurked at the next corner, and they knew it; to save +the girl's reason the Queen was forced to break off all discussion of +the match. Accordingly, the Duke of Burgundy went next day to the +conference alone. Jehan began with "ifs," and over these flimsy +barriers Henry, already fretted by Katharine's scorn, presently +vaulted to a towering fury. + +"Fair cousin," the King said, after a deal of vehement bickering, "we +wish you to know that we will have the daughter of your King, and that +we will drive both him and you out of this kingdom." + +The Duke answered, not without spirit, "Sire, you are pleased to say +so; but before you have succeeded in ousting my lord and me from this +realm, I am of the opinion that you will be very heartily tired." + +At this the King turned on his heel; over his shoulder he flung: "I am +tireless; also, I am agile as a fox in the pursuit of my desires. Say +that to your Princess." Then he went away in a rage. + +It had seemed an approvable business to win love incognito, according +to the example of many ancient emperors, but in practice he had +tripped over an ugly outgrowth from the legendary custom. The girl +hated him, there was no doubt about it; and it was equally certain he +loved her. Particularly caustic was the reflection that a twitch of +his finger would get him Katharine as his wife, for before long the +Queen-Regent was again attempting secret negotiations to bring this +about. Yes, he could get the girl's body by a couple of pen-strokes, +and had he been older that might have contented him: as it was, what +he wanted was to rouse the look her eyes had borne in Chartres orchard +that tranquil morning, and this one could not readily secure by +fiddling with seals and parchments. You see his position: this +high-spirited young man now loved the Princess too utterly to take her +on lip-consent, and this marriage was now his one possible excuse for +ceasing from victorious warfare. So he blustered, and the fighting +recommenced; and he slew in a despairing rage, knowing that by every +movement of his arm he became to her so much the more detestable. + +Then the Vicomte de Montbrison, as you have heard, betrayed France, +and King Henry began to strip the French realm of provinces as you +peel the layers from an onion. By the May of the year of grace 1420 +France was, and knew herself to be, not beaten but demolished. Only a +fag-end of the French army lay entrenched at Troyes, where King +Charles and his court awaited Henry's decision as to the morrow's +action. If he chose to destroy them root and branch, he could; and +they knew such mercy as was in the man to be quite untarnished by +previous using. Sire Henry drew up a small force before the city and +made no overtures toward either peace or throat-cutting. + +This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday after +Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in his +apartments at the Hôtel de Ville. The King was pursing his lips over +an alternative play, when somebody began singing below in the +courtyard. + +Sang the voice: + + "I can find no meaning in life, + That have weighed the world,--and it was + Abundant with folly, and rife + With sorrows brittle as glass, + And with joys that flicker and pass + Like dreams through a fevered head; + And like the dripping of rain + In gardens naked and dead + Is the obdurate thin refrain + Of our youth which is presently dead. + + "And she whom alone I have loved + Looks ever with loathing on me, + As one she hath seen disproved + And stained with such smirches as be + Not ever cleansed utterly; + And is both to remember the days + When Destiny fixed her name + As the theme and the goal of my praise; + And my love engenders shame, + And I stain what I strive for and praise. + + "O love, most perfect of all, + Just to have known you is well! + And it heartens me now to recall + That just to have known you is well, + And naught else is desirable + Save only to do as you willed + And to love you my whole life long;-- + But this heart in me is filled + With hunger cruel and strong, + And with hunger unfulfilled. + + "Fond heart, though thy hunger be + As a flame that wanders unstilled, + There is none more perfect than she!" + +Malise now came into the room, and, without speaking, laid a fox-brush +before the Princess. + +Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered table. +"So you are in his pay, Malise? I am sorry. But you know that your +employer is master here. Who am I to forbid him entrance?" The girl +went away silently, abashed, and the Princess sat quite still, tapping +the brush against the table. + +"They do not want me to sign another treaty, do they?" her father +asked timidly. "It appears to me they are always signing treaties, and +I cannot see that any good comes of it. And I would have won the last +game, Katharine, if Malise had not interrupted us. You know I would +have won." + +"Yes, Father, you would have won. Oh, he must not see you!" Katharine +cried, a great tide of love mounting in her breast, the love that +draws a mother fiercely to shield her backward boy. "Father, will you +not go into your chamber? I have a new book for you, Father--all +pictures, dear. Come--" She was coaxing him when Sire Henry appeared +in the doorway. + +"But I do not wish to look at pictures," Charles said, peevishly; "I +wish to play cards. You are an ungrateful daughter, Katharine. You are +never willing to amuse me." He sat down with a whimper and began to +pluck at his dribbling lips. + +Katharine had moved a little toward the door. Her face was white. "Now +welcome, sire!" she said. "Welcome, O great conqueror, who in your +hour of triumph can find no nobler recreation than to shame a maid +with her past folly! It was valorously done, sire. See, Father; here +is the King of England come to observe how low we sit that yesterday +were lords of France." + +"The King of England!" echoed Charles, and he rose now to his feet. "I +thought we were at war with him. But my memory is treacherous. You +perceive, brother of England, I am planning a new mouse-trap, and my +mind is somewhat preëmpted. I recall now that you are in treaty for my +daughter's hand. Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but +I suppose--" He paused, as if to regard and hear some invisible +counsellor, and then briskly resumed: "Yes, I suppose policy demands +that she should marry you. We trammelled kings can never go free of +policy--ey, my compère of England? No; it was through policy I wedded +her mother; and we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in +your ear, son-in-law: Madame Isabeau's soul formerly inhabited a sow, +as Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the +influence of the moon drew it hither." + +Henry did not say anything. Steadily his calm blue eyes appraised Dame +Katharine. And King Charles went on, very knowingly: + +"Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, though by +ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy again, +son-in-law: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the great +hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten flies-- +very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of parricides,--and +afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the Mediterranean hath its +sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at cards. Cheats, sir!--and +I her father!" The incessant peering, the stealthy cunning with which +Charles whispered this, the confidence with which he clung to his +destroyer's hand, was that of a conspiring child. + + +"Come, Father," Katharine said. "Come away to bed, dear." + +"Hideous basilisk!" he spat at her; "dare you rebel against me? Am I +not King of France, and is it not blasphemy for a King of France to be +mocked? Frail moths that flutter about my splendor," he shrieked, in +an unheralded frenzy, "beware of me, beware! for I am omnipotent! I am +King of France, Heaven's regent. At my command the winds go about the +earth, and nightly the stars are kindled for my recreation. Perhaps I +am mightier than God, but I do not remember now. The reason is written +down and lies somewhere under a bench. Now I sail for England. Eia! +eia! I go to ravage England, terrible and merciless. But I must have +my mouse-traps, Goodman Devil, for in England the cats of the +middle-sea wait unfed." He went out of the room, giggling, and in the +corridor began to sing: + + "A hundred thousand times good-bye! + I go to seek the Evangelist, + For here all persons cheat and lie ..." + +All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon +Katharine. Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the +boulder, and they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But +she turned and met his gaze squarely. She noted now for the first time +how oddly his left eyebrow drooped. Katharine said: "And that is the +king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable conquest to overcome +so wise a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? There are cut-throats +in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would scorn the action. Now shall +I fetch my mother, sire? the commander of that great army which you +overcame? As the hour is late, she is by this time tipsy, but she will +come. Or perhaps she is with some paid lover, but if this conqueror, +this second Alexander, wills it she will come. O God!" the girl +wailed, on a sudden; "O just and all-seeing God! are not we of Valois +so contemptible that in conquering us it is the victor who is shamed?" + +"Flower of the marsh!" he said, and his voice pulsed with tender +cadences--"flower of the marsh! it is not the King of England who now +comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry Plantagenet God has led +hither by the hand to punish the sins of this realm, and to reign in +it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet will cast out the Valois from +the throne they have defiled, as Darius cast out Belshazzar, for such +is the desire and the intent of God. But to you comes Alain the +harper, not as a conqueror but as a suppliant,--Alain who has loved +you whole-heartedly these two years past, and who now kneels before +you entreating grace." + +Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he had +fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood that he +believed France to be his by Divine favor and Heaven's peculiar +intervention. He thought himself God's factor, not His rebel. He was +rather stupid, this huge, handsome, squinting boy; and as she +comprehended this, her hand went to his shoulder, half maternally. + +"It is nobly done, sire. But I understand. You must marry me in order +to uphold your claim to France. You sell, and I with my body purchase, +peace for France. There is no need of a lover's posture when hucksters +meet." + +"So changed!" he said, and he was silent for an interval, still +kneeling. Then he began: "You force me to point out that I do not need +any pretext for holding France. France lies before me prostrate. By +God's singular grace I reign in this fair kingdom, mine by right of +conquest, and an alliance with the house of Valois will neither make +nor mar me." She was unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact. +"But I love you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you +not understand that there can be between us no question of expediency? +Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know of; +now in Troyes they meet again,--not as princess and king, but as man +and maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your heart, I think. +And now in all the world there is one thing I covet--to gain for the +poor king some portion of that love you would have squandered on the +harper." His hand closed upon her hand. + +At his touch the girl's composure vanished. "My lord, you woo too +timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced advocates. I am +daughter to the King of France, and next to my soul's salvation I +esteem the welfare of France. Can I, then, fail to love the King of +England, who chooses the blood of my countrymen as a judicious garb to +come a-wooing in? How else, since you have ravaged my native land, +since you have besmirched the name I bear, since yonder afield every +wound in my dead and yet unburied Frenchmen is to me a mouth which +shrieks your infamy?" + +He rose. "And yet, for all that, you love me." + +She could not at the first effort find words with which to answer him, +but presently she said, quite simply, "To see you lying in your coffin +I would willingly give up my hope of heaven, for heaven can afford no +sight more desirable." + +"You loved Alain." + +"I loved the husk of a man. You can never comprehend how utterly I +loved him." + +"You are stubborn. I shall have trouble with you. But this notion of +yours is plainly a mistaken notion. That you love me is indisputable, +and this I propose to demonstrate. You will observe that I am quite +unarmed except for this dagger, which I now throw out of the +window--" with the word it jangled in the courtyard below. "I am in +Troyes alone among some thousand Frenchmen, any one of whom would +willingly give his life for the privilege of taking mine. You have but +to sound the gong beside you, and in a few moments I shall be a dead +man. Strike, then! For with me dies the English power in France. +Strike, Katharine! If you see in me but the King of England." + +She was rigid; and his heart leapt when he saw it was because of +terror. + +"You came alone! You dared!" + +He answered, with a wonderful smile, "Proud spirit! How else might I +conquer you?" + +"You have not conquered!" Katharine lifted the baton beside the gong, +poising it. God had granted her prayer--to save France. Now the past +and the ignominy of the past might be merged in Judith's nobler guilt. +But I must tell you that in the supreme hour, Destiny at her beck, her +main desire was to slap the man for his childishness. Oh, he had no +right thus to besot himself with adoration! This dejection at her feet +of his high destiny awed her, and pricked her, too, with her inability +to understand him. Angrily she flung away the baton. "Go! Ah, go!" she +cried, like one strangling. "There has been enough of bloodshed, and I +must spare you, loathing you as I do, for I cannot with my own hand +murder you." + +But the King was a kindly tyrant, crushing independence from his +associates as lesser folk squeeze water from a sponge. "I cannot go +thus. Acknowledge me to be Alain, the man you love, or else strike +upon the gong." + +"You are cruel!" she wailed, in her torture. + +"Yes, I am cruel." + +Katharine raised straining arms above her head in a hard gesture of +despair. "You have conquered. You know that I love you. Oh, if I could +find words to voice my shame, to shriek it in your face, I could +better endure it! For I love you. With all my body and heart and soul +I love you. Mine is the agony, for I love you! and presently I shall +stand quite still and see little Frenchmen scramble about you as +hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill you. And after that I +shall live! I preserve France, but after I have slain you, Henry, I +must live. Mine is the agony, the enduring agony." She stayed +motionless for an interval. "God, God! Let me not fail!" Katharine +breathed; and then: "O fair sweet friend, I am about to commit a vile +action, but it is for the sake of the France that I love next to God. +As Judith gave her body to Holofernes, I crucify my heart for the +preservation of France." Very calmly she struck upon the gong. + +If she could have found any reproach in his eyes during the ensuing +silence, she could have borne it; but there was only love. And with +all that, he smiled like one who knew the upshot of this matter. + +A man-at-arms came into the room. "Germain--" said Katharine, and then +again, "Germain--" She gave a swallowing motion and was silent. When +she spoke it was with crisp distinctness. "Germain, fetch a harp. +Messire Alain here is about to play for me." + +At the man's departure she said: "I am very pitiably weak. Need you +have dragged my soul, too, in the dust? God heard my prayer, and you +have forced me to deny His favor, as Peter denied Christ. My dear, be +very kind to me, for I come to you naked of honor." She fell at the +King's feet, embracing his knees. "My master, be very kind to me, for +there remains only your love." + +He raised her to his breast. "Love is enough," he said. + +She was conscious, as he held her thus, of the chain mail under his +jerkin. He had come armed; he had his soldiers no doubt in the +corridor; he had tricked her, it might be from the first. But that did +not matter now. + +"Love is enough," she told her master docilely. + +Next day the English entered Troyes and in the cathedral church these +two were betrothed. Henry was there magnificent in a curious suit of +burnished armor; in place of his helmet-plume he wore a fox-brush +ornamented with jewels, which unusual ornament afforded great matter +of remark among the busybodies of both armies. + +THE END OF THE TENTH NOVEL + + + + +THE EPILOGUE + + + "Et je fais sçavoir à tous lecteurs de ce Livret que les choses que + je dis avoir vues et sues sont enregistrés icy, afin que vous pouviez + les regarder selon vostre bon sens, s'il vous plaist." + +HERE IS APPENDED THE EPILOGUE THAT MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN AFFIXED TO +THE BOOK WHICH HE HAD MADE ACCORDING TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY; AND +WHICH (IN CONSEQUENCE) HE DARED NOT APPRAISE. + + + + +_The Epilogue_ + + +_A Son Livret_ + + +Intrepidly depart, my little book, into the presence of that most +illustrious lady who bade me compile you. Bow down before her +judgment. And if her sentence be that of a fiery death, I counsel you +not to grieve at what cannot be avoided. + +But, if by any miracle that glorious, strong fortress of the weak +consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pass thence, my little +book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live out your +little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your appointed +season perish and be forgotten. Thus may you share your betters' fate, +and be at one with those famed comedies of Greek Menander and all the +poignant songs of Sappho. _Et quid Pandoniae_--thus, little book, I +charge you to poultice your more-merited oblivion--_quid Pandoniae +restat nisi nomen Athenae?_ + +Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with those who +will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and protest +assertions which are only fables. To these you will reply that I, your +maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of the most high and +noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at and about her house of +Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person with Dame Katharine, then +happily remarried to a private gentleman of Wales; and so obtained the +matter of the ninth story and of the tenth authentically. You will say +also that Messire de Montbrison afforded me the main matter of the +sixth and seventh stories, and many of the songs which this book +contains; and that, moreover, I once journeyed to Caer Idion and +talked for some two hours with Richard Holland (whom I found a very +old and garrulous and cheery person), and got of him the matter of the +eighth tale in this dizain, together with much information as concerns +the sixth and the seventh. And you will add that the matter of the +fourth and fifth tales was in every detail related to me by my most +illustrious mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this +information from her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady, +and one that was in youth Dame Philippa's most dear associate. For the +rest you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book +to be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say) +even in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd +times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always +endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me. + +I have pieced together these tales about the women who intermarried, +not very enviably, with the demon-tainted blood of Edward Longshanks, +because it seems to me that these tales, when they are rightly +considered, compose the initial portion of a troubling history. +Whether (as some declare) the taint came from Manuel of Poictesme, or +whether (as yet others say) this poison was inherited from the demon +wife whom Foulques Plantagenet fetched out of hell, the blood in these +men was not all human. These men might not tread equally with human +beings: their wives suffered therefor, just as they that had inherited +this blood suffered therefor, and all England suffered therefor. And +the upshot of it I have narrated elsewhere, in the book called and +entitled _The Red Cuckold_, which composes the final portion of this +history, and tells of the last spilling and of the extinction of this +blood. + +Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people who +will jeer at you, and will say that you and I have cheated them of +your purchase-money. To these you will reply, with Plutarch, _Non mi +aurum posco, nec mi pretium_. Secondly you will say that, of +necessity, the tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; and that +he cannot undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering Orion suitably +when the resources of his shop amount to only a few yards of cambric. +Indeed had I the power to make you better, my little book, I would +have exercised that power to the utmost. A good conscience is a +continual feast, and I summon high Heaven to be my witness that had I +been Homer you had awed the world, another Iliad. I lament your +inability to do this, as heartily as any person living; yet Heaven +willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven these aforementioned +cavillers should rightfully complain. + +So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless indeed +you should elect to answer them by repetition of this song which I now +make for you, my little book, at your departure from me. And the song +runs in this fashion: + + Depart, depart, my book! and live and die + Dependent on the idle fantasy + Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I. + + For I am fond, and willingly mistake + My book to be the book I meant to make, + And cannot judge you, for that phantom's sake. + + Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill + In making you, that never spared the will + To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill. + + Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I + Had wrought in you some wizardry so high + That no man but had listened ... + + They pass by, + And shrug--as we, who know that unto us + It has been granted never to fare thus, + And never to be strong and glorious. + + Is it denied me to perpetuate + What so much loving labor did create?-- + I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate, + And acquiesce, not all disconsolate. + + For I have got such recompense + Of that high-hearted excellence + Which the contented craftsman knows, + Alone, that to loved labor goes, + And daily does the work he chose, + And counts all else impertinence! + +EXPLICIT DECAS REGINARUM + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11752 *** diff --git a/11752-h/11752-h.htm b/11752-h/11752-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec8b2dc --- /dev/null +++ b/11752-h/11752-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7967 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xhtml1-20000126/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Chivalry, by James Branch Cabell, et al</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[*/ + +body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; + text-align: justify; text-decoration: none;} +h1, {text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em;} +h2, h3 {text-align: center; margin-bottom: 3em;} +hr {text-align: center; width: 50%;} +hr.full {width: 100%; size:5; noshade; } +a {text-decoration: none; font-style: normal;} + .poem {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 20%; + text-align: left; font-style: italic; font-size: 105%;} + .poem p {margin: 0em 0em 0em 0em; padding-left: 1em;} + .poem p.stanza {margin: 1em 0em 0em 0em} + .poem p.i2 {margin: 0em 0em 0em 1em;} + .poem p.i4 {margin: 0em 0em 0em 2em;} + .poem p.i6 {margin: 0em 0em 0em 3em;} + .poem p.il {margin: 0em 0em 0em 10em;} + .poem p.stanzai2 {margin: 1em 0em 0em 1em;} + .poem p.stanzai4 {margin: 1em 0em 0em 2em;} + .poem p.stanzai6 {margin: 1em 0em 0em 3em;} + .poem p.stanzail {margin: 1em 0em 0em 10em;} + .chapter {margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; + font-size: 170%; font-weight: 500; line-height: 100%; + text-align: center; border-top: 4em; + border-bottom: 2em; + border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; + padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;} +.epigram {margin-left: 24%; margin-right: 24%; + font-style: italic; font-size: 115%; + text-align: left; + border-top-style: solid; + border-top-width: 1px; + padding-bottom: 1.5em; + padding-top: 2em;} +.epigram p {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em;} +.epigram p.in {margin: 0; padding-left: 4em;} +.synopsis {margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; + font-size: 110%; line-height: 150%; + text-align: justify; margin-top: 1em; + border-bottom-style: solid; + border-bottom-width: 1px; + border-top-style: solid; + border-top-width: 1px; + padding-bottom: 3em; + padding-top: 3em;} +.salutation {text-align: center; font-style: italic; + font-size: 120%;} + + .subhead {font-style: italic; font-size: 175%; + text-align: left; margin-bottom: 1em; + padding-top: 1em;} + .ded {margin-left: 25%; margin-right: 25%; + margin-top: 2em; font-size: 135%; + text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2em; + border-top-style: solid; + border-top-width: 1px; + padding-top: 3em;} + .ded2 {margin-left: 30%; margin-right: 30%; + margin-top: 2em; font-size: 100%; + text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2em;} + .table {margin-top: 0em; margin-bottom: 0em;} + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + pre {font-size: 9pt;} + + + + /*]]>*/ +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11752 ***</div> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Chivalry, by James Branch Cabell, et al</h1> +<br /> +<br /> +<center><b>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Joris Van Dael, Susan Lucy,<br /> + and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</b></center> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr class="full" /> +<br /> + +<h1 align="center">CHIVALRY:</h1> +<h2 align="center">Dizain des Reines </h2> + +<h2 align="center">JAMES BRANCH CABELL</h2> + + + + +<h3 align="center">1921</h3> + + + +<div class="ded"> +TO ANNE BRANCH CABELL +</div> + + + + + +<p class="ded2"> + “AINSI A VOUS, MADAME, A MA TRÈS HAULTE ET + TRÈS NOBLE DAME, A QUI J’AYME A DEVOIR + ATTACHEMENT ET OBÉISSANCE, + J’ENVOYE CE LIVRET<a href="#cont">.</a>” +</p> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<br /> +INTRODUCTION +</div> + +<p> Few of the more astute critics who have appraised the work of +James Branch Cabell have failed to call attention to that +extraordinary cohesion which makes his very latest novel a further +flowering of the seed of his very earliest literary work. Especially +among his later books does the scheme of each seem to dovetail into +the scheme of the other and the whole of his writing take on the +character of an uninterrupted discourse. To this phenomenon, which +is at once a fact and an illusion of continuity, Mr. Cabell himself +has consciously contributed, not only by a subtly elaborate use of +conjunctions, by repetition, and by reintroducing characters from +his other books, but by actually setting his expertness in genealogy +to the genial task of devising a family tree for his figures of +fiction. </p> + +<p> If this were an actual continuity, more tangible than that fluid +abstraction we call the life force; if it were merely a tireless +reiteration and recasting of characters, Mr. Cabell’s work +would have an unbearable monotony. But at bottom this apparent +continuity has no more material existence than has the thread of +lineal descent. To insist upon its importance is to obscure, as has +been obscured, the epic range of Mr. Cabell’s creative genius. +It is to fail to observe that he has treated in his many books every +mainspring of human action and that his themes have been the +cardinal dreams and impulses which have in them heroic qualities. +Each separate volume has a unity and harmony of a complete and +separate life, for the excellent reason that with the consummate +skill of an artist he is concerned exclusively in each book with one +definite heroic impulse and its frustrations. </p> + +<p> It is true, of course, that like the fruit of the tree of life, +Mr. Cabell’s artistic progeny sprang from a first conceptual +germ—“In the beginning was the Word.” That +animating idea is the assumption that if life may be said to have an +aim it must be an aim to terminate in success and splendor. It +postulates the high, fine importance of excess, the choice or +discovery of an overwhelming impulse in life and a conscientious +dedication to its fullest realization. It is the quality and +intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological +norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the +exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, +aimless mediocrities about him. What the dream is, matters not at +all—it may be a dream of sainthood, kingship, love, art, +asceticism or sensual pleasure—so long as it is fully +expressed with all the resources of self. It is this sort of +completion which Mr. Cabell has elected to depict in all his work: +the complete sensualist in Demetrios, the complete phrase-maker in +Felix Kennaston, the complete poet in Marlowe, the complete lover in +Perion. In each he has shown that this complete self-expression is +achieved at the expense of all other possible selves, and that +herein lies the tragedy of the ideal. Perfection is a costly flower +and is cultured only by an uncompromising, strict husbandry. </p> + +<p> All this is, we see, the ideational gonfalon under which surge +the romanticists; but from the evidence at hand it is the banner to +which life also bears allegiance. It is in humanity’s records +that it has reserved its honors for its romantic figures. It +remembers its Caesars, its saints, its sinners. It applauds, with a +complete suspension of moral judgment, its heroines and its heroes +who achieve the greatest self-realization. And from the splendid +triumphs and tragic defeats of humanity’s individual strivings +have come our heritage of wisdom and of poetry. </p> + +<p> Once we understand the fundamentals of Mr. Cabell’s +artistic aims, it is not easy to escape the fact that in <i>Figures +of Earth</i> he undertook the staggering and almost unsuspected task +of rewriting humanity’s sacred books, just as in <i>Jurgen</i> +he gave us a stupendous analogue of the ceaseless quest for beauty. +For we must accept the truth that Mr. Cabell is not a novelist at +all in the common acceptance of the term, but a historian of the +human soul. His books are neither documentary nor representational; +his characters are symbols of human desires and motives. By the not +at all simple process of recording faithfully the projections of his +rich and varied imagination, he has written thirteen books, which he +accurately terms biography, wherein is the bitter-sweet truth about +human life. </p> + +<p align="center"> II </p> + + +<p> Among the scant certainties vouchsafed us is that every age +lives by its special catchwords. Whether from rebellion against the +irking monotony of its inherited creeds or from compulsions +generated by its own complexities, each age develops its code of +convenient illusions which minimize cerebration in dilemmas of +conduct by postulating an unequivocal cleavage between the current +right and the current wrong. It works until men tire of it or +challenge the cleavage, or until conditions render the code +obsolete. It has in it, happily, a certain poetic merit always; it +presents an ideal to be lived up to; it gives direction to the +uncertain, stray impulses of life. </p> + +<p> The Chivalric code is no worse than most and certainly it is +prettier than some. It is a code peculiar to an age, or at least it +flourishes best in an age wherein sentiment and the stuff of dreams +are easily translatable into action. Its requirements are less of +the intellect than of the heart. It puts God, honor, and mistress +above all else, and stipulates that a knight shall serve these three +without any reservation. It requires of its secular practitioners +the holy virtues of an active piety, a modified chastity, and an +unqualified obedience, at all events, to the categorical imperative. +The obligation of poverty it omits, for the code arose at a time +when the spiritual snobbery of the meek and lowly was not pressing +the simile about the camel and the eye of the needle. It leads to +charming manners and to delicate amenities. It is the opposite of +the code of Gallantry, for while the code of Chivalry takes +everything with a becoming seriousness, the code of Gallantry takes +everything with a wink. If one should stoop to pick flaws with the +Chivalric ideal, it would be to point out a certain priggishness and +intolerance. For, while it is all very well for one to cherish the +delusion that he is God’s vicar on earth and to go about his +Father’s business armed with a shining rectitude, yet the +unhallowed may be moved to deprecate the enterprise when they +recall, with discomfort, the zealous vicarship of, say, the late +Anthony J. Comstock. </p> + +<p> But here I blunder into Mr. Cabell’s province. For he has +joined many graceful words in delectable and poignant proof of just +that lamentable tendency of man to make a mess of even his most +immaculate conceivings. When he wrote <i>Chivalry</i>, Mr. Cabell +was yet young enough to view the code less with the appraising eye +of a pawnbroker than with the ardent eye of an amateur. He knew its +value, but he did not know its price. So he made of it the thesis +for a dizain of beautiful happenings that are almost flawless in +their verbal beauty. </p> + + +<p align="center"> III </p> <p> It is perhaps of historical interest +here to record the esteem in which Mark Twain held the genius of Mr. +Cabell as it was manifested as early as a dozen years ago. Mr. +Cabell wrote <i>The Soul of Melicent</i>, or, as it was rechristened +on revision, <i>Domnei</i>, at the great humorist’s request, +and during the long days and nights of his last illness it was Mr. +Cabell’s books which gave Mark Twain his greatest joy. This +knowledge mitigates the pleasure, no doubt, of those who still, +after his fifteen years of writing, encounter him intermittently +with a feeling of having made a great literary discovery. The truth +is that Mr. Cabell has been discovered over and over with each +succeeding book from that first fine enthusiasm with which Percival +Pollard reviewed <i>The Eagle’s Shadow</i> to that generous +acknowledgment by Hugh Walpole that no one in England, save perhaps +Conrad and Hardy, was so sure of literary permanence as James Branch +Cabell. </p> + +<p> With <i>The Cream of the Jest</i>, <i>Beyond Life</i>, and +<i>Figures of Earth</i> before him, it is not easy for the +perceptive critic to doubt this permanence. One might as sensibly +deny a future to Ecclesiastes, <i>The Golden Ass</i>, +<i>Gulliver’s Travels</i>, and the works of Rabelais as to +predict oblivion for such a thesaurus of ironic wit and fine +fantasy, mellow wisdom and strange beauty as <i>Jurgen</i>. But to +appreciate the tales of <i>Chivalry</i> is, it seems, a gift more +frequently reserved for the general reader than for the professional +literary evaluator. Certainly years before discussion of Cabell was +artificially augmented by the suppression of <i>Jurgen</i> there +were many genuine lovers of romance who had read these tales with +pure enjoyment. That they did not analyse and articulate their +enjoyment for the edification of others does not lessen the quality +of their appreciation. Even in those years they found in +Cabell’s early tales what we find who have since been directed +to them by the curiosity engendered by his later work, namely, a +superb craftsmanship in recreating a vanished age, an atmosphere in +keeping with the themes, a fluid, graceful, personal style, a poetic +ecstasy, a fine sense of drama, and a unity and symmetry which are +the hall-marks of literary genius. </p> + +<p align="right"> BURTON RASCOE. New York City, September, 1921. </p> +<a name="cont"></a> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<br /> +CONTENTS +</div> + +<table summary=""> + <tr> + <td> </td> <td> <a href="#pre">PRECAUTIONAL</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> </td> <td> <a href="#pro">THE PROLOGUE</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">I</td> <td> <a href="#I">THE STORY OF THE SESTINA</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">II</td> <td> <a href="#II">THE STORY OF THE TENSON</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">III</td> <td> <a href="#III">THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">IV</td> <td> <a href="#IV">THE STORY OF THE CHOICES</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">V</td> <td> <a href="#V">THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">VI</td> <td> <a href="#VI">THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">VII</td> <td> <a href="#VII">THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">VIII</td> <td> <a href="#VIII">THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">IX</td> <td> <a href="#IX">THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">X</td> <td> <a href="#X">THE STORY OF THE FOX-BRUSH</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> </td> <td> <a href="#epi">THE EPILOGUE</a></td> + </tr> +</table> +<br /> +<br /> + +<a name="pre"></a> + +<div class="chapter"> +<br /> +PRECAUTIONAL +</div> + +<p> Imprimis, as concerns the authenticity of these tales perhaps +the less debate may be the higher wisdom, if only because this +Nicolas de Caen, by common report, was never a Gradgrindian. And in +this volume in particular, writing it (as Nicolas is supposed to +have done) in 1470, as a dependant on the Duke of Burgundy, it were +but human nature should he, in dealing with the putative descendants +of Dom Manuel and Alianora of Provence, be niggardly in his +ascription of praiseworthy traits to any member of the house of +Lancaster or of Valois. Rather must one in common reason accept old +Nicolas as confessedly a partisan writer, who upon occasion will +recolor an event with such nuances as will be least inconvenient to +a Yorkist and Burgundian bias. </p> + +<p> The reteller of these stories needs in addition to plead guilty +of having abridged the tales with a free hand. Item, these tales +have been a trifle pulled about, most notably in “The Story of +the Satraps,” where it seemed advantageous, on reflection, to +put into Gloucester’s mouth a history which in the original +version was related <i>ab ovo</i>, and as a sort of bungling +prologue to the story proper. </p> + +<p> Item, the re-teller of these stories desires hereby to tender +appropriate acknowledgment to Mr. R. E. Townsend for his assistance +in making an English version of the lyrics included hereinafter; and +to avoid discussion as to how freely, in these lyrics, Nicolas has +plagiarized from Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and other elder poets.<a id="footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> And—“sixth and lastly”—should confession +be made that in the present rendering a purely arbitrary title has +been assigned this little book; chiefly for commercial reasons, +since the word “dizain” has been adjudged both +untranslatable and, in its pristine form, repellantly +<i>outré</i>. </p> + + +<p align="center"> 2 </p> + +<p> You are to give my titular makeshift, then, a wide +interpretation; and are always to remember that in the bleak, florid +age these tales commemorate this Chivalry was much the rarelier +significant of any personal trait than of a world-wide code in +consonance with which all estimable people lived and died. Its root +was the assumption (uncontested then) that a gentleman will always +serve his God, his honor and his lady without any reservation; nor +did the many emanating by-laws ever deal with special cases as +concerns this triple, fixed, and fundamental homage. </p> + +<p> Such is the trinity served hereinafter. Now about lady-service, +or <i>domnei</i>, I have written elsewhere. Elsewhere also I find it +recorded that “the cornerstone of Chivalry is the idea of +vicarship: for the chivalrous person is, in his own eyes at least, +the child of God, and goes about this world as his Father’s +representative in an alien country.” </p> + +<p> I believe the definition holds: it certainly tends to explain +the otherwise puzzling pertinacity with which the characters in +these tales talk about God and act upon an assured knowledge as to +Heaven’s private intentions and preferences. These people are +the members of one family engrossed, as all of us are apt to be when +in the society of our kin, by family matters and traditions and +by-words. It is not merely that they are all large children +consciously dependent in all things upon a not foolishly indulgent +Father, Who keeps an interested eye upon the least of their doings, +and punishes at need,—not merely that they know themselves to +act under surveillance and to speak within ear-shot of a divine +eavesdropper. The point is, rather, that they know this observation +to be as tender, the punishment to be as unwilling, as that which +they themselves extend to their own children’s pranks and +misdemeanors. The point is that to them Heaven is a place as actual +and tangible as we consider Alaska or Algiers to be, and that their +living is a conscious journeying toward this actual place. The point +is that the Father is a real father, and not a word spelt with +capital letters in the Church Service; not an abstraction, not a +sort of a something vaguely describable as “the Life +Force,” but a very famous kinsman, of whom one is naïvely +proud, and whom one is on the way to visit.... The point, in brief, +is that His honor and yours are inextricably blended, and are both +implicated in your behavior on the journey. </p> + +<p> We nowadays can just cloudily imagine this viewing of life as a +sort of boarding-school from which one eventually goes home, with an +official report as to progress and deportment: and in retaliation +for being debarred from the comforts of this view, the +psychoanalysts have no doubt invented for it some opprobrious +explanation. At all events, this Chivalry was a pragmatic +hypothesis: it “worked,” and served society for a long +while, not faultlessly of course, but by creating, like all the +other codes of human conduct which men have yet tried, a tragi-comic +mêlée wherein contended “courtesy and humanity, +friendliness, hardihood, love and friendship, and murder, hate, and +virtue, and sin.” </p> + +<p align="center"> 3 </p> + +<p> For the rest, since good wine needs no bush, and an inferior +beverage is not likely to be bettered by arboreal adornment, I elect +to piece out my exordium (however lamely) with “The +Printer’s Preface.” And it runs in this fashion: </p> + +<p> “Here begins the volume called and entitled the Dizain of +Queens, composed and extracted from divers chronicles and other +sources of information, by that extremely venerable person and +worshipful man, Messire Nicolas de Caen, priest and chaplain to the +right noble, glorious and mighty prince in his time, Philippe, Duke +of Burgundy, of Brabant, etc., in the year of the Incarnation of our +Lord God a thousand four hundred and seventy: and imprinted by me, +Colard Mansion, at Bruges, in the year of our said Lord God a +thousand four hundred and seventy-one; at the commandment of the +right high, mighty and virtuous Princess, my redoubted Lady, +Isabella of Portugal, by the grace of God Duchess of Burgundy and +Lotharingia, of Brabant and Limbourg, of Luxembourg and of Gueldres, +Countess of Flanders, of Artois, and of Burgundy, Palatine of +Hainault, of Holland, of Zealand and of Namur, Marquesse of the Holy +Empire, and Lady of Frisia, of Salins and of Mechlin; whom I beseech +Almighty God less to increase than to continue in her virtuous +disposition in this world, and after our poor fleet existence to +receive eternally. Amen.” </p> + +<br /> +<a name="pro"></a> +<div class="chapter"> +<p>THE PROLOGUE</p> +</div> + + + <div class="epigram"> + “Afin que les entreprises honorables et les nobles aventures + et faicts d’armes soyent noblement enregistrés et + conservés, je vais traiter et raconter et inventer ung + galimatias.” +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE DIZAIN OF QUEENS OF THAT NOBLE MAKER IN THE FRENCH TONGUE, MESSIRE +NICOLAS DE CAEN, DEDICATED TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS ISABELLA OF PORTUGAL, +OF THE HOUSE OF THE INDOMITABLE ALFONSO HENRIQUES, AND DUCHESS DOWAGER +OF BURGUNDY. HERE BEGINS IN AUSPICIOUS WISE THE PROLOGUE. +</div> + + + +<p class="subhead"> +The Prologue +</p> + +<p class="salutation">A Sa Dame</p> + +<p> Inasmuch as it was by your command, illustrious and exalted lady, +that I have gathered together these stories to form the present little +book, you should the less readily suppose I have presumed to dedicate to +your Serenity this trivial offering because of my esteeming it to be not +undeserving of your acceptance. The truth is otherwise: your postulant +approaches not spurred toward you by vainglory, but rather by equity, +and equity’s plain need to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of +noble ladies must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who +is the light and mainstay of our age. I humbly bring my book to you as +Phidyle approached another and less sacred shrine, <i>farre pio et +saliente mica</i>, and lay before you this my valueless mean tribute not +as appropriate to you but as the best I have to offer. </p> + +<p> It is a little book wherein I treat of divers queens and of +their love-business; and with necessitated candor I concede my +chosen field to have been harvested, and scrupulously gleaned, by +many writers of innumerable conditions. Since Dares Phrygius wrote +of Queen Heleine, and Virgil (that shrewd necromancer) of Queen +Dido, a preponderating mass of clerks, in casting about for high and +serious matter, have chosen, as though it were by common instinct, +to dilate upon the amours of royal women. Even in romance we +scribblers must contrive it so that the fair Nicolete shall be +discovered in the end to be no less than the King’s daughter +of Carthage, and that Sir Doön of Mayence shall never sink in +his love affairs beneath the degree of a Saracen princess; and we +are backed in this old procedure not only by the authority of +Aristotle but, oddly enough, by that of reason. </p> + +<p> Kings have their policies and wars wherewith to drug each human +appetite. But their consorts are denied these makeshifts; and love may +rationally be defined as the pivot of each normal woman’s life, and in +consequence as the arbiter of that ensuing life which is eternal. +Because—as anciently Propertius demanded, though not, to speak the +truth, of any woman—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> Quo fugis? ah demens! nulla est fuga, tu licet usque</p> + <p>Ad Tanaim fugias, usque sequetur amor.</p> +</div> + +<p>And a dairymaid, let us say, may love whom she will, and nobody else +be a penny the worse for her mistaking of the preferable nail whereon to +hang her affections; whereas with a queen this choice is more +portentous. She plays the game of life upon a loftier table, ruthlessly +illuminated, she stakes by her least movement a tall pile of counters, +some of which are, of necessity, the lives and happiness of persons whom +she knows not, unless it be by vague report. Grandeur sells itself at +this hard price, and at no other. A queen must always play, in fine, as +the vicar of destiny, free to choose but very certainly compelled in the +ensuing action to justify that choice: as is strikingly manifested by +the authentic histories of Brunhalt, and of Guenevere, and of swart +Cleopatra, and of many others that were born to the barbaric queenhoods +of extinct and dusty times. </p> + +<p> All royal persons are (I take it) the immediate and the responsible +stewards of Heaven; and since the nature of each man is like a troubled +stream, now muddied and now clear, their prayer must ever be, <i>Defenda +me, Dios, de me</i>! Yes, of exalted people, and even of their near +associates, life, because it aims more high than the aforementioned +Aristotle, demands upon occasion a more great catharsis, which would +purge any audience of unmanliness, through pity and through terror, +because, by a quaint paradox, the players have been purged of humanity. +For a moment Destiny has thrust her scepter into the hands of a human +being and Chance has exalted a human being to decide the issue of many +human lives. These two—with what immortal chucklings one may +facilely imagine—have left the weakling thus enthroned, free to +direct the heavy outcome, free to choose, and free to evoke much +happiness or age-long weeping, but with no intermediate course unbarred. +<i>Now prove thyself</i>! saith Destiny; and Chance appends: <i>Now +prove thyself to be at bottom a god or else a beast, and now eternally +abide that choice. And now</i> (O crowning irony!) <i>we may not tell +thee clearly by which choice thou mayst prove either</i>. </p> + +<p> In this little book about the women who intermarried, not very +enviably, with an unhuman race (a race predestinate to the red ending +which I have chronicled elsewhere, in <i>The Red Cuckold</i>), it is of +ten such moments that I treat. </p> + +<p> You alone, I think, of all persons living, have learned, as you have +settled by so many instances, to rise above mortality in such a testing, +and unfailingly to merit by your conduct the plaudits and the adoration +of our otherwise dissentient world. You have often spoken in the stead +of Destiny, with nations to abide your verdict; and in so doing have +both graced and hallowed your high vicarship. If I forbear to speak of +this at greater length, it is because I dare not couple your well-known +perfection with any imperfect encomium. Upon no plea, however, can any +one forbear to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of noble ladies +must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who is the light +and mainstay of our age. </p> + +<p> <i>Therefore to you, madame—most excellent and noble lady, to +whom I love to owe both loyalty and love—I dedicate this little +book.</i> </p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="I"></a> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +I +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE SESTINA +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Armatz de fust e de fer e d’acier,</p> + <p>Mos ostal seran bosc, fregz, e semdier,</p> + <p>E mas cansos sestinas e descortz,</p> + <p> E mantenrai los frevols contra ’ls fortz.”</p> +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE FIRST NOVEL.—ALIANORA OF PROVENCE, COMING IN DISGUISE AND IN +ADVERSITY TO A CERTAIN CLERK, IS BY HIM CONDUCTED ACROSS A HOSTILE +COUNTRY; AND IN THAT TROUBLED JOURNEY ARE MADE MANIFEST TO EACH THE +SNARES WHICH HAD BEGUILED THEM AFORETIME. +</div> + +<div class="subhead"> +<p>The Story of the Sestina</p> +</div> + +<p> In this place we have to do with the opening tale of the Dizain of +Queens. I abridge, as afterward, at discretion; and an initial account +of the Barons’ War, among other superfluities, I amputate as more +remarkable for veracity than interest. The result, we will agree at +outset, is that to the Norman cleric appertains whatever these tales may +have of merit, whereas what you find distasteful in them you must impute +to my delinquencies in skill rather than in volition. </p> + +<p> Within the half hour after de Giars’ death (here one overtakes +Nicolas mid-course in narrative) Dame Alianora thus stood alone in the +corridor of a strange house. Beyond the arras the steward and his lord +were at irritable converse. </p> + +<p> First, “If the woman be hungry,” spoke a high and +peevish voice, “feed her. If she need money, give it to her. +But do not annoy me.” </p> + +<p> “This woman demands to see the master of the house,” +the steward then retorted. </p> + +<p> “O incredible Boeotian, inform her that the master of the +house has no time to waste upon vagabonds who select the middle of +the night as an eligible time to pop out of nowhere. Why did you not +do so in the beginning, you dolt?” The speaker got for answer +only a deferential cough, and very shortly continued: “This is +remarkably vexatious. <i>Vox et praeterea nihil</i>—which +signifies, Yeck, that to converse with women is always delightful. +Admit her.” This was done, and Dame Alianora came into an +apartment littered with papers, where a neat and shriveled gentleman +of fifty-odd sat at a desk and scowled. </p> + +<p> He presently said, “You may go, Yeck.” He had risen, +the magisterial attitude with which he had awaited her entrance cast +aside. “Oh, God!” he said; “you, madame!” +His thin hands, scholarly hands, were plucking at the air. </p> + +<p> Dame Alianora had paused, greatly astonished, and there was an +interval before she said, “I do not recognize you, +messire.” </p> + +<p> “And yet, madame, I recall very clearly that some thirty +years ago the King-Count Raymond Bérenger, then reigning in +Provence, had about his court four daughters, each one of whom was +afterward wedded to a king. First, Meregrett, the eldest, now +regnant in France; then Alianora, the second and most beautiful of +these daughters, whom troubadours hymned as the Unattainable +Princess. She was married a long while ago, madame, to the King of +England, Lord Henry, third of that name to reign in these +islands.” </p> + +<p> Dame Alianora’s eyes were narrowing. “There is +something in your voice,” she said, “which I +recall.” </p> + +<p> He answered: “Madame and Queen, that is very likely, for +it is a voice which sang a deal in Provence when both of us were +younger. I concede with the Roman that I have somewhat deteriorated +since the reign of Cynara. Yet have you quite forgotten the +Englishman who made so many songs of you? They called him Osmund +Heleigh.” </p> + +<p> “He made the Sestina of Spring which won the violet crown +at my betrothal,” the Queen said; and then, with eagerness: +“Messire, can it be that you are Osmund Heleigh?” He +shrugged assent. She looked at him for a long time, rather sadly, +and demanded if he were the King’s man or of the barons’ +party. </p> + +<p> The nervous hands were raised in deprecation. “I have no +politics,” Messire Heleigh began, and altered it, gallantly +enough, to, “I am the Queen’s man, madame.” </p> + +<p> “Then aid me, Osmund,” she said. </p> + +<p> He answered with a gravity which singularly became him, +“You have reason to understand that to my fullest power I will +aid you.” </p> + +<p> “You know that at Lewes these swine overcame us.” He +nodded assent. “Now they hold the King, my husband, captive at +Kenilworth. I am content that he remain there, for he is of all the +King’s enemies the most dangerous. But, at Wallingford, +Leicester has imprisoned my son, Prince Edward. The Prince must be +freed, my Osmund. Warren de Basingbourne commands what is left of +the royal army, now entrenched at Bristol, and it is he who must +liberate my son. Get me to Bristol, then. Afterward we will take +Wallingford.” The Queen issued these orders in cheery, +practical fashion, and did not admit opposition into the account, +for she was a capable woman. </p> + +<p> “But you, madame?” he stammered. “You came +alone?” </p> + +<p> “I come from France, where I have been +entreating—and vainly entreating—succor from yet another +monkish king, the holy Lewis of that realm. Eh, what is God about +when He enthrones these whining pieties! Were I a king, were I even +a man, I would drive these smug English out of their foggy isle in +three days’ space! I would leave alive not one of these curs +that dare yelp at me! I would—” She paused, anger +veering into amusement. “See how I enrage myself when I think +of what your people have made me suffer,” the Queen said, and +shrugged her shoulders. “In effect, I skulked back in disguise +to this detestable island, accompanied by Avenel de Giars and Hubert +Fitz-Herveis. To-night some half-dozen fellows—robbers, +thorough knaves, like all you English,—attacked us on the +common yonder and slew the men of our party. While they were cutting +de Giars’ throat I slipped away in the dark and tumbled +through many ditches till I spied your light. There you have my +story. Now get me an escort to Bristol.” </p> + +<p> It was a long while before Messire Heleigh spoke. Then, +“These men,” he said—“this de Giars and this +Fitz-Herveis—they gave their lives for yours, as I understand +it,—<i>pro caris amicis</i>. And yet you do not grieve for +them.” </p> + +<p> “I shall regret de Giars,” the Queen acknowledged, +“for he made excellent songs. But Fitz-Herveis?—foh! the +man had a face like a horse.” Again her mood changed. +“Many persons have died for me, my friend. At first I wept for +them, but now I am dry of tears.” </p> + +<p> He shook his head. “Cato very wisely says, ‘If thou +hast need of help, ask it of thy friends.’ But the sweet friend that +I remember was a clean eyed girl, joyous and exceedingly beautiful. +Now you appear to me one of those ladies of remoter +times—Faustina, or Jael, or Artemis, the King’s wife of +Tauris,—they that slew men, laughing. I am somewhat afraid of +you, madame.” </p> + +<p> She was angry at first; then her face softened. “You +English!” she said, only half mirthful. “Eh, my God! you +remember me when I was a high hearted young sorceress. Now the +powers of the Apsarasas have departed from me, and time has thrust +that Alianora, who was once the Unattainable Princess, chin deep in +misery. Yet even now I am your Queen, messire, and it is not yours +to pass judgment upon me.” “I do not judge you,” +he returned. “Rather I cry with him of old, <i>Omnia incerta +ratione</i>! and I cry with Salomon that he who meddles with the +strife of another man is like to him that takes a hound by the ears. +Yet listen, madame and Queen. I cannot afford you an escort to +Bristol. This house, of which I am in temporary charge, is +Longaville, my brother’s manor. Lord Brudenel, as you doubtless +know, is of the barons’ party and—scant cause for +grief!—is with Leicester at this moment. I can trust none of +my brother’s people, for I believe them to be of much the same +opinion as those Londoners who not long ago stoned you and would +have sunk your barge in Thames River. Oh, let us not blink the fact +that you are not overbeloved in England. So an escort is out of the +question. Yet I, madame, if you so elect, will see you safe to +Bristol.” +</p> + +<p> “You? Singly?” the Queen demanded. </p> + +<p> “My plan is this: Singing folk alone travel whither they +will. We will go as jongleurs, then. I can yet manage a song to the +viol, I dare affirm. And you must pass as my wife.” </p> + +<p> He said this with simplicity. The plan seemed unreasonable, and +at first Dame Alianora waved it aside. Out of the question! But +reflection suggested nothing better; it was impossible to remain at +Longaville, and the man spoke sober truth when he declared any +escort other than himself to be unprocurable. Besides, the lunar +madness of the scheme was its strength; that the Queen would venture +to cross half England unprotected—and Messire Heleigh on the +face of him was a paste-board buckler—was an event which +Leicester would neither anticipate nor on report credit. There you +were! these English had no imagination. The Queen snapped her +fingers and said: “Very willingly will I be your wife, my +Osmund. But how do I know that I can trust you? Leicester would give +a deal for me; he would pay any price for the pious joy of burning +the Sorceress of Provence. And you are not wealthy, I +suspect.” </p> + +<p> “You may trust me, mon bel esper,”—his eyes +here were those of a beaten child—“because my memory is +better than yours.” Messire Osmund Heleigh gathered his papers +into a neat pile. “This room is mine. To-night I keep guard in +the corridor, madame. We will start at dawn.” +</p> + +<p> When he had gone, Dame Alianora laughed contentedly. “Mon +bel esper! my fairest hope! The man called me that in his +verses—thirty years ago! Yes, I may trust you, my poor +Osmund.” </p> + +<p> So they set out at cockcrow. He had procured for himself a viol and +a long falchion, and had somewhere got suitable clothes for the Queen; +and in their aging but decent garb the two approached near enough to the +appearance of what they desired to be thought. In the courtyard a knot +of servants gaped, nudged one another, but openly said nothing. Messire +Heleigh, as they interpreted it, was brazening out an affair of +gallantry before the countryside; and they esteemed his casual +observation that they would find a couple of dead men on the common +exceedingly diverting. </p> + +<p> When the Queen asked him the same morning, “And what will +you sing, my Osmund? Shall we begin the practise of our new +profession with the Sestina of Spring?”—old Osmund +Heleigh grunted out: “I have forgotten that rubbish long ago. +<i>Omnis amans, amens</i>, saith the satirist of Rome town, and with +reason.” </p> + +<p> Followed silence. </p> + +<p> One sees them thus trudging the brown, naked plains under a sky +of steel. In a pageant the woman, full-veined and comely, her russet +gown girded up like a harvester’s might not inaptly have +prefigured October; and for less comfortable November you could +nowhere have found a symbol more precise than her lank companion, +humorously peevish under his white thatch of hair, and constantly +fretted by the sword tapping at his ankles. </p> + +<p> They made Hurlburt prosperously and found it vacant, for the +news of Falmouth’s advance had driven the villagers hillward. +There was in this place a child, a naked boy of some two years, +lying on a doorstep, overlooked in his elders’ gross terror. +As the Queen with a sob lifted this boy the child died. </p> + +<p> “Starved!” said Osmund Heleigh; “and within a +stone’s throw of my snug home!” </p> + +<p> The Queen laid down the tiny corpse, and, stooping, lightly +caressed its sparse flaxen hair. She answered nothing, though her +lips moved.</p> + +<p> Past Vachel, scene of a recent skirmish, with many dead in the +gutters, they were overtaken by Falmouth himself, and stood at the +roadside to afford his troop passage. The Marquess, as he went by, flung +the Queen a coin, with a jest sufficiently high flavored. She knew the +man her inveterate enemy, knew that on recognition he would have killed +her as he would a wolf; she smiled at him and dropped a curtsey. </p> + +<p> “This is remarkable,” Messire Heleigh observed. “I was hideously +afraid, and am yet shaking. But you, madame, laughed.” </p> + +<p> The Queen replied: “I laughed because I know that some day I shall +have Lord Falmouth’s head. It will be very sweet to see it roll in the +dust, my Osmund.” </p> + +<p> Messire Heleigh somewhat dryly observed that tastes differed. </p> + +<p> At Jessop Minor befell a more threatening adventure. Seeking food at +the <i>Cat and Hautbois</i> in that village, they blundered upon the +same troop at dinner in the square about the inn. Falmouth and his +lieutenants were somewhere inside the house. The men greeted the +supposed purveyors of amusement with a shout; and one of these +soldiers—a swarthy rascal with his head tied in a +napkin—demanded that the jongleurs grace their meal with a song. +</p> + +<p> Osmund tried to put him off with a tale of a broken viol. </p> + +<p> But, “Haro!” the fellow blustered; “by blood +and by nails! you will sing more sweetly with a broken viol than +with a broken head. I would have you understand, you hedge thief, +that we gentlemen of the sword are not partial to wordy +argument.” Messire Heleigh fluttered inefficient hands as the +men-at-arms gathered about them, scenting some genial piece of +cruelty. “Oh, you rabbit!” the trooper jeered, and +caught at Osmund’s throat, shaking him. In the act this rascal +tore open Messire Heleigh’s tunic, disclosing a thin chain +about his neck and a handsome locket, which the fellow wrested from +its fastening. “Ahoi!” he continued. “Ahoi, my +comrades, what sort of minstrel is this, who goes about England all +hung with gold like a Cathedral Virgin! He and his +sweetheart”—the actual word was +grosser—“will be none the worse for an interview with +the Marquess.” </p> + +<p> The situation smacked of awkwardness, because Lord Falmouth was +familiar with the Queen, and to be brought specifically to his +attention meant death for two detected masqueraders. Hastily Osmund +Heleigh said: </p> + +<p> “Messire, the locket contains the portrait of a lady whom +in my youth I loved very greatly. Save to me, it is valueless. I +pray you, do not rob me of it.” </p> + +<p> But the trooper shook his head with drunken solemnity. “I +do not like the looks of this. Yet I will sell it to you, as the +saying is, for a song.” </p> + +<p> “It shall be the king of songs,” said +Osmund,—“the song that Arnaut Daniel first made. I will +sing for you a Sestina, messieurs,—a Sestina in salutation of +Spring.” </p> + +<p> The men disposed themselves about the dying grass, and presently +he sang. </p> + +<p> +Sang Messire Heleigh: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Awaken! for the servitors of Spring</p> + <p>Proclaim his triumph! ah, make haste to see</p> + <p>With what tempestuous pageantry they bring</p> + <p>The victor homeward! haste, for this is he</p> + <p>That cast out Winter and all woes that cling</p> + <p>To Winter’s garments, and bade April be!</p> + +<p class="stanzai2">“And now that Spring is master, let us be</p> + <p>Content, and laugh, as anciently in spring</p> + <p>The battle-wearied Tristan laughed, when he</p> + <p> Was come again Tintagel-ward, to bring</p> + <p>Glad news of Arthur’s victory—and see</p> + <p>Ysoude, with parted lips, that waver and cling.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“Not yet in Brittany must Tristan cling</p> + <p>To this or that sad memory, and be</p> + <p>Alone, as she in Cornwall; for in spring</p> + <p>Love sows against far harvestings,—and he</p> + <p>Is blind, and scatters baleful seed that bring</p> + <p>Such fruitage as blind Love lacks eyes to see!”</p> +</div> + +<p> +Osmund paused here for an appreciable interval, staring at the Queen. +You saw his flabby throat a-quiver, his eyes melting, saw his cheeks +kindle, and youth seeping into the lean man like water over a crumbling +dam. His voice was now big and desirous. +</p> + +<p> +Sang Messire Heleigh: +</p> +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see</p> + <p>The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling,</p> + <p>Never again when in the grave ye be</p> + <p>Incurious of your happiness in spring,</p> + <p>And get no grace of Love there, whither he</p> + <p>That bartered life for love no love may bring.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “No braggart Heracles avails to bring</p> + <p>Alcestis hence; nor here may Roland see</p> + <p>The eyes of Aude; nor here the wakening spring</p> + <p>Vex any man with memories: for there be</p> + <p>No memories that cling as cerements cling,</p> + <p>No force that baffles Death, more strong than he.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Us hath he noted, and for us hath he</p> + <p>An hour appointed; and that hour will bring</p> + <p>Oblivion.—Then, laugh! Laugh, dear, and see</p> + <p>The tyrant mocked, while yet our bosoms cling,</p> + <p>While yet our lips obey us, and we be</p> + <p>Untrammeled in our little hour of spring!</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Thus in the spring we jeer at Death, though he</p> + <p>Will see our children perish and will briny</p> + <p>Asunder all that cling while love may be.”</p> +</div> + +<p> Then Osmund put the viol aside and sat quite silent. The +soldiery judged, and with cordial frankness stated, that the +difficulty of his rhyming scheme did not atone for his lack of +indecency, but when the Queen of England went among them with +Messire Heleigh’s faded green hat she found them liberal. Even +the fellow with the broken head admitted that a bargain was +proverbially a bargain, and returned the locket with the addition of +a coin. So for the present these two went safe, and quitted the +<i>Cat and Hautbois</i> fed and unmolested. </p> + +<p> “My Osmund,” Dame Alianora said, presently, +“your memory is better than I had thought.” </p> + +<p> “I remembered a boy and a girl,” he returned. +“And I grieved that they were dead.” </p> + +<p> Afterward they plodded on toward Bowater, and the ensuing night +rested in Chantrell Wood. They had the good fortune there to +encounter dry and windless weather and a sufficiency of brushwood, +with which Osmund constructed an agreeable fire. In its glow these +two sat, eating bread and cheese. </p> + +<p> But talk languished at the outset. The Queen had complained of +an ague, and Messire Heleigh was sedately suggesting three spiders +hung about the neck as an infallible corrective for this ailment, +when Dame Alianora rose to her feet. “Eh, my God!” she +said; “I am wearied of such ungracious aid! Not an inch of the +way but you have been thinking of your filthy books and longing to +be back at them! No; I except the moments when you were frightened +into forgetfulness—first by Falmouth, then by the trooper. O +Eternal Father! afraid of a single dirty soldier!” </p> + +<p> “Indeed, I was very much afraid,” said Messire +Heleigh, with perfect simplicity; “<i>timidus perire, +madame</i>.” </p> + +<p> “You have not even the grace to be ashamed! Yet I am +shamed, messire, that Osmund Heleigh should have become the +book-muddled pedant you are. For I loved young Osmund +Heleigh.” </p> + +<p> He also had risen in the firelight, and now its convulsive +shadows marred two dogged faces. “I think it best not to +recall that boy and girl who are so long dead. And, frankly, madame +and Queen, the merit of the business I have in hand is questionable. +It is you who have set all England by the ears, and I am guiding you +toward opportunities for further mischief. I must serve you. +Understand, madame, that ancient folly in Provence yonder has +nothing to do with the affair. Count Manuel left you: and between +his evasion and your marriage you were pleased to amuse yourself +with me—” </p> + +<p> “You were more civil then, my Osmund—” </p> + +<p> “I am not uncivil, I merely point out that this old folly +constitutes no overwhelming obligation, either way. I cry <i>nihil +ad Andromachen</i>! For the rest, I must serve you because you are a +woman and helpless; yet I cannot forget that he who spares the wolf +is the sheep’s murderer. It would be better for all England if +you were dead. Hey, your gorgeous follies, madame! Silver peacocks +set with sapphires! Cloth of fine gold—” </p> + +<p> “Would you have me go unclothed?” Dame Alianora +demanded, pettishly. </p> + +<p> “Not so,” Osmund retorted; “again I say to you +with Tertullian, ‘Let women paint their eyes with the tints of +chastity, insert into their ears the Word of God, tie the yoke of +Christ about their necks, and adorn their whole person with the silk +of sanctity and the damask of devotion.’ I say to you that the +boy you wish to rescue from Wallingford, and make King of England, +is freely rumored to be not verily the son of Sire Henry but the +child of tall Manuel of Poictesme. I say to you that from the first +you have made mischief in England. And I say to you—” +</p> + +<p> But Dame Alianora was yawning quite frankly. “You will say +to me that I brought foreigners into England, that I misguided the +King, that I stirred up strife between the King and his barons. Eh, +my God! I am sufficiently familiar with the harangue. Yet listen, my +Osmund: They sold me like a bullock to a man I had never seen. I +found him a man of wax, and I remoulded him. They asked of me an +heir for England: I provided that heir. They gave me England as a +toy; I played with it. I was the Queen, the source of honor, the +source of wealth—the trough, in effect, about which swine +gathered. Never since I came into England, Osmund, has any man or +woman loved me; never in all my English life have I loved man or +woman. Do you understand, my Osmund?—the Queen has many +flatterers, but no friends. Not a friend in the world, my Osmund! +And so the Queen made the best of it and amused herself.” </p> + +<p> Somewhat he seemed to understand, for he answered without +asperity: </p> + +<p> “Mon bel esper, I do not find it anywhere in Holy Writ +that God requires it of us to amuse ourselves; but upon many +occasions we have been commanded to live righteously. We are tempted +in divers and insidious ways. And we cry with the Psalmist, +‘My strength is dried up like a potsherd.’ But God +intends this, since, until we have here demonstrated our valor upon +Satan, we are manifestly unworthy to be enregistered in God’s +army. The great Captain must be served by proven soldiers. We may be +tempted, but we may not yield. O daughter of the South! we must not +yield!” </p> + +<p> “Again you preach,” Dame Alianora said. “That +is a venerable truism.” </p> + +<p> “Ho, madame,” he returned, “is it on that +account the less true?” </p> + +<p> Pensively the Queen considered this. “You are a good man, +my Osmund,” she said, at last, “though you are very +droll. Ohimé! it is a pity that I was born a princess! Had it +been possible for me to be your wife, I would have been a better +woman. I shall sleep now and dream of that good and stupid and +contented woman I might have been.” So presently these two +slept in Chantrell Wood. </p> + +<p> Followed four days of journeying. As Messer Dante had not yet +surveyed Malebolge, Osmund Heleigh and Dame Alianora lacked a +parallel for that which they encountered; their traverse discovered +England razed, charred, and depopulate—picked bones of an +island, a vast and absolute ruin about which passion-wasted men +skulked like rats. Messire Heleigh and the Queen traveled without +molestation; malice and death had journeyed before them on this +road, and had swept it clear. </p> + +<p> At every trace of these hideous precessors Osmund Heleigh would +say, “By a day’s ride I might have prevented +this.” Or, “By a day’s ride I might have saved +this woman.” Or, “By two days’ riding I might have +fed this child.” </p> + +<p> The Queen kept Spartan silence, but daily you saw the fine woman +age. In their slow advance every inch of misery was thrust before +her for inspection; meticulously she observed and evaluated her +handiwork. Enthroned, she had appraised from a distance the +righteous wars she set afoot; trudging thus among the débris +of these wars, she found they had unsuspected aspects. Bastling the +royal army had recently sacked. There remained of this village the +skeletons of two houses, and for the rest a jumble of bricks, +rafters half-burned, many calcined fragments of humanity, and ashes. +At Bastling, Messire Heleigh turned to the Queen toiling behind. +</p> + +<p> “Oh, madame!” he said, in a dry whisper, “this +was the home of so many men!” </p> + +<p> “I burned it,” Dame Alianora replied. “That +man we passed just now I killed. Those other men and women—my +folly slew them all. And little children, my Osmund! The hair like +flax, blood-dabbled!” </p> + +<p> “Oh, madame!” he wailed, in the extremity of his +pity. </p> + +<p> For she stood with eyes shut, all gray. The Queen demanded: +“Why have they not slain me? Was there no man in England to +strangle the proud wanton? Are you all cowards here?” </p> + +<p> He said: “I detect only one coward in the affair. Your men +and Leicester’s men also ride about the world, and draw sword +and slay and die for the right as they see it. And you and Leicester +contend for the right as ye see it. But I, madame! I! I, who sat +snug at home spilling ink and trimming rose-bushes! God’s +world, madame, and I in it afraid to speak a word for Him! +God’s world, and a curmudgeon in it grudging God the life He +gave!” The man flung out his soft hands and snarled: +“<i>We are tempted in divers and insidious ways.</i> But I, +who rebuked you! behold, now, with how gross a snare was I +entrapped!” “I do not understand, my Osmund.” </p> + +<p> “I was afraid, madame,” he returned, dully. +“Everywhere men fight, and I am afraid to die.” </p> + +<p> So they stood silent in the ruins of Bastling. </p> + +<p> “Of a piece with our lives,” Dame Alianora said at +last. “All ruin, my Osmund.” </p> + +<p> But Messire Heleigh threw back his head and laughed, new color +in his face. “Presently men will build here, my Queen. +Presently, as in legend was re-born the Arabian bird, arises from +these ashes a lordlier and more spacious town.” </p> + +<p> They went forward. The next day chance loosed upon them Gui +Camoys, lord of Bozon, Foliot, and Thwenge, who, riding alone +through Poges Copse, found there a man and a woman over their +limited supper. The woman had thrown back her hood, and Camoys drew +rein to stare at her. Lispingly he spoke the true court dialect. +</p> + +<p> “Ma belle,” said this Camoys, in friendly +condescension, “n’estez vous pas jongleurs?” </p> + +<p> Dame Alianora smiled up at him. “Ouais, messire; mon mary +faict les chançons—” She paused, with dilatory +caution, for Camoys had leaped from his horse, giving a great laugh. +</p> + +<p> “A prize! ho, an imperial prize!” Camoys shouted. +“A peasant woman with the Queen’s face, who speaks +French! And who, madame, is this? Have you by any chance brought +pious Lewis from oversea? Have I bagged a brace of monarchs?” +</p> + +<p> Here was imminent danger, for Camoys had known the Queen some +fifteen years. Messire Heleigh rose, his five days’ beard +glinting like hoar-frost as his mouth twitched. </p> + +<p> “I am Osmund Heleigh, messire, younger brother to the Earl +of Brudenel.” </p> + +<p> “I have heard of you, I believe—the fellow who +spoils parchment. This is odd company, however, Messire Osmund, for +Brudenel’s brother.” </p> + +<p> “A gentleman must serve his Queen, messire. As Cicero very +justly observes—” </p> + +<p> “I am inclined to think that his political opinions are +scarcely to our immediate purpose. This is a high matter, Messire +Heleigh. To let the sorceress pass is, of course, out of the +question; upon the other hand, I observe that you lack weapons of +defence. Yet if you will have the kindness to assist me in unarming, +your courtesy will place our commerce on more equal footing.” +</p> + +<p> Osmund had turned very white. “I am no swordsman, +messire—”</p> + +<p> “Now, this is not handsome of you,” Camoys began. +“I warn you that people will speak harshly of us if we lose +this opportunity of gaining honor. And besides, the woman will be +burned at the stake. Plainly, you owe it to all three of us to +fight.” </p> + +<p> “—But I refer my cause to God. I am quite at your +service.” “No, my Osmund!” Dame Alianora then +cried. “It means your death.” </p> + +<p> He spread out his hands. “That is God’s affair, +madame.” </p> + +<p> “Are you not afraid?” she breathed. </p> + +<p> “Of course I am afraid,” said Messire Heleigh, +irritably. </p> + +<p> After that he unarmed Camoys, and presently they faced each +other in their tunics. So for the first time in the journey +Osmund’s long falchion saw daylight. He had thrown away his +dagger, as Camoys had none. </p> + +<p> The combat was sufficiently curious. Camoys raised his left +hand. “So help me God and His saints, I have upon me neither +bone, stone, nor witchcraft wherethrough the power and the word of +God might be diminished or the devil’s power increased.” +</p> + +<p> Osmund made similar oath. “Judge Thou this woman’s +cause!” he cried, likewise. </p> + +<p> Then Gui Camoys shouted, as a herald might have done, +“Laissez les aller, laissez les aller, laissez les aller, les +bons combatants!” and warily each moved toward the other. </p> + +<p> On a sudden Osmund attacked, desperately apprehensive of his own +cowardice. Camoys lightly eluded him and slashed at Osmund’s +undefended thigh, drawing much blood. Osmund gasped. He flung away +his sword, and in the instant catching Camoys under the arms, threw +him to the ground. Messire Heleigh fell with his opponent, who in +stumbling had lost his sword, and thus the two struggled unarmed, +Osmund atop. But Camoys was the younger man, and Osmund’s +strength was ebbing rapidly by reason of his wound. Now +Camoys’ tethered horse, rearing with nervousness, tumbled his +master’s flat-topped helmet into the road. Osmund caught up +this helmet and with it battered Camoys in the face, dealing severe +blows. </p> + +<p> “God!” Camoys cried, his face all blood. </p> + +<p> “Do you acknowledge my quarrel just?” said Osmund, +between horrid sobs. </p> + +<p> “What choice have I?” said Gui Camoys, very +sensibly. </p> + +<p> So Osmund rose, blind with tears and shivering. The Queen bound +up their wounds as best she might, but Camoys was much dissatisfied. +</p> + +<p> “For private purposes of His own, madame,” he +observed, “and doubtless for sufficient reasons, God has +singularly favored your cause. I am neither a fool nor a pagan to +question His decision, and you two may go your way unhampered. But I +have had my head broken with my own helmet, and this I consider to +be a proceeding very little conducive toward enhancing my +reputation. Of your courtesy, messire, I must entreat another +meeting.” </p> + +<p> Osmund shrank as if from a blow. Then, with a short laugh, he +conceded that this was Camoys’ right, and they fixed upon the +following Saturday, with Poges Copse as the rendezvous. </p> + +<p> “I would suggest that the combat be to the death,” +Gui Camoys said, “in consideration of the fact it was my own +helmet. You must undoubtedly be aware, Messire Osmund, that such an +affront is practically without any parallel.” </p> + +<p> This, too, was agreed upon. </p> + +<p> Then, after asking if they needed money, which was courteously +declined, Gui Camoys rode away, and sang as he went. Osmund Heleigh +remained motionless. He raised quivering hands to the sky. </p> + +<p> “Thou hast judged!” he cried. “Thou hast +judged, O puissant Emperor of Heaven! Now pardon! Pardon us twain! +Pardon for unjust stewards of Thy gifts! Thou hast loaned this woman +dominion over England, with all instruments to aid Thy cause, and +this trust she has abused. Thou hast loaned me life and manhood, +agility and wit and strength, all instruments to aid Thy cause. +Talents in a napkin, O God! Repentant we cry to Thee. Pardon for +unjust stewards! Pardon for the ungirt loin, for the service +shirked, for all good deeds undone! Pardon and grace, O King of +kings!” </p> + +<p> Thus he prayed, while Gui Camoys sang, riding deeper into the +tattered, yellowing forest. By an odd chance Camoys had lighted on +that song made by Thibaut of Champagne, beginning <i>Signor, saciez, +ki or ne s’en ira</i>, which denounces all half-hearted +servitors of Heaven; and this he sang with a lilt gayer than his +matter countenanced. Faintly there now came to Osmund and the Queen +the sound of Camoys’ singing, and they found it, in the +circumstances, ominously apt. </p> + +<p> Sang Camoys: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Et vos, par qui je n’ci onques aïe,</p> + <p>Descendez luit en infer le parfont.”</p> +</div> + +<p> Dame Alianora shivered. But she was a capable woman, and so she +said: “I may have made mistakes. But I am sure I never meant +any harm, and I am sure, too, that God will be more sensible about +it than are you poets.” </p> + +<p> They slept that night in Ousley Meadow, and the next afternoon +came safely to Bristol. You may learn elsewhere with what rejoicing +the royal army welcomed the Queen’s arrival, how courage +quickened at sight of the generous virago. In the ebullition Messire +Heleigh was submerged, and Dame Alianora saw nothing more of him +that day. Friday there were counsels, requisitions, orders signed, a +memorial despatched to Pope Urban, chief of all a letter (this in +the Queen’s hand throughout) privily conveyed to the Lady +Maude de Mortemer, who shortly afterward contrived Prince +Edward’s escape from her husband’s gaolership. There was +much sowing of a seed, in fine, that eventually flowered victory. +There was, however, no sign of Osmund Heleigh, though by Dame +Alianora’s order he was sought. </p> + +<p> On Saturday at seven in the morning he came to her lodging, in +complete armor. From the open helmet his wrinkled face, showing like +a wizened nut in a shell, smiled upon her questionings. </p> + +<p> “I go to fight Gui Camoys, madame and Queen.” </p> + +<p> Dame Alianora wrung her hands. “You go to your +death.” </p> + +<p> He answered: “That is true. Therefore I am come to bid you +farewell.” </p> + +<p> The Queen stared at him for a while; on a sudden she broke into +a curious fit of deep but tearless sobbing, which bordered upon +laughter, too. </p> + +<p> “Mon bel esper,” said Osmund Heleigh, gently, +“what is there in all this worthy of your sorrow? The man will +kill me; granted, for he is my junior by some fifteen years, and is +in addition a skilled swordsman. I fail to see that this is +lamentable. Back to Longaville I cannot go after recent happenings; +there a rope’s end awaits me. Here I must in any event shortly +take to the sword, since a beleaguered army has very little need of +ink-pots; and shortly I must be slain in some skirmish, dug under +the ribs perhaps by a greasy fellow I have never seen. I prefer a +clean death at a gentleman’s hands.” </p> + +<p> “It is I who bring about your death!” she said. +“You gave me gallant service, and I have requited you with +death, and it is a great pity.” </p> + +<p> “Indeed the debt is on the other side. The trivial +services I rendered you were such as any gentleman must render a +woman in distress. Naught else have I afforded you, madame, save +very anciently a Sestina. Ho, a Sestina! And in return you have +given me a Sestina of fairer make,—a Sestina of days, six days +of manly common living.” His eyes were fervent. </p> + +<p> She kissed him on either cheek. “Farewell, my +champion!” </p> + +<p> “Ay, your champion. In the twilight of life old Osmund +Heleigh rides forth to defend the quarrel of Alianora of Provence. +Reign wisely, my Queen, so that hereafter men may not say I was +slain in an evil cause. Do not, I pray you, shame my maiden venture +at a man’s work.” </p> + +<p> “I will not shame you,” the Queen proudly said; and +then, with a change of voice: “O my Osmund! My Osmund, you +have a folly that is divine, and I lack it.” </p> + +<p> He caught her by each wrist, and stood crushing both her hands +to his lips, with fierce staring. “Wife of my King! wife of my +King!” he babbled; and then put her from him, crying, “I +have not failed you! Praise God, I have not failed you!” </p> + +<p> From her window she saw him ride away, a rich flush of glitter +and color. In new armor with a smart emblazoned surcoat the lean +pedant sat conspicuously erect; and as he went he sang defiantly, +taunting the weakness of his flesh. </p> + +<p> +Sang Osmund Heleigh: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see</p> + <p>The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling</p> + <p>Never again when in the grave ye be</p> + <p>Incurious of your happiness in spring,</p> + <p>And get no grace of Love, there, whither he</p> + <p>That bartered life for love no love may bring.”</p> +</div> + +<p> +So he rode away and thus out of our history. But in the evening Gui +Camoys came into Bristol under a flag of truce, and behind him heaved a +litter wherein lay Osmund Heleigh’s body. +</p> + +<p> “For this man was frank and courteous,” Camoys said +to the Queen, “and in the matter of the reparation he owed me +acted very handsomely. It is fitting that he should have honorable +interment.” </p> + +<p> “That he shall not lack,” the Queen said, and gently +unclasped from Osmund’s wrinkled neck the thin gold chain, now +locketless. “There was a portrait here,” she said; +“the portrait of a woman whom he loved in his youth, Messire +Camoys. And all his life it lay above his heart.” </p> + +<p> Camoys answered stiffly: “I imagine this same locket to +have been the object which Messire Heleigh flung into the river, +shortly before we began our combat. I do not rob the dead, +madame.” </p> + +<p> “Well,” the Queen said, “he always did queer +things, and so, I shall always wonder what sort of lady he picked +out to love, but it is none of my affair.” </p> + +<p> Afterward she set to work on requisitions in the King’s +name. But Osmund Heleigh she had interred at Ambresbury, commanding +it to be written on his tomb that he died in the Queen’s +cause. </p> + +<p> How the same cause prospered (Nicolas concludes), how presently +Dame Alianora reigned again in England and with what wisdom, and how +in the end this great Queen died a nun at Ambresbury and all England +wept therefor—this you may learn elsewhere. I have chosen to +record six days of a long and eventful life; and (as Messire Heleigh +might have done) I say modestly with him of old, <i>Majores majora +sonent</i>. Nevertheless, I assert that many a forest was once a +pocketful of acorns. </p> + +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE FIRST NOVEL +</p> +<a name="II"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +II +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE TENSON +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Plagues à Dieu ja la nueitz non falhis,</p> + <p>Ni’l mieus amicx lone de mi nos partis,</p> + <p>Ni la gayta jorn ni alba ne vis.</p> + <p>Oy Dieus! oy Dieus! de l’alba tan tost we!”</p> +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE SECOND NOVEL.—ELLINOR OF CASTILE, BEING ENAMORED OF A HANDSOME +PERSON, IS IN HER FLIGHT FROM MARITAL OBLIGATIONS ASSISTED BY HER +HUSBAND, AND IS IN THE END BY HIM CONVINCED OF THE RATIONALITY OF ALL +ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Tenson +</p> + + +<p> In the year of grace 1265 (Nicolas begins), about the festival +of Saint Peter <i>ad Vincula</i>, the Prince de Gâtinais came +to Burgos. Before this he had lodged for three months in the +district of Ponthieu; and the object of his southern journey was to +assure the tenth Alphonso, then ruling in Castile, that the +latter’s sister Ellinor, now resident at Entréchat, was +beyond any reasonable doubt the transcendent lady whose existence +old romancers had anticipated, however cloudily, when they fabled in +remote time concerning Queen Heleine of Sparta. </p> + +<p> There was a postscript to this news. The world knew that the +King of Leon and Castile desired to be King of Germany as well, and +that at present a single vote in the Diet would decide between his +claims and those of his competitor, Earl Richard of Cornwall. De +Gâtinais chaffered fairly; he had a vote, Alphonso had a +sister. So that, in effect—ohé, in effect, he made no +question that his Majesty understood! </p> + +<p> The Astronomer twitched his beard and demanded if the fact that +Ellinor had been a married woman these ten years past was not an +obstacle to the plan which his fair cousin had proposed? </p> + +<p> Here the Prince was accoutred cap-à-pie, and hauled out a +paper. Dating from Viterbo, Clement, Bishop of Rome, servant to the +servants of God, desirous of all health and apostolical blessing for +his well-beloved son in Christ, stated that a compact between a boy +of fifteen and a girl of ten was an affair of no particular moment; +and that in consideration of the covenantors never having clapped +eyes upon each other since the wedding-day,—even had not the +precontract of marriage between the groom’s father and the +bride’s mother rendered a consummation of the childish oath an +obvious and a most heinous enormity,—why, that, in a sentence, +and for all his coy verbosity, the new pontiff was perfectly +amenable to reason. </p> + +<p> So in a month it was settled. Alphonso would give his sister to +de Gâtinais, and in exchange get the latter’s vote to +make Alphonso King of Germany; and Gui Foulques of +Sabionetta—now Clement, fourth Pope to assume that +name—would annul the previous marriage, and in exchange get an +armament to serve him against Manfred, the late and troublesome +tyrant of Sicily and Apulia. The scheme promised to each one of them +that which he in particular desired, and messengers were presently +sent into Ponthieu. </p> + +<p> It is now time we put aside these Castilian matters and speak of +other things. In England, Prince Edward had fought, and won, a +shrewd battle at Evesham. People said, of course, that such behavior +was less in the manner of his nominal father, King Henry, than +reminiscent of Count Manuel of Poictesme, whose portraits certainly +the Prince resembled to an embarrassing extent. Either way, the +barons’ power was demolished, there would be no more +internecine war; and spurred by the unaccustomed idleness, Prince +Edward began to think of the foreign girl he had not seen since the +day he wedded her. She would be a woman by this, and it was +befitting that he claim his wife. He rode with Hawise Bulmer and her +baby to Ambresbury, and at the gate of the nunnery they parted, with +what agonies are immaterial to this history’s progression; the +tale merely tells that, having thus decorously rid himself of his +mistress, the Prince went into Lower Picardy alone, riding at +adventure as he loved to do, and thus came to Entréchat, +where his wife resided with her mother, the Countess Johane. </p> + +<p> In a wood near the castle he approached a company of Spaniards, +four in number, their horses tethered while these men (Oviedans, as +they told him) drank about a great stone which served them for a +table. Being thirsty, he asked and was readily accorded hospitality, +and these five fell into amicable discourse. One fellow asked his +name and business in those parts, and the Prince gave each without +hesitancy as he reached for the bottle, and afterward dropped it +just in time to catch, cannily, with his naked left hand, the +knife-blade with which the rascal had dug at the unguarded ribs. The +Prince was astounded, but he was never a subtle man: here were four +knaves who, for reasons unexplained—but to them of undoubted +cogency—desired his death: manifestly there was here an +actionable difference of opinion; so he had his sword out and killed +the four of them. </p> + +<p> Presently came to him an apple-cheeked boy, habited as a page, +who, riding jauntily through the forest, lighted upon the Prince, +now in bottomless vexation. The lad drew rein, and his lips outlined +a whistle. At his feet were several dead men in various conditions +of dismemberment. And seated among them, as if throned upon this +boulder, was a gigantic and florid person, so tall that the heads of +few men reached to his shoulder; a person of handsome exterior, +high-featured and blond, having a narrow, small head, and vivid +light blue eyes, and the chest of a stallion; a person whose left +eyebrow had an odd oblique droop, so that the stupendous man +appeared to be winking the information that he was in jest. </p> + +<p> “Fair friend,” said the page. “God give you +joy! and why have you converted this forest into a shambles?” +</p> + +<p> The Prince told him as much of the half-hour’s action as +has been narrated. “I have perhaps been rather hasty,” +he considered, by way of peroration, “and it vexes me that I +did not spare, say, one of these lank Spaniards, if only long enough +to ascertain why, in the name of Termagaunt, they should have +desired my destruction.” </p> + +<p> But midway in his tale the boy had dismounted with a gasp, and +he was now inspecting the features of one carcass. “Felons, my +Prince! You have slain some eight yards of felony which might have +cheated the gallows had they got the Princess Ellinor safe to +Burgos. Only two days ago this chalk-eyed fellow conveyed to her a +letter.” </p> + +<p> Prince Edward said, “You appear, lad, to be somewhat +overheels in the confidence of my wife.” </p> + +<p> Now the boy arose and defiantly flung back his head in shrill +laughter. “Your wife! Oh, God have mercy! Your wife, and for +ten years left to her own devices! Why, look you, to-day you and +your wife would not know each other were you two brought face to +face.” </p> + +<p> Prince Edward said, “That is very near the truth.” +But, indeed, it was the absolute truth, and as it concerned him was +already attested. </p> + +<p> “Sire Edward,” the boy then said, “your wife +has wearied of this long waiting till you chose to whistle for her. +Last summer the young Prince de Gâtinais came +a-wooing—and he is a handsome man.” The page made known +all which de Gâtinais and King Alphonso planned, the words +jostling as they came in torrents, but so that one might understand. +“I am her page, my lord. I was to follow her. These fellows +were to be my escort, were to ward off possible pursuit. Cry haro, +beau sire! Cry haro, and shout it lustily, for your wife in company +with six other knaves is at large between here and +Burgos,—that unreasonable wife who grew dissatisfied after a +mere ten years of neglect.” </p> + +<p> “I have been remiss,” the Prince said, and one huge +hand strained at his chin; “yes, perhaps I have been remiss. +Yet it had appeared to me—But as it is, I bid you mount, my +lad!” </p> + +<p> The boy demanded, “And to what end?” </p> + +<p> “Oy Dieus, messire! have I not slain your escort? Why, in +common reason, equity demands that I afford you my protection so far +as Burgos, messire, just as plainly as equity demands I slay de +Gâtinais and fetch back my wife to England.” </p> + +<p> The page wrung exquisite hands with a gesture which was but +partially tinged with anguish, and presently began to laugh. +Afterward these two rode southerly, in the direction of Castile. +</p> + +<p> For it appeared to the intriguing little woman a diverting jest +that in this fashion her husband should be the promoter of her +evasion. It appeared to her more diverting when in two days’ +space she had become fond of him. She found him rather slow of +comprehension, and she was humiliated by the discovery that not an +eyelash of the man was irritated by his wife’s decampment; he +considered, to all appearances, that some property of his had been +stolen, and he intended, quite without passion, to repossess himself +of it, after, of course, punishing the thief. </p> + +<p> This troubled the Princess somewhat; and often, riding by her +stolid husband’s side, the girl’s heart raged at memory +of the decade so newly overpast which had kept her always dependent +on the charity of this or that ungracious patron—on any one +who would take charge of her while the truant husband fought out his +endless squabbles in England. Slights enough she had borne during +the period, and squalor, and physical hunger also she had known, who +was the child of a king and a saint.<a id="footnotetag2" +name="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> But +now she rode toward the dear southland; and presently she would be +rid of this big man, when he had served her purpose; and afterward +she meant to wheedle Alphonso, just as she had always wheedled him, +and later still, she and Etienne would be very happy: in fine, +to-morrow was to be a new day. </p> + +<p> So these two rode southward, and always Prince Edward found this +new page of his—this Miguel de Rueda,—a jolly lad, who +whistled and sang inapposite snatches of balladry, without any +formal ending or beginning, descanting always with the delicate +irrelevancy of a bird-trill. </p> + +<p> +Sang Miguel de Rueda: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Man’s Love, that leads me day by day</p> + <p>Through many a screened and scented way,</p> + <p>Finds to assuage my thirst.</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “No love that may the old love slay,</p> + <p>None sweeter than the first.</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Fond heart of mine, that beats so fast</p> + <p>As this or that fair maid trips past,</p> + <p>Once, and with lesser stir</p> + <p>We viewed the grace of love, at last,</p> + <p>And turned idolater.</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Lad’s Love it was, that in the spring</p> + <p>When all things woke to blossoming</p> + <p>Was as a child that came</p> + <p>Laughing, and filled with wondering,</p> + <p>Nor knowing his own name—”</p> +</div> + +<p> “And still I would prefer to think,” the big man +interrupted, heavily, “that Sicily is not the only allure. I +would prefer to think my wife so beautiful.—And yet, as I +remember her, she was nothing extraordinary.” </p> + +<p> The page a little tartly said that people might forget a deal +within a decade. </p> + +<p> The Prince continued his unriddling of the scheme hatched in +Castile. “When Manfred is driven out of Sicily they will give +the throne to de Gâtinais. He intends to get both a kingdom +and a handsome wife by this neat affair. And in reason, England must +support my Uncle Richard’s claim to the German crown, against +El Sabio—Why, my lad, I ride southward to prevent a war that +would devastate half Europe.” </p> + +<p> “You ride southward in the attempt to rob a miserable +woman of her sole chance of happiness,” Miguel de Rueda +estimated. </p> + +<p> “That is undeniable, if she loves this thrifty Prince, as +indeed I do not question my wife does. Yet our happiness here is a +trivial matter, whereas war is a great disaster. You have not +seen—as I, my little Miguel, have often seen—a man +viewing his death-wound with a face of stupid wonder, a bewildered +wretch in point to die in his lord’s quarrel and understanding +never a word of it. Or a woman, say—a woman’s twisted +and naked body, the breasts yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes +of some village, or the already dripping hoofs which will presently +crush this body. Well, it is to prevent many such ugly spectacles +hereabout that I ride southward.” </p> + +<p> Miguel de Rueda shuddered. But, “She has her right to +happiness,” the page stubbornly said. </p> + +<p> “She has only one right,” the Prince retorted; +“because it has pleased the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us +twain to lofty stations, to entrust to us the five talents of the +parable; whence is our debt to Him, being fivefold, so much the +greater than that of common persons. Therefore the more is it our +sole right, being fivefold, to serve God without faltering, and +therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more an +inconsiderable matter. For, as I have read in the Annals of the +Romans—” He launched upon the story of King Pompey and +his daughter, whom a certain duke regarded with impure and improper +emotions. “My little Miguel, that ancient king is our Heavenly +Father, that only daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here +delivered for protection to five soldiers—that is, to the five +senses,—to preserve it from the devil, the world, and the +flesh. But, alas! the too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon +the gaudy vapors of this world—” </p> + +<p> “You whine like a canting friar,” the page +complained; “and I can assure you that the Lady Ellinor was +prompted rather than hindered by her God-given faculties of sight +and hearing and so on when she fell in love with de Gâtinais. +Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer and the more +intelligent man, and it was God who bestowed on her sufficient wit +to perceive the superiority of de Gâtinais. And what am I to +deduce from this?” </p> + +<p> The Prince reflected. At last he said: “I have also read +in these same Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on +account of the malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm +will engender; but if the body be smitten by lightning, in a few +days the carcass will abound with vermin. My little Miguel, both men +and women are at birth empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no +worm—that is, no virtue. But once they are struck with +lightning—that is, by the grace of God,—they are +astonishingly fruitful in good works.” </p> + +<p> The page began to laugh. “You are hopelessly absurd, my +Prince, though you will never know it,—and I hate you a +little,—and I envy you a great deal.” </p> + +<p> “Ah, but,” Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, +for the man was never quick-witted,—“but it is not for +my own happiness that I ride southward.” </p> + +<p> The page then said, “What is her name?” </p> + +<p> Prince Edward answered, very fondly, “Hawise.” </p> + +<p> “I hate her, too,” said Miguel de Rueda; “and +I think that the holy angels alone know how profoundly I envy +her.” </p> + +<p> In the afternoon of the same day they neared Ruffec, and at the +ford found three brigands ready, two of whom the Prince slew, and +the other fled. </p> + +<p> Next night they supped at Manneville, and sat afterward in the +little square, tree-chequered, that lay before their inn. Miguel had +procured a lute from the innkeeper, and he strummed idly as these +two debated together of great matters; about them was an +immeasurable twilight, moonless, but tempered by many stars, and +everywhere they could hear an agreeable whispering of leaves. </p> + +<p> “Listen, my Prince,” the boy said: “here is +one view of the affair.” And he began to chant, without +rhyming, without raising his voice above the pitch of talk, while +the lute monotonously accompanied his chanting. </p> + +<p> +Sang Miguel: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> <p +class="i2"> “Passeth a little while, +and Irus the beggar and Menephtah the high king are at sorry unison, +and Guenevere is a skull. Multitudinously we tread toward oblivion, +as ants hasten toward sugar, and presently Time cometh with his +broom. Multitudinously we tread dusty road toward oblivion; but +yonder the sun shines upon a grass-plot, converting it into an +emerald; and I am aweary of the trodden path.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> “Vine-crowned is +the fair peril that guards the grasses yonder, and her breasts are +naked. ‘Vanity of Vanities!’ saith the beloved. But she +whom I love seems very far away to-night, though I might be with her +if I would. And she may not aid me now, for not even love is +all-powerful. She is most dear of created women, and very wise, but +she may never understand that at any time one grows aweary of the +trodden path.</p> + + +<p class="stanzai2"> “At sight of my +beloved, love closes over my heart like a flood. For the sake of my +beloved I have striven, with a good endeavor, to my tiny uttermost. +Pardie, I am not Priam at the head of his army! A little while and I +will repent; to-night I cannot but remember that there are women +whose lips are of a livelier tint, that life is short at best, that +wine evokes in me some admiration for myself, and that I am aweary +of the trodden path.</p> + + +<p class="stanzai2"> “She is very far +from me to-night. Yonder in the Hörselberg they exult and make +sweet songs, songs which are sweeter, immeasurably sweeter, than +this song of mine, but in the trodden path I falter, for I am +tired, tired in every fibre of me, and I am aweary of the trodden +path”</p> </div> + +<p> Followed a silence. “Ignorance spoke there,” the +Prince said. “It is the song of a woman, or else of a boy who +is very young. Give me the lute, my little Miguel.” And +presently the Prince, too, sang. </p> + +<p> Sang the Prince: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<p class="i2"> “I was in a path, and I +trod toward the citadel of the land’s Seigneur, and on either +side were pleasant and forbidden meadows, having various names. And +one trod with me who babbled of the brooding mountains and of the +low-lying and adjacent clouds; of the west wind and of the budding +fruit-trees. He debated the significance of these things, and he +went astray togather violets, while I walked in the trodden +path.”</p> + + +<p class="stanzai2"> “He babbled of +genial wine and of the alert lips of women, of swinging censers and +of the serene countenances of priests, and of the clear, lovely +colors of bread and butter, and his heart was troubled by a world +profuse in beauty. And he leaped a stile to share his allotted +provision with a dying dog, and afterward, being hungry, a wall to +pilfer apples, while I walked in the trodden path.</p> + + +<p class="stanzai2"> “He babbled of +Autumn’s bankruptcy and of the age-long lying promises of +Spring; and of his own desire to be at rest; and of running waters +and of decaying leaves. He babbled of the far-off stars; and he +debated whether they were the eyes of God or gases which burned, and +he demonstrated, with logic, that neither existed. At times he +stumbled as he stared about him and munched his apples, so that he +was all bemired, but I walked in the trodden path.</p> + + +<p class="stanzai2"> “And the path led +to the gateway of a citadel, and through the gateway. ‘Let us +not enter,’ he said, ‘for the citadel is vacant, and, +moreover, I am in profound terror, and, besides, I have not as yet +eaten all my apples.’ And he wept aloud, but I was not afraid, +for I had walked in the trodden path.”</p> +</div> + +<p> Again there was a silence. “You paint a dreary world, my +Prince.” </p> + +<p> “My little Miguel, I paint the world as the Eternal Father +made it. The laws of the place are written large, so that all may +read them; and we know that every road, whether it be my trodden +path or some byway through your gayer meadows, yet leads in the end +to God. We have our choice,—or to come to Him as a laborer +comes at evening for the day’s wages fairly earned, or to come +as a roisterer haled before the magistrate.” </p> + +<p> “I consider you to be in the right,” the boy said, +after a lengthy interval, “although I decline—and +decline emphatically—to believe you.” </p> + +<p> The Prince laughed. “There spoke Youth,” he said, +and he sighed as though he were a patriarch. “But we have +sung, we two, the Eternal Tenson of God’s will and of +man’s desires. And I claim the prize, my Little Miguel.” +</p> + +<p> Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. “You have +conquered, my very dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that +Hawise—” But Miguel de Rueda choked. “Oh, I do not +understand! and yet in part I understand!” the boy wailed in +the darkness. </p> + +<p> And the Prince laid one hand upon his page’s hair, and +smiled in the darkness to note how soft was this hair, since the man +was less a fool than at first view you might have taken him to be; +and he said: </p> + +<p> “One must play the game out fairly, my lad. We are no +little people, she and I, the children of many kings, of God’s +regents here on earth; and it was never reasonable, my Miguel, that +gentlefolk should cheat at their dicing.” </p> + +<p> The same night Miguel de Rueda repeated the prayer which Saint +Theophilus made long ago to the Mother of God: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Dame, je n’ose,</p> + <p>Flors d’aiglentier et lis et rose,</p> + <p>En qui li filz Diex se repose,”</p> +</div> + +<p> and so on. Or, in other wording: “Hearken, O gracious +Lady! thou that art more fair than any flower of the eglantine, more +comely than the blossoming of the rose or of the lily! thou to whom +was confided the very Son of God! Harken, for I am afraid! afford +counsel to me that am ensnared by Satan and know not what to do! +Never will I make an end of praying. O Virgin débonnaire! O +honored Lady! Thou that wast once a woman—!” </p> + +<p> So he prayed, and upon the next day as these two rode southward, +he sang half as if in defiance. </p> + +<p> Sang Miguel: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“And still,—whatever years impend</p> + <p>To witness Time a fickle friend,</p> + <p>And Youth a dwindling fire,—</p> + <p>I must adore till all years end</p> + <p>My first love, Heart’s Desire.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“I may not hear men speak of her</p> + <p>Unmoved, and vagrant pulses stir</p> + <p>To greet her passing-by,</p> + <p>And I, in all her worshipper</p> + <p>Must serve her till I die.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> “For I remember: this is she</p> + <p>That reigns in one man’s memory</p> + <p>Immune to age and fret,</p> + <p>And stays the maid I may not see</p> + <p>Nor win to, nor forget.”</p> +</div> + +<p> It was on the following day, near Bazas, that these two +encountered Adam de Gourdon, a Provençal knight, with whom +the Prince fought for a long while, without either contestant giving +way; in consequence a rendezvous was fixed for the November of that +year, and afterward the Prince and de Gourdon parted, highly pleased +with each other. </p> + +<p> Thus the Prince and his attendant came, in late September, to +Mauléon, on the Castilian frontier, and dined there at the +<i>Fir Cone</i>. Three or four lackeys were about—some exalted +person’s retinue? Prince Edward hazarded to the swart little +landlord, as the Prince and Miguel lingered over the remnants of +their meal. </p> + +<p> Yes, the fellow informed them: the Prince de Gâtinais had +lodged there for a whole week, watching the north road, as +circumspect of all passage as a cat over a mouse-hole. Eh, +monseigneur expected some one, doubtless—a lady, it might +be,—the gentlefolk had their escapades like every one else. +The innkeeper babbled vaguely, for on a sudden he was very much +afraid of his gigantic patron. </p> + +<p> “You will show me to his room,” Prince Edward said, +with a politeness that was ingratiating. </p> + +<p> The host shuddered and obeyed. </p> + +<p> Miguel de Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips +drumming upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his +shoulders, all resolution. On the stairway he passed the black +little landlord, who was now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. +But Miguel de Rueda went on to the room above. The door was ajar. He +paused there. </p> + +<p> De Gâtinais had risen from his dinner and stood facing the +door. He, too, was a blond man and the comeliest of his day. And at +sight of him awoke in the woman’s heart all the old +tenderness; handsome and brave and witty she knew him to be, as +indeed the whole world knew him to be distinguished by every namable +grace; and the innate weakness of de Gâtinais, which she alone +suspected, made him now seem doubly dear. Fiercely she wanted to +shield him, less from bodily hurt than from that self-degradation +which she cloudily apprehended to be at hand; the test was come, and +Etienne would fail. Thus much she knew with a sick, illimitable +surety, and she loved de Gâtinais with a passion which dwarfed +comprehension. </p> + +<p> “O Madame the Virgin!” prayed Miguel de Rueda, +“thou that wast once a woman, even as I am now a woman! grant +that the man may slay him quickly! grant that he may slay Etienne +very quickly, honored Lady, so that my Etienne may die +unshamed!” </p> + +<p> “I must question, messire,” de Gâtinais was +saying, “whether you have been well inspired. Yes, quite +frankly, I do await the arrival of her who is your nominal wife; and +your intervention at this late stage, I take it, can have no outcome +save to render you absurd. So, come now! be advised by me, +messire—” </p> + +<p> Prince Edward said, “I am not here to talk.” </p> + +<p> “—For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary +disputation the cutting of one gentleman’s throat by another +gentleman is well enough, since the argument is unanswerable. Yet in +this case we have each of us too much to live for; you to govern +your reconquered England, and I—you perceive that I am +candid—to achieve in turn the kingship of another realm. Now +to secure this realm, possession of the Lady Ellinor is to me +essential; to you she is nothing.” </p> + +<p> “She is a woman whom I have deeply wronged,” Prince +Edward said, “and to whom, God willing, I mean to make +atonement. Ten years ago they wedded us, willy-nilly, to avert the +impending war between Spain and England; to-day El Sabio intends to +purchase Germany with her body as the price; you to get Sicily as +her husband. Mort de Dieu! is a woman thus to be bought and sold +like hog’s flesh! We have other and cleaner customs, we of +England.” </p> + +<p> “Eh, and who purchased the woman first?” de +Gâtinais spat at him, viciously, for the Frenchman now saw his +air-castle shaken to the corner-stone. </p> + +<p> “They wedded me to the child in order that a great war +might be averted. I acquiesced, since it appeared preferable that +two people suffer inconvenience rather than many thousands be slain. +And still this is my view of the matter. Yet afterward I failed her. +Love had no clause in our agreement; but I owed her more protection +than I have afforded. England has long been no place for women. I +thought she would comprehend that much. But I know very little of +women. Battle and death are more wholesome companions, I now +perceive, than such folk as you and Alphonso. Woman is the weaker +vessel—the negligence was mine—I may not blame +her.” The big and simple man was in an agony of repentance. +</p> + +<p> On a sudden he strode forward, his sword now shifted to his left +hand and his right hand outstretched. “One and all, we are +weaklings in the net of circumstance. Shall one herring, then, blame +his fellow if his fellow jostle him? We walk as in a mist of error, +and Belial is fertile in allurements; yet always it is granted us to +behold that sin is sin. I have perhaps sinned through anger, Messire +de Gâtinais, more deeply than you have planned to sin through +luxury and through ambition. Let us then cry quits, Messire de +Gâtinais, and afterward part in peace, and in common +repentance.” </p> + +<p> “And yield you Ellinor?” de Gâtinais said. +“Oh no, messire, I reply to you with Arnaud de Marveil, that +marvellous singer of eld, ‘They may bear her from my presence, +but they can never untie the knot which unites my heart to her; for +that heart, so tender and so constant, God alone divides with my +lady, and the portion which God possesses He holds but as a part of +her domain, and as her vassal.’” “This is +blasphemy,” Prince Edward now retorted, “and for such +observations alone you merit death. Will you always talk and talk +and talk? I perceive that the devil is far more subtle than you, +messire, and leads you, like a pig with a ring in his nose, toward +gross iniquity. Messire, I tell you that for your soul’s +health I doubly mean to kill you now. So let us make an end of +this.” </p> + +<p> De Gâtinais turned and took up his sword. “Since you +will have it,” he rather regretfully said; “yet I +reiterate that you play an absurd part. Your wife has deserted you, +has fled in abhorrence of you. For three weeks she has been tramping +God knows whither or in what company—” </p> + +<p> He was here interrupted. “What the Lady Ellinor has +done,” Prince Edward crisply said, “was at my request. +We were wedded at Burgos; it was natural that we should desire our +reunion to take place at Burgos; and she came to Burgos with an +escort which I provided.” </p> + +<p> De Gâtinais sneered. “So that is the tale you will +deliver to the world?” </p> + +<p> “After I have slain you,” the Prince said, +“yes.” </p> + +<p> “The reservation is wise. For if I were dead, Messire +Edward, there would be none to know that you risk all for a drained +goblet, for an orange already squeezed—quite dry, +messire.” </p> + +<p> “Face of God!” the Prince said. </p> + +<p> But de Gâtinais flung back both arms in a great gesture, +so that he knocked a flask of claret from the table at his rear. +“I am candid, my Prince. I would not see any brave gentleman +slain in a cause so foolish. In consequence I kiss and tell. In +effect, I was eloquent, I was magnificent, so that in the end her +reserve was shattered like the wooden flask yonder at our feet. Is +it worth while, think you, that our blood flow like this +flagon’s contents?” </p> + +<p> “Liar!” Prince Edward said, very softly. “O +hideous liar! Already your eyes shift!” He drew near and +struck the Frenchman. “Talk and talk and talk! and lying talk! +I am ashamed while I share the world with a thing as base as +you.” </p> + +<p> De Gâtinais hurled upon him, cursing, sobbing in an +abandoned fury. In an instant the place resounded like a smithy, for +there were no better swordsmen living than these two. The +eavesdropper could see nothing clearly. Round and round they veered +in a whirl of turmoil. Presently Prince Edward trod upon the broken +flask, smashing it. His foot slipped in the spilth of wine, and the +huge body went down like an oak, his head striking one leg of the +table. </p> + +<p> “A candle!” de Gâtinais cried, and he panted +now—“a hundred candles to the Virgin of +Beaujolais!” He shortened his sword to stab the Prince of +England. </p> + +<p> The eavesdropper came through the doorway, and flung herself +between Prince Edward and the descending sword. The sword dug deep +into her shoulder, so that she shrieked once with the cold pain of +this wound. Then she rose, ashen. “Liar!” she said. +“Oh, I am shamed while I share the world with a thing as base +as you!” </p> + +<p> In silence de Gâtinais regarded her. There was a long +interval before he said, “Ellinor!” and then again, +“Ellinor!” like a man bewildered. </p> + +<p> “<i>I was eloquent, I was magnificent</i>” she said, +“<i>so that in the end her reserve was shattered</i>! +Certainly, messire, it is not your death which I desire, since a man +dies so very, very quickly. I desire for you—I know not what I +desire for you!” the girl wailed. </p> + +<p> “You desire that I should endure this present +moment,” de Gâtinais replied; “for as God reigns, +I love you, of whom I have spoken infamy, and my shame is very +bitter.” </p> + +<p> She said: “And I, too, loved you. It is strange to think +of that.” </p> + +<p> “I was afraid. Never in my life have I been afraid before +to-day. But I was afraid of this terrible and fair and righteous +man. I saw all hope of you vanish, all hope of Sicily—in +effect, I lied as a cornered beast spits out his venom.” </p> + +<p> “I know,” she answered. “Give me water, +Etienne.” She washed and bound the Prince’s head with a +vinegar-soaked napkin. Ellinor sat upon the floor, the big +man’s head upon her knee. “He will not die of this, for +he is of strong person. Look you, Messire de Gâtinais, you and +I are not strong. We are so fashioned that we can enjoy only the +pleasant things of life. But this man can enjoy—enjoy, mark +you—the commission of any act, however distasteful, if he +think it to be his duty. There is the difference. I cannot fathom +him. But it is now necessary that I become all which he +loves—since he loves it,—and that I be in thought and +deed all which he desires. For I have heard the Tenson +through.” </p> + +<p> “You love him!” said de Gâtinais. </p> + +<p> She glanced upward with a pitiable smile. “No, it is you +whom I love, my Etienne. You cannot understand how at this very +moment every fibre of me—heart, soul, and body—may be +longing just to comfort you, and to give you all which you desire, +my Etienne, and to make you happy, my handsome Etienne, at however +dear a cost. No; you will never understand that. And since you may +not understand, I merely bid you go and leave me with my +husband.” </p> + +<p> And then there fell between these two an infinite silence. </p> + +<p> “Listen,” de Gâtinais said; “grant me +some little credit for what I do. You are alone; the man is +powerless. My fellows are within call. A word secures the +Prince’s death; a word gets me you and Sicily. And I do not +speak that word, for you are my lady as well as his, and your will +is my one law.” </p> + +<p> But there was no mercy in the girl, no more for him than for +herself. The big head lay upon her breast; she caressed the gross +hair of it ever so lightly. “These are tinsel oaths,” +she crooned, as if rapt with incurious content; “these are the +old empty protestations of all you strutting poets. A word gets you +what you desire! Then why do you not speak that word? Why do you not +speak many words, and become again as eloquent and as magnificent as +you were when you contrived that adultery about which you were just +now telling my husband?” </p> + +<p> De Gâtinais raised clenched hands. “I am +shamed,” he said; and then he said, “It is just.” +</p> + +<p> He left the room and presently rode away with his men. I say +that, here at last, he had done a knightly deed, but she thought +little of it, never raised her head as the troop clattered from +Mauléon, with a lessening beat which lapsed now into the +blunders of an aging fly who doddered about the window yonder. </p> + +<p> She stayed thus, motionless, her meditations adrift in the +future; and that which she foreread left her not all sorry nor +profoundly glad, for living seemed by this, though scarcely the +merry and colorful business which she had esteemed it, yet +immeasurably the more worth while. </p> + +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE SECOND NOVEL +</p> +<a name="III"></a> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +III +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Leixant a part le stil dels trobados,</p> + <p>Dos grans dezigs ban combatut ma pensa,</p> + <p>Mas lo voler vers un seguir dispensa:</p> + <p>Yo l’vos publich, amar dretament vos.”</p> +</div> + +<p class="synopsis"> +THE THIRD NOVEL.—MEREGRETT OF FRANCE, THINKING TO PRESERVE A +HOODWINKED GENTLEMAN, ANNOYS A SPIDER; AND BY THE GRACE OF DESTINY THE +WEB OF THAT CUNNING INSECT ENTRAPS A BUTTERFLY, A WASP, AND THEN A GOD; +WHO SHATTERS IT. +</p> + + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Rat-Trap +</p> + + +<p> In the year of grace 1298, a little before Candlemas (thus +Nicolas begins), came letters to the first King Edward of England +from his kinsman and ambassador to France, Earl Edmund of Lancaster. +It was perfectly apparent, the Earl wrote, that the French King +meant to surrender to the Earl’s lord and brother neither the +duchy of Guienne nor the Lady Blanch. This lady, I must tell you, +was now affianced to King Edward, whose first wife, Dame Ellinor, +had died eight years before this time. </p> + +<p> The courier found Sire Edward at Ipswich, midway in celebration +of his daughter’s marriage to the Count of Holland. The King +read the letters through and began to laugh; and presently broke +into a rage such as was possible (men whispered) only to the +demon-tainted blood of Oriander’s descendants. Next day the +keeper of the privy purse entered upon the house-hold-books a +considerable sum “to make good a large ruby and an emerald +lost out of his coronet when the King’s Grace was pleased to +throw it into the fire”; and upon the same day the King +recalled Lancaster. The King then despatched yet another embassy +into France to treat about Sire Edward’s marriage. This last +embassy was headed by the Earl of Aquitaine: his lieutenant was Lord +Pevensey, the King’s natural son by Hawise Bulmer. </p> + +<p> The Earl got audience of the French King at Mezelais. Walking +alone came this Earl of Aquitaine, with a large retinue, into the +hall where the barons of France stood according to their rank; in +unadorned russet were the big Earl and his attendants, but upon the +scarlets and purples of the French lords many jewels shone: it was +as though through a corridor of gayly painted sunlit glass that the +grave Earl came to the dais where sat King Philippe. </p> + +<p> The King had risen at close sight of the new envoy, and had +gulped once or twice, and without speaking, had hurriedly waved his +lords out of ear-shot. The King’s perturbation was very +extraordinary. </p> + +<p> “Fair cousin,” the Earl now said, without any +prelude, “four years ago I was affianced to your sister, Dame +Blanch. You stipulated that Gascony be given up to you in guaranty, +as a settlement on any children I might have by that incomparable +lady. I assented, and yielded you the province, upon the +understanding, sworn to according to the faith of loyal kings, that +within forty days you assign to me its seignory as your vassal. And +I have had of you since then neither my province nor my betrothed +wife, but only excuses, Sire Philippe.” </p> + +<p> With eloquence the Frenchman touched upon the emergencies to +which the public weal so often drives men of high station, and upon +his private grief over the necessity—unavoidable, +alas!—of returning a hard answer before the council; and +became so voluble that Sire Edward merely laughed in that big-lunged +and disconcerting way of his, and afterward lodged for a week at +Mezelais, nominally passing by his minor title of Earl of Aquitaine, +and as his own ambassador. </p> + +<p> Negotiations became more swift of foot, since a man serves +himself with zeal. In addition, the French lords could make nothing +of a politician so thick-witted that he replied to every +consideration of expediency with a parrot-like reiteration of the +circumstance that already the bargain was signed and sworn to: in +consequence, while daily they fumed over his stupidity, daily he +gained his point. During this period he was, upon one pretext or +another, very often in the company of his affianced wife, Dame +Blanch. </p> + +<p> This lady, I must tell you, was the handsomest of her day; there +could nowhere be found a creature more agreeable to every sense; and +she compelled the adoring regard of men, it is recorded, not gently +but in an imperious fashion. Sire Edward, who, till this, had loved +her merely by report, and, in accordance with the high custom of +old, through many perusals of her portrait, now appeared besotted. +He was an aging man, near sixty, huge and fair, with a crisp beard, +and the bright unequal eyes of Manuel of Poictesme. The better-read +at Mezelais began to liken this so candidly enamored monarch and his +Princess to Sieur Hercules at the feet of Queen Omphale. </p> + +<p> The court hunted and slew a stag of ten in the woods of +Ermenoueïl, which stand thick about the château; and at +the hunt’s end, these two had dined at Rigon the +forester’s hut, in company with Dame Meregrett, the French +King’s younger sister. She sat a little apart from the +betrothed, and stared through the hut’s one window. We know, +nowadays, it was not merely the trees she was considering. </p> + +<p> Dame Blanch seemed undisposed to mirth. “We have slain the +stag, beau sire,” she said, “and have made of his death +a brave diversion. To-day we have had our sport of death,—and +presently the gay years wind past us, as our cavalcade came toward +the stag, and God’s incurious angel slays us, much as we slew +the stag. And we shall not understand, and we shall wonder, as the +stag did, in helpless wonder. And Death will have his sport of us, +as if in atonement.” Her big eyes shone, as when the sun +glints upon a sand-bottomed pool. “Ohé, I have known +such happiness of late, beau sire, that I am hideously afraid to +die.” </p> + +<p> The King answered, “I too have been very happy of +late.” </p> + +<p> “But it is profitless to talk about death thus drearily. +Let us flout him, instead, with some gay song.” And thereupon +she handed Sire Edward a lute. </p> + +<p> The King accepted it. “Death is not reasonably mocked by +any person,” Sire Edward said, “since in the end he +conquers, and of the lips that gibed at him remains but a little +dust. Rather should I, who already stand beneath a lifted sword, +make for my destined and inescapable conqueror a Sirvente, which is +the Song of Service.” </p> + +<p> +Sang Sire Edward:<a id="footnotetag3" name="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “I sing of Death, that comes unto the king,</p> + <p>And lightly plucks him from the cushioned throne;</p> + <p>And drowns his glory and his warfaring</p> + <p>In unrecorded dim oblivion;</p> + <p>And girds another with the sword thereof;</p> + <p>And sets another in his stead to reign;</p> + <p>And ousts the remnant, nakedly to gain</p> + <p>Styx’ formless shore and nakedly complain</p> + <p>Midst twittering ghosts lamenting life and love.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “For Death is merciless: a crack-brained king</p> + <p>He raises in the place of Prester John,</p> + <p>Smites Priam, and mid-course in conquering</p> + <p>Bids Caesar pause; the wit of Salomon,</p> + <p>The wealth of Nero and the pride thereof,</p> + <p>And battle-prowess—or of Tamburlaine</p> + <p>Darius, Jeshua, or Charlemaigne,—</p> + <p>Wheedle and bribe and surfeit Death in vain,</p> + <p>And get no grace of him nor any love.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Incuriously he smites the armored king</p> + <p>And tricks his counsellors—”</p> +</div> + +<p> “True, O God!” murmured the tiny woman, who sat +beside the window yonder. With that, Dame Meregrett rose, and passed +from the room. </p> + +<p> The two lovers started, and laughed, and afterward paid little +heed to her outgoing. Sire Edward had put aside the lute and sat now +regarding the Princess. His big left hand propped the bearded chin; +his grave countenance was flushed, and his intent eyes shone under +their shaggy brows, very steadily, although the left eye was now so +nearly shut as to reveal the merest spark. </p> + +<p> Irresolutely, Dame Blanch plucked at her gown; then rearranged a +fold of it, and with composure awaited the ensuing action, afraid at +bottom, but not at all ill-pleased; and she looked downward. </p> + +<p> The King said: “Never before were we two alone, madame. +Fate is very gracious to me this morning.” </p> + +<p> “Fate,” the lady considered, “has never denied +much to the Hammer of the Scots.” </p> + +<p> “She has denied me nothing,” he sadly said, +“save the one thing that makes this business of living seem a +rational proceeding. Fame and power and wealth fate has accorded me, +no doubt, but never the common joys of life. And, look you, my +Princess, I am of aging person now. During some thirty years I have +ruled England according to my interpretation of God’s will as +it was anciently made manifest by the holy Evangelists; and during +that period I have ruled England not without odd by-ends of +commendation: yet behold, to-day I forget the world-applauded, +excellent King Edward, and remember only Edward +Plantagenet—hot-blooded and desirous man!—of whom that +much-commended king has made a prisoner all these years.” </p> + +<p> “It is the duty of exalted persons,” Blanch +unsteadily said, “to put aside such private inclinations as +their breasts may harbor—” </p> + +<p> He said, “I have done what I might for the happiness of +every Englishman within my realm saving only Edward Plantagenet; and +now I think his turn to be at hand.” Then the man kept +silence; and his hot appraisal daunted her. </p> + +<p> “Lord,” she presently faltered, “lord, you +know that we are already betrothed, and, in sober verity, Love +cannot extend his laws between husband and wife, since the gifts of +love are voluntary, and husband and wife are but the slaves of +duty—” </p> + +<p> “Troubadourish nonsense!” Sire Edward said; +“yet it is true that the gifts of love are voluntary. And +therefore—Ha, most beautiful, what have you and I to do with +all this chaffering over Guienne?” The two stood very close to +each other now. Blanch said, “It is a high +matter—” Then on a sudden the full-veined girl was +aglow. “It is a trivial matter.” He took her in his +arms, since already her cheeks flared in scarlet anticipation of the +event. </p> + +<p> Thus holding her, he wooed the girl tempestuously. Here, indeed, +was Sieur Hercules enslaved, burned by a fiercer fire than that of +Nessus, and the huge bulk of the unconquerable visibly shaken by his +adoration. In a disordered tapestry of verbiage, aflap in winds of +passion, she presently beheld herself prefigured by Balkis, the +Judean’s lure, and by that Princess of Cyprus who reigned in +Aristotle’s time, and by Nicolete, the King’s daughter +of Carthage,—since the first flush of morning was as a +rush-light before her resplendency, the man swore; and in +conclusion, he likened her to a modern Countess of Tripolis, for +love of whom he, like Rudel, had cleft the seas, and losing whom he +must inevitably die as did Rudel. Sire Edward snapped his fingers +now over any consideration of Guienne. He would conquer for her all +Muscovy and all Cataia, too, if she desired mere acreage. Meanwhile +he wanted her, and his hard and savage passion beat down opposition +as if with a bludgeon. </p> + +<p> “Heart’s emperor,” the trembling girl replied, +“I think that you were cast in some larger mould than we of +France. Oh, none of us may dare resist you! and I know that nothing +matters, nothing in all the world, save that you love me. Then take +me, since you will it,—and take me not as King, since you will +otherwise, but as Edward Plantagenet. For listen! by good luck you +have this afternoon despatched Rigon for Chevrieul, where to-morrow +we were to hunt the great boar. So to-night this hut will be +unoccupied.” </p> + +<p> The man was silent. He had a gift that way when occasion served. +</p> + +<p> “Here, then, beau sire! here, then, at nine, you are to +meet me with my chaplain. Behold, he marries us, as glibly as though +we two were peasants. Poor king and princess!” cried Dame +Blanch, and in a voice which thrilled him, “shall ye not, +then, dare to be but man and woman?” </p> + +<p> “Ha!” the King said. “So the chaplain makes a +third! Well, the King is pleased to loose his prisoner, that +long-imprisoned Edward Plantagenet: and I will do it.” </p> + +<p> So he came that night, without any retinue, and habited as a +forester, with a horn swung about his neck, into the unlighted hut +of Rigon the forester, and he found a woman there, though not the +woman whom he had expected. </p> + +<p> “Treachery, beau sire! Horrible treachery!” she +wailed. </p> + +<p> “I have encountered it before this,” the big man +said. </p> + +<p> “Presently will come to you not Blanch but Philippe, with +many men to back him. And presently they will slay you. You have +been trapped, beau sire. Ah, for the love of God, go! Go, while +there is yet time!” Sire Edward reflected. Undoubtedly, to +light on Edward Longshanks alone in a forest would appear to King +Philippe, if properly attended, a tempting chance to settle divers +difficulties, once for all; and Sire Edward knew the conscience of +his old opponent to be invulnerable. The act would violate the core +of hospitality and knighthood, no doubt, but its outcome would be a +very definite gain to France, and for the rest, merely a dead body +in a ditch. Not a monarch in Christendom, Sire Edward reflected, but +feared and in consequence hated the Hammer of the Scots, and in +further consequence would not lift a finger to avenge him; and not a +being in the universe would rejoice more heartily at the success of +Philippe’s treachery than would Sire Edward’s son and +immediate successor, the young Prince Edward of Caernarvon. Taking +matters by and large, Philippe had all the powers of common-sense to +back him in contriving an assassination. </p> + +<p> What Sire Edward said was, “Dame Blanch, then, knew of +this?” But Meregrett’s pitiful eyes had already answered +him, and he laughed a little. </p> + +<p> “In that event, I have to-night enregistered my name among +the goodly company of Love’s Lunatics,—as yokefellow +with Dan Merlin in his thornbush, and with wise Salomon when he +capered upon the high places of Chemosh, and with Duke Ares +sheepishly agrin in the net of Mulciber. Rogues all, madame! fools +all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and allures the soul to such +sensual delights as bar its passage toward the eternal life wherein +alone lies the empire and the heritage of the soul. And why does +this carnal prison so impede the soul? Because Satan once ranked +among the sons of God, and the Eternal Father, as I take it, has not +yet forgotten the antique relationship,—and hence it is +permitted even in our late time that always the flesh rebel against +the spirit, and that always these so tiny and so thin-voiced +tricksters, these highly tinted miracles of iniquity, so gracious in +demeanor and so starry-eyed—” </p> + +<p> Then he turned and pointed, no longer the orotund zealot but the +expectant captain now. “Look, my Princess!” In the +pathway from which he had recently emerged stood a man in full armor +like a sentinel. “Mort de Dieu, we can but try to get out of +this,” Sire Edward said. </p> + +<p> “You should have tried without talking so much,” +replied Meregrett. She followed him. And presently, in a big splash +of moonlight, the armed man’s falchion glittered across their +way. “Back,” he bade them, “for by the +King’s orders, I can let no man pass.” </p> + +<p> “It would be very easy now to strangle this +herring,” Sire Edward reflected. </p> + +<p> “But it is not easy to strangle a whole school of +herring,” the fellow retorted. “Hoh, Messire +d’Aquitaine, the bushes of Ermenoueîl are alive with my +associates. The hut yonder, in effect, is girdled by them,—and +we have our orders to let no man pass.” </p> + +<p> “Have you any orders concerning women?” the King +said. </p> + +<p> The man deliberated. Sire Edward handed him three gold pieces. +“There was assuredly no specific mention of petticoats,” +the soldier now recollected, “and in consequence I dare to +pass the Princess, against whom certainly nothing can be +planned.” </p> + +<p> “Why, in that event,” Sire Edward said, “we +two had as well bid each other adieu.” </p> + +<p> But Meregrett only said, “You bid me go?” </p> + +<p> He waved his hand. “Since there is no choice. For that +which you have done—however tardily—I thank you. +Meantime I return to Rigon’s hut to rearrange my toga as King +Caesar did when the assassins fell upon him, and to encounter with +due decorum whatever Dame Luck may prefer.” </p> + +<p> She said, “You go to your death.” </p> + +<p> He shrugged his broad shoulders. “In the end we +necessarily die.” </p> + +<p> Dame Meregrett turned, and without faltering passed back into +the hut. </p> + +<p> When he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, +Sire Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation. +“Presently come your brother and his tattling lords. To be +discovered here with me at night, alone, means trouble for you. If +Philippe chances to fall into one of his Capetian rages it means +death.” </p> + +<p> She answered, as though she were thinking about other matters, +“Yes.” </p> + +<p> Now, for the first time, Sire Edward regarded her with profound +consideration. To the finger-tips this so-little lady showed a +descendant of the holy Lewis whom he had known and loved in old +years. Small and thinnish she was, with soft and profuse hair that, +for all its blackness, gleamed in the lamplight with stray ripples +of brilliancy, as you may see sparks shudder to extinction over +burning charcoal. She had the Valois nose, long and delicate in +form, and overhanging a short upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious +in tint, and the whiteness of her skin would have matched the +Hyperborean snows tidily enough. As for her eyes, the customary +similes of the court poets were gigantic onyxes or ebony highly +polished and wet with May dew. These eyes were too big for her +little face: they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which +nervously endured each incident of life, like a foreigner uneasily +acquiescent to the custom of the country. </p> + +<p> Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. +“Madame, I do not understand.” </p> + +<p> Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. “It +means that I love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for +presently you die. Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may +hearten me to live.” </p> + +<p> The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming +to Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful +haze of forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes +a god and transmutes whatever in corporeal man would have been a +defect into some divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must +tell you in this place, since no other occasion offers, that even +until the end of her life it was so. For to her what in other +persons would have seemed flagrant dulness showed somehow, in Sire +Edward, as the majestic deliberation of one that knows his verdict +to be decisive, and therefore appraises cautiously; and if sometimes +his big, irregular calm eyes betrayed no apprehension of the jest at +which her lips were laughing, and of which her brain approved, +always within the instant her heart convinced her that a god is not +lightly moved to mirth. </p> + +<p> And now it was a god—<i>O deus certè</i>!—who +had taken a woman’s paltry face between his hands, half +roughly. “And the maid is a Capet!” Sire Edward mused. +</p> + +<p> “Blanch has never desired you any ill, beau sire. But she +loves the Archduke of Austria. And once you were dead, she might +marry him. One cannot blame her,” Meregrett considered, +“since he wishes to marry her, and she, of course, wishes to +make him happy.” </p> + +<p> “And not herself, save in some secondary way!” the +big King said. “In part I comprehend, madame. Now I too hanker +after this same happiness, and my admiration for the cantankerous +despoiler whom I praised this morning is somewhat abated. There was +a Tenson once—Lord, Lord, how long ago! I learn too late that +truth may possibly have been upon the losing side—” Thus +talking incoherencies, he took up Rigon’s lute. </p> + +<p> +Sang Sire Edward: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Incuriously he smites the armored king</p> + <p>And tricks his counsellors—</p> +</div> + +<p> “yes, the jingle ran thus. Now listen, madame—listen, the while +that I have my singing out, whatever any little cut-throats may be +planning in corners.” </p> + +<p> +Sang Sire Edward: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“As, later on,</p> + <p>Death will, half-idly, still our pleasuring,</p> + <p>And change for fevered laughter in the sun</p> + <p>Sleep such as Merlin’s,—and excess thereof,—</p> + <p>Whence we, divorceless Death our Viviaine</p> + <p>Implacable, may never more regain</p> + <p>The unforgotten rapture, and the pain</p> + <p>And grief and ecstasy of life and love.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“For, presently, as quiet as the king</p> + <p>Sleeps now that planned the keeps of Ilion,</p> + <p>We, too, will sleep, whilst overhead the spring</p> + <p>Rules, and young lovers laugh—as we have done,—</p> + <p>And kiss—as we, that take no heed thereof,</p> + <p>But slumber very soundly, and disdain</p> + <p>The world-wide heralding of winter’s wane</p> + <p>And swift sweet ripple of the April rain</p> + <p>Running about the world to waken love.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“We shall have done with Love, and Death be king</p> + <p>And turn our nimble bodies carrion,</p> + <p>Our red lips dusty;—yet our live lips cling</p> + <p>Despite that age-long severance and are one</p> + <p>Despite the grave and the vain grief thereof,—</p> + <p>Which we will baffle, if in Death’s domain</p> + <p>Fond memories may enter, and we twain</p> + <p>May dream a little, and rehearse again</p> + <p>In that unending sleep our present love.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“Speed forth to her in halting unison,</p> + <p>My rhymes: and say no hindrance may restrain</p> + <p>Love from his aim when Love is bent thereon;</p> + <p>And that were love at my disposal lain—</p> + <p>All mine to take!—and Death had said, ‘Refrain,</p> + <p>Lest I, even I, exact the cost thereof,’</p> + <p>I know that even as the weather-vane</p> + <p>Follows the wind so would I follow Love.”</p> +</div> + +<p> Sire Edward put aside the lute. “Thus ends the Song of +Service,” he said, “which was made not by the King of +England but by Edward Plantagenet—hot-blooded and desirous +man!—in honor of the one woman who within more years than I +care to think of has at all considered Edward Plantagenet.” +</p> + +<p> “I do not comprehend,” she said. And, indeed, she +dared not. </p> + +<p> But now he held both tiny hands in his. “At best, your +poet is an egotist. I must die presently. Meantime I crave largesse, +madame, and a great almsgiving, so that in his unending sleep your +poet may rehearse our present love.” And even in Rigon’s +dim light he found her kindling eyes not niggardly. </p> + +<p> Sire Edward strode to the window and raised big hands toward the +spear-points of the aloof stars. “Master of us all!” he +cried; “O Father of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the +Scourge of France, the conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and +the flail of the accursed race that slew Thine only Son! the King of +England am I, who have made of England an imperial nation, and have +given to Thy Englishmen new laws! And to-night I crave my hire. +Never, O my Father, have I had of any person aught save reverence or +hatred! never in my life has any person loved me! And I am old, my +Father—I am old, and presently I die. As I have served +Thee—as Jacob wrestled with Thee at the ford of +Jabbok—at the place of Peniel—” Against the +tremulous blue and silver of the forest the Princess saw how +horribly the big man was shaken. “My hire! my hire!” he +hoarsely said. “Forty long years, my Father! And now I will +not let Thee go except Thou hear me, and grant me life and this +woman’s love.” </p> + +<p> He turned, stark and black in the rearward splendor of the moon. +“<i>As a prince hast thou power with God</i>,” he calmly +said, “<i>and thou hast prevailed</i>. For the King of kings +was never obdurate, my dear, to them that have deserved well of Him. +So He will attend to my request, and will get us out of this pickle +somehow.” </p> + +<p> Even as he said this, Philippe the Handsome came into the room, +and at the heels of the French King were seven lords, armed +cap-à-pie. </p> + +<p> The French King was an odd man. Subtly smiling, he came forward +through the twilight, with soft, long strides, and he made no outcry +at recognition of his sister. “Take the woman away, +Victor,” he said, disinterestedly, to de Montespan. Afterward +he sat down beside the table and remained silent for a while, +intently regarding Sire Edward and the tiny woman who clung to Sire +Edward’s arm; and in the flickering gloom of the hut Philippe +smiled as an artist may smile who gazes on the perfected work and +knows it to be adroit. </p> + +<p> “You prefer to remain, my sister?” he said +presently. “Hé bien! it happens that to-night I am in a +mood for granting almost any favor. A little later and I will attend +to your merits.” The fleet disorder of his visage had lapsed +again into the meditative smile which was that of Lucifer watching a +toasted soul. “And so it ends,” he said, “and +England loses to-night the heir that Manuel the Redeemer provided. +Conqueror of Scotland, Scourge of France! O unconquerable king! and +will the worms of Ermenoueïl, then, pause to-morrow to consider +through what a glorious turmoil their dinner came to them?” +</p> + +<p> “Do you design to murder me?” Sire Edward said. </p> + +<p> The French King shrugged. “I design that within this +moment my lords shall slay you while I sit here and do not move a +finger. Is it not good to be a king, my cousin, and to sit quite +still, and to see your bitterest enemy hacked and slain,—and +all the while to sit quite still, quite unruffled, as a king should +always be? Eh, eh! I never lived until to-night!” </p> + +<p> “Now, by Heaven,” said Sire Edward, “I am your +kinsman and your guest, I am unarmed—” </p> + +<p> Philippe bowed his head. “Undoubtedly,” he assented, +“the deed is foul. But I desire Gascony very earnestly, and so +long as you live you will never permit me to retain Gascony. Hence +it is quite necessary, you conceive, that I murder you. What!” +he presently said, “will you not beg for mercy? I had +hoped,” the French King added, somewhat wistfully, “that +you might be afraid to die, O huge and righteous man! and would +entreat me to spare you. To spurn the weeping conqueror of +Llewellyn, say ... But these sins which damn one’s soul are in +actual performance very tedious affairs; and I begin to grow aweary +of the game. Hé bien! now kill this man for me, +messieurs.” </p> + +<p> The English King strode forward. “Shallow +trickster!” Sire Edward thundered. “<i>Am I not +afraid</i>? You grimacing baby, do you think to ensnare a lion with +such a flimsy rat-trap? Wise persons do not hunt lions with these +contraptions: for it is the nature of a rat-trap, fair cousin, to +ensnare not the beast which imperiously desires and takes in +daylight, but the tinier and the filthier beast that covets meanly +and attacks under the cover of darkness—as do you and your +seven skulkers!” The man was rather terrible; not a Frenchman +within the hut but had drawn back a little. </p> + +<p> “Listen!” Sire Edward said, and he came yet farther +toward the King of France and shook at him one forefinger; +“when you were in your cradle I was leading armies. When you +were yet unbreeched I was lord of half Europe. For thirty years I +have driven kings before me as did Fierabras. Am I, then, a person +to be hoodwinked by the first big-bosomed huzzy that elects to +waggle her fat shoulders and to grant an assignation in a forest +expressly designed for stabbings? You baby, is the Hammer of the +Scots the man to trust for one half moment a Capet? Ill-mannered +infant,” the King said, with bitter laughter, “it is now +necessary that I summon my attendants and remove you to a nursery +which I have prepared in England.” He set the horn to his lips +and blew three blasts. There came many armed warriors into the hut, +bearing ropes. Here was the entire retinue of the Earl of Aquitaine. +Cursing, Sire Philippe sprang upon the English King, and with a +dagger smote at the impassive big man’s heart. The blade broke +against the mail armor under the tunic. “Have I not told +you,” Sire Edward wearily said, “that one may never +trust a Capet? Now, messieurs, bind these carrion and convey them +whither I have directed you. Nay, but, Roger—” He +conversed apart with his son, the Earl of Pevensey, and what Sire +Edward commanded was done. The French King and seven lords of France +went from that hut trussed like chickens ready for the oven. </p> + +<p> And now Sire Edward turned toward Meregrett and chafed his big +hands gleefully. “At every tree-bole a tethered horse awaits +us; and a ship awaits our party at Fécamp. To-morrow we sleep +in England—and, Mort de Dieu! do you not think, madame, that +once within my very persuasive Tower of London, your brother and I +may come to some agreement over Guienne?” </p> + +<p> She had shrunk from him. “Then the trap was yours? It was +you that lured my brother to this infamy!” </p> + +<p> “In effect, I planned it many months ago at Ipswich +yonder,” Sire Edward gayly said. “Faith of a gentleman! +your brother has cheated me of Guienne, and was I to waste eternity +in begging him to give me back my province? Oh, no, for I have many +spies in France, and have for some two years known your brother and +your sister to the bottom. Granted that I came hither incognito, to +forecast your kinfolk’s immediate endeavors was none too +difficult; and I wanted Guienne—and, in consequence, the +person of your brother. Hah, death of my life! does not the seasoned +hunter adapt his snare to the qualities of his prey, and take the +elephant through his curiosity, as the snake through his notorious +treachery?” Now the King of England blustered. </p> + +<p> But the little Princess wrung her hands. “I am this night +most hideously shamed. Beau sire, I came hither to aid a brave man +infamously trapped, and instead I find an alert spider, snug in his +cunning web, and patiently waiting until the gnats of France fly +near enough. Eh, the greater fool was I to waste my labor on the +shrewd and evil thing which has no more need of me than I of it! And +now let me go hence, sire, unmolested, for the sake of chivalry. +Could I have come to the brave man I had dreamed of, I would have +come cheerily through the murkiest lane of hell; as the more artful +knave, as the more judicious trickster”—and here she +thrust him from her—“I spit upon you. Now let me go +hence.” </p> + +<p> He took her in his brawny arms. “Fit mate for me,” +he said. “Little vixen, had you done otherwise I would have +devoted you to the devil.” </p> + +<p> Still grasping her, and victoriously lifting Dame Meregrett, so +that her feet swung clear of the floor, Sire Edward said, again with +that queer touch of fanatic gravity: “My dear, you are +perfectly right. I was tempted, I grant you. But it was never +reasonable that gentlefolk should cheat at their dicing. Therefore I +whispered Roger Bulmer my final decision; and he is now loosing all +my captives in the courtyard of Mezelais, after birching the tails +of every one of them as soundly as these infants’ pranks +to-night have merited. So you perceive that I do not profit by my +trick; and that I lose Guienne, after all, in order to come to you +with hands—well! not intolerably soiled.” </p> + +<p> “Oh, now I love you!” she cried, a-thrill with +disappointment to find him so unthriftily high-minded. “Yet +you have done wrong, for Guienne is a king’s ransom.” +</p> + +<p> He smiled whimsically, and presently one arm swept beneath her +knees, so that presently he held her as one dandles a baby; and +presently his stiff and graying beard caressed her burning cheek. +Masterfully he said: “Then let Guienne serve as such and +ransom for a king his glad and common manhood. Now it appears +expedient that I leave France without any unwholesome delay, because +these children may resent being spanked. More +lately—hé, already I have in my pocket the Pope’s +dispensation permitting me to marry, in spite of our cousinship, the +sister of the King of France.” </p> + +<p> Very shyly Dame Meregrett lifted her little mouth. She said +nothing because talk was not necessary. </p> + +<p> In consequence, after a deal of political tergiversation +(Nicolas concludes), in the year of grace 1299, on the day of our +Lady’s nativity, and in the twenty-seventh year of King +Edward’s reign, came to the British realm, and landed at +Dover, not Dame Blanch, as would have been in consonance with +seasoned expectation, but Dame Meregrett, the other daughter of King +Philippe the Bold; and upon the following day proceeded to +Canterbury, whither on the next Thursday after came Edward, King of +England, into the Church of the Trinity at Canterbury, and therein +espoused the aforesaid Dame Meregrett. </p> + +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE THIRD NOVEL +</p> +<a name="IV"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +IV +</p> + +<p> +THE STORY OF THE CHOICES +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Sest fable es en aquest mon</p> + <p>Semblans al homes que i son;</p> + <p>Que el mager sen qu’om pot aver</p> + <p>So es amar Dieu et sa mer,</p> + <p>E gardar sos comendamens.”</p> +</div> + +<p class="synopsis"> +THE FOURTH NOVEL.—YSABEAU OF FRANCE, DESIROUS OF DISTRACTION, +LOOKS FOR RECREATION IN THE TORMENT OF A CERTAIN KNIGHT, WHOM SHE PROVES +TO BE NO MORE THAN HUMAN; BUT IN THE OUTCOME OF HER HOLIDAY HE CONFOUNDS +THIS QUEEN BY THE WIT OF HIS REPLY. +</p> + + + + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Choices +</p> + + +<p> In the year of grace 1327 (thus Nicolas begins) you could have +found in all England no couple more ardent in affection or in +despair more affluent than Rosamund Eastney and Sir Gregory Darrell. +She was Lord Berners’ only daughter, a brown beauty, of +extensive repute, thanks to a retinue of lovers who were +practitioners of the Gay Science, and who had scattered broadcast +innumerable Canzons in her honor; and Lord Berners was a man to +accept the world as he found it. </p> + +<p> “Dompnedex!” the Earl was wont to say; “in +sincerity I am fond of Gregory Darrell, and if he chooses to make +love to my daughter that is none of my affair. The eyes and the +brain preserve a proverbial warfare, which is the source of all +amenity, for without lady-service there would be no songs and +tourneys, no measure and no good breeding; and a man delinquent in +domnei is no more to be valued than an ear of corn without the +grain. No, I am so profoundly an admirer of Love that I can never +willingly behold him slain, of a surfeit, by Matrimony; besides, +this rapscallion Gregory could not to advantage exchange purses with +Lazarus in the parable; and, moreover, Rosamund is to marry the Earl +of Sarum a little after All Saints’ day.” </p> + +<p> “Sarum!” people echoed. “Why, the old goat has +had four wives already!” </p> + +<p> And the Earl would spread his hands. “These redundancies +are permissible to one of the wealthiest persons in England,” +he was used to submit. </p> + +<p> Thus it fell out that Sir Gregory came and went at his own +discretion as concerned Lord Berners’ fief of Ordish, all +through those choppy times of warfare between Sire Edward and Queen +Ysabeau. Lord Berners, for one, vexed himself not inordinately over +the outcome, since he protested the King’s armament to consist +of fools and the Queen’s of rascals; and had with entire +serenity declined to back either Dick or the devil. </p> + +<p> But at last the Queen got resistless aid from Count William of +Hainault (in a way to be told about hereafter), and the King was +captured by her forces, and was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle. There +they held the second Edward to reign in England, who was the +unworthy son of Dame Ellinor and of that first squinting King Edward +about whom I have told you in the two tales preceding this tale. It +was in the September of this year, a little before Michaelmas, that +they brought Sir Gregory Darrell to be judged by the Queen; +notoriously the knight had been her husband’s adherent. +“Death!” croaked Adam Orleton, who sat to the right +hand, and, “Young de Spencer’s death!” amended the +Earl of March, with wild laughter; but Ysabeau leaned back in her +great chair—a handsome woman, stoutening now from gluttony and +from too much wine,—and regarded her prisoner with lazy +amiability. </p> + +<p> “And what was your errand in Figgis Wood?” she +demanded—“or are you mad, then, Gregory Darrell, that +you dare ride past my gates alone?” </p> + +<p> He curtly said, “I rode for Ordish.” </p> + +<p> Followed silence. “Roger,” the Queen ordered, +“give me the paper which I would not sign.” </p> + +<p> The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of +London somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, like a person in shrewd +and epicurean amusement, while the Queen subscribed the parchment, +with a great scrawling flourish. </p> + +<p> “Take, in the devil’s name, the hire of your +dexterities,” said Ysabeau. She pushed this document with her +wet pen-point toward March. “So! get it over with, that +necessary business with my husband at Berkeley. And do the rest of +you withdraw, saving only my prisoner.” </p> + +<p> Followed another silence. Queen Ysabeau lolled in her carven +chair, considering the comely gentleman who stood before her, +fettered, at the point of shameful death. There was in the room a +little dog which had come to the Queen, and now licked the palm of +her left hand, and the soft lapping of its tongue was the only sound +you heard. “So at peril of your life you rode for Ordish, +then, messire?” </p> + +<p> The tense man had flushed. “You have harried us of the +King’s party out of England,—and in reason I might not +leave England without seeing the desire of my heart.” </p> + +<p> “My friend,” said Ysabeau, as if half in sorrow, +“I would have pardoned anything save that.” She rose. +Her face was dark and hot. “By God and all His saints! you +shall indeed leave England to-morrow and the world also! but not +without a final glimpse of this same Rosamund. Yet listen: I, too, +must ride with you to Ordish—as your sister, +say—Gregory, did I not hang, last April, the husband of your +sister? Yes, Ralph de Belomys, a thin man with eager eyes, the Earl +of Farrington he was. As his widow I will ride with you to Ordish, +upon condition you disclose to none at Ordish, saving only, if you +will, this quite immaculate Rosamund, any hint of our merry +carnival. And to-morrow (you will swear according to the nicest +obligations of honor) you must ride back with me to +encounter—that which I may devise. For I dare to trust your +naked word in this, and, moreover, I shall take with me a +sufficiency of retainers to leave you no choice.” </p> + +<p> Darrell knelt before her. “I can do no homage to Queen +Ysabeau; yet the prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die +to-morrow and cunningly contrives, for old time’s sake, to +hearten me with a sight of Rosamund, I cannot but kiss.” This +much he did. “And I swear in all things to obey your +will.” </p> + +<p> “O comely fool!” the Queen said, not ungently, +“I contrive, it may be, but to demonstrate that many tyrants +of antiquity were only bunglers. And, besides, I must have other +thoughts than those which I have known too long: I must this night +take holiday from thinking them, lest I go mad.” </p> + +<p> Thus did the Queen arrange her holiday. </p> + +<p> “Either I mean to torture you to-morrow,” Dame +Ysabeau said, presently, to Darrell, as these two rode side by side, +“or else I mean to free you. In sober verity I do not know. I +am in a holiday humor, and it is as the whim may take me. But do you +indeed love this Rosamund Eastney? And of course she worships +you?” </p> + +<p> “It is my belief, madame, that when I see her I tremble +visibly, and my weakness is such that a child has more intelligence +than I,—and toward such misery any lady must in common reason +be a little compassionate.” </p> + +<p> Her hands had twitched so that the astonished palfrey reared. +“I design torture,” the Queen said; “ah, I perfect +exquisite torture, for you have proven recreant, you have forgotten +the maid Ysabeau,—Le Desir du Cuer, was it not, my Gregory, +that you were wont to call her, as nowadays this Rosamund is the +desire of your heart. You lack inventiveness.” </p> + +<p> His palms clutched at heaven. “That Ysabeau is dead! and +all true joy is destroyed, and the world lies under a blight from +which God has averted an unfriendly face in displeasure! yet of all +wretched persons existent I am he who endures the most grievous +anguish, for daily I partake of life without any relish, and I would +in truth deem him austerely kind who slew me now that the maiden +Ysabeau is dead.” </p> + +<p> She shrugged wearily. “I scent the raw stuff of a +Planh,” the Queen observed; “<i>benedicite</i>! it was +ever your way, my friend, to love a woman chiefly for the verses she +inspired.” And she began to sing, as they rode through +Baverstock Thicket. </p> + +<p> +Sang Ysabeau: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2">“Man’s love hath many prompters,</p> + <p>But a woman’s love hath none;</p> + <p>And he may woo a nimble wit</p> + <p>Or hair that shames the sun,</p> + <p>Whilst she must pick of all one man</p> + <p>And ever brood thereon—</p> + <p>And for no reason,</p> + <p>And not rightly,—</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2">“Save that the plan was foreordained</p> + <p>(More old than Chalcedon,</p> + <p>Or any tower of Tarshish</p> + <p>Or of gleaming Babylon),</p> + <p>That she must love unwillingly</p> + <p>And love till life be done,—.</p> + <p>He for a season,</p> + <p>And more lightly.”</p> + +</div> +<p> So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, +with a retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory +Darrell. Lord Berners received the party with boisterous +hospitality. </p> + +<p> “Age has not blinded Father to the fact that your sister +is a very handsome woman,” was Rosamund Eastney’s +comment. The period appears to have been after supper, and the girl +sat with Gregory Darrell in not the most brilliant corner of the +main hall. </p> + +<p> The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then +with a tumbling rush of speech told of the sorry masquerade. +“The she-devil designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she +plans I know not what.” </p> + +<p> “Yet I—” said Rosamund. The girl had risen, +and she continued with an odd inconsequence: “You have told me +you were Pembroke’s squire when long ago he sailed for France +to fetch this woman into England—” </p> + +<p> “—Which you never heard!” Lord Berners shouted +at this point. “Jasper, a lute!” And then he halloaed, +“Gregory, Madame de Farrington demands that racy song you made +against Queen Ysabeau during your last visit.” Thus did the +Queen begin her holiday. </p> + +<p> It was a handsome couple which came forward, with hand quitting +hand tardily, and with blinking eyes yet rapt: these two were not +overpleased at being disturbed, and the man was troubled, as in +reason he well might be, by the task assigned him. </p> + +<p> “Is it, indeed, your will, my sister,” he said, +“that I should sing—this song?” </p> + +<p> “It is my will,” the Countess said. </p> + +<p> And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. “A +truth, once spoken, may not be disowned in any company. It is not, +look you, of my own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if Queen +Ysabeau herself were to bid me sing this song, I could not refuse, +for, Christ aid me! the song is true.” </p> + +<p> +Sang Sir Gregory: +</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Dame Ysabeau, la prophécie</p> + <p>Que li sage dit ne ment mie,</p> + <p>Que la royne sut ceus grever</p> + <p>Qui tantost laquais sot aymer—”<a id="footnotetag4" name="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a></p> +</div> + +<p> and so on. It was a lengthy ditty, and in its wording not +oversqueamish; the Queen’s career in England was detailed +without any stuttering, and you would have found the catalogue +unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory delivered it with an incisive gusto, +desperately countersigning his own death warrant. Her treacheries, +her adulteries and her assassinations were rendered in glowing terms +whose vigor seemed, even now, to please their contriver. Yet the +minstrel added a new peroration. </p> + +<p> +Sang Sir Gregory: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="i2">“Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gémit—</p> +<p>Peu pense à ce que la voix dit,</p> +<p>Car me membre du temps jadis</p> +<p>Et d’ung garson, d’amour surpris,</p> +<p>Et d’une fille—et la vois si—</p> +<p>Et grandement suis esbahi.” </p> +</div> + +<p> And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without +speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance +caught between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had +annoyed her. She drew the little dagger from her girdle and +meditatively cut the buzzing thing in two. She cast the fragments +from her, and resting the dagger’s point upon the arm of her +chair, one forefinger upon the summit of the hilt, considerately +twirled the brilliant weapon. </p> + +<p> “This song does not err upon the side of clemency,” +she said at last, “nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau.” +</p> + +<p> “That she-wolf!” said Lord Berners, comfortably. +“Hoo, Madame Gertrude! since the Prophet Moses wrung healing +waters from a rock there has been no such miracle recorded.” +</p> + +<p> “We read, Messire de Berners, that when the she-wolf once +acknowledges a master she will follow him as faithfully as any dog. +My brother, I do not question your sincerity, yet everybody knows +you sing with the voice of an unhonored courtier. Suppose Queen +Ysabeau had heard your song all through as I have heard it, and then +had said—for she is not as the run of +women—‘Messire, I had thought until this that there was +no thorough man in England save tall Roger Mortimer. I find him +tawdry now, and—I remember. Come you, then, and rule the +England that you love as you may love no woman, and rule me, +messire, since I find even in your cruelty—For we are no +pygmies, you and I! Yonder is squabbling Europe and all the ancient +gold of Africa, ready for our taking! and past that lies Asia, too, +and its painted houses hung with bells, and cloud-wrapt Tartary, +where we two may yet erect our equal thrones, upon which to receive +the tributary emperors! For we are no pygmies, you and I.’ She +paused. She shrugged. “Suppose Queen Ysabeau, who is not as +the run of women, had said this much, my brother?” </p> + +<p> Darrell was more pallid (as the phrase is) than a sheet, and the +lute had dropped unheeded, and his hands were clenched. </p> + +<p> “I would answer, my sister, that as she has found in +England but one man, I have found in England but one woman—the +rose of all the world.” His eyes were turned at this toward +Rosamund Eastney. “And yet,” the man stammered, +“because I, too, remember—” </p> + +<p> “Hah, in God’s name! I am answered,” the +Countess said. She rose, in dignity almost a queen. “We have +ridden far to-day, and to-morrow we must travel a deal +farther—eh, my brother? I am going to bed, Messire de +Berners.” </p> + +<p> So the men and women parted. Madame de Farrington kissed her +brother at leaving him, as was natural; and under her caress his +stalwart person shuddered, but not in repugnance; and the Queen went +away singing hushedly. </p> + +<p> +Sang Ysabeau: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="i2"> + “Were the All-Mother wise, life (shaped anotherwise)</p> + <p>Would be all high and true;</p> + <p>Could I be otherwise I had been otherwise</p> + <p>Simply because of you, ...</p> + <p>With whom I have naught to do,</p> + <p>And who are no longer you!</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Life with its pay to be bade us essay to be</p> + <p>What we became,—I believe</p> + <p>Were there a way to be what it was play to be</p> + <p>I would not greatly grieve ...</p> + <p>Hearts are not worn on the sleeve.</p> + <p>Let us neither laugh nor grieve!”</p> +</div> + +<p> Ysabeau would have slept that night within the chamber of +Rosamund Eastney had either slept. As concerns the older I say +nothing. The girl, though soon aware of frequent rustlings near at +hand, lay quiet, half-forgetful of the poisonous woman yonder. The +girl was now fulfilled with a great blaze of exultation: to-morrow +Gregory must die, and then perhaps she might find time for tears; +meanwhile, before her eyes, the man had flung away a kingdom and +life itself for love of her, and the least nook of her heart ached +to be a shade more worthy of the sacrifice. </p> + +<p> After it might have been an hour of this excruciate ecstasy the +Countess came to Rosamund’s bed. “Ay,” the woman +began, “it is indisputable that his hair is like spun gold and +that his eyes resemble sun-drenched waters in June. It is certain +that when this Gregory laughs God is more happy. Girl, I was +familiar with the routine of your meditations before you were +born.” </p> + +<p> Rosamund said, quite simply: “You have known him always. I +envy the circumstance, Madame Gertrude—you alone of all women +in the world I envy, since you, his sister, being so much older, +must have known him always.” </p> + +<p> “I know him to the core, my girl,” the Countess +answered. For a while she sat silent, one bare foot jogging +restlessly. “Yet I am two years his junior—Did you hear +nothing, Rosamund?” “No, Madame Gertrude, I heard +nothing.” </p> + +<p> “Strange!” the Countess said; “let us have +lights, since I can no longer endure this overpopulous +twilight.” She kindled, with twitching fingers, three lamps. +“It is as yet dark yonder, where the shadows quiver very +oddly, as though they would rise from the floor—do they not, +my girl?—and protest vain things. But, Rosamund, it has been +done; in the moment of death men’s souls have travelled +farther and have been visible; it has been done, I tell you. And he +would stand before me, with pleading eyes, and would reproach me in +a voice too faint to reach my ears—but I would see +him—and his groping hands would clutch at my hands as though a +dropped veil had touched me, and with the contact I would go +mad!” </p> + +<p> “Madame Gertrude!” the girl stammered, in +communicated terror. </p> + +<p> “Poor innocent fool!” the woman said, “I am +Ysabeau of France.” And when Rosamund made as though to rise, +in alarm, Queen Ysabeau caught her by the shoulder. “Bear +witness when he comes that I never hated him. Yet for my quiet it +was necessary that it suffer so cruelly, the scented, pampered body, +and no mark be left upon it! Eia! even now he suffers! No, I have +lied. I hate the man, and in such fashion as you will comprehend +when you are Sarum’s wife.” </p> + +<p> “Madame and Queen!” the girl said, “you will +not murder me!” “I am tempted!” the Queen +answered. “O little slip of girlhood, I am tempted, for it is +not reasonable you should possess everything that I have lost. +Innocence you have, and youth, and untroubled eyes, and quiet +dreams, and the fond graveness of a child, and Gregory +Darrell’s love—” Now Ysabeau sat down upon the bed +and caught up the girl’s face between two fevered hands. +“Rosamund, this Darrell perceives within the moment, as I do, +that the love he bears for you is but what he remembers of the love +he bore a certain maid long dead. Eh, you might have been her +sister, Rosamund, for you are very like her. And she, poor +wench—why, I could see her now, I think, were my eyes not +blurred, somehow, almost as though Queen Ysabeau might weep! But she +was handsomer than you, since your complexion is not overclear, +praise God!” </p> + +<p> Woman against woman they were. “He has told me of his +intercourse with you,” the girl said, and this was a lie +flatfooted. “Nay, kill me if you will, madame, since you are +the stronger, yet, with my dying breath, I protest that Gregory has +loved no woman truly in all his life except me.” </p> + +<p> The Queen laughed bitterly. “Do I not know men? He told +you nothing. And to-night he hesitated, and to-morrow, at the +lifting of my finger, he will supplicate. Since boyhood Gregory +Darrell has loved me, O white, palsied innocence! and he is mine at +a whistle. And in that time to come he will desert you, +Rosamund—bidding farewell with a pleasing Canzon,—and +they will give you to the gross Earl of Sarum, as they gave me to +the painted man who was of late our King! and in that time to come +you will know your body to be your husband’s makeshift when he +lacks leisure to seek out other recreation! and in that time to come +you will long for death, and presently your heart will be a flame +within you, my Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your +God because He made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate +hour he tricked you, and hate all men because, poor fools, they +scurry to obey your whims! and chiefly you will hate yourself +because you are so pitiable! and devastation only will you love in +that strange time which is to come. It is adjacent, my +Rosamund.” </p> + +<p> The girl kept silence. She sat erect in the tumbled bed, her +hands clasping her knees, and she appeared to deliberate what Dame +Ysabeau had said. Plentiful brown hair fell about this +Rosamund’s face, which was white and shrewd. “A part of +what you say, madame, I understand. I know that Gregory Darrell +loves me, yet I have long ago acknowledged he loves me as one pets a +child, or, let us say, a spaniel which reveres and amuses one. I +lack his wit, you comprehend, and so he never speaks to me all that +he thinks. Yet a part of it he tells me, and he loves me, and with +this I am content. Assuredly, if they give me to Sarum I shall hate +Sarum even more than I detest him now. And then, I think, Heaven +help me! that I would not greatly grieve—Oh, you are all +evil!” Rosamund said; “and you thrust into my mind +thoughts which I may not understand!” </p> + +<p> “You will comprehend them,” the Queen said, +“when you know yourself a chattel, bought and paid for.” +</p> + +<p> The Queen laughed. She rose, and her hands strained toward +heaven. “You are omnipotent, yet have You let me become that +into which I am transmuted,” she said, very low. </p> + +<p> She began to speak as though a statue spoke through lips that +seemed motionless. “Men have long urged me, Rosamund, to a +deed which by one stroke would make me mistress of these islands. +To-day I looked on Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in +love—and I had but to crush a lewd soft worm to come to him. +Eh, and I was tempted—!” </p> + +<p> The girl said: “Let us grant that Gregory loves you very +greatly, and me just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a +cushioned infamy, a colorful and brief delirium, and afterward +demolishment of soul and body; I offer him contentment and a level +life, made up of small events, it may be, and lacking both in +abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love a flame wherein the +lover’s soul must be purified; it is a flame which assays high +queens just as it does their servants: and thus, madame, to judge +between us I dare summon you.” “Child, child!” the +Queen said, tenderly, and with a smile, “you are brave; and in +your fashion you are wise; yet you will never comprehend. But once I +was in heart and soul and body all that you are to-day; and now I am +Queen Ysabeau—Did you in truth hear nothing, Rosamund?” +</p> + +<p> “Why, nothing save the wind.” </p> + +<p> “Strange!” said the Queen; “since all the +while that I have talked with you I have been seriously annoyed by +shrieks and imprecations! But I, too, grow cowardly, it may +be—Nay, I know,” she said, and in a resonant voice, +“that by this I am mistress of broad England, until my +son—my own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, +Rosamund—knows me for what I am. For I have +heard—Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!” the Queen said; +“I would have died without lamentation and I was but your +plaything!” </p> + +<p> “Madame Ysabeau—!” the girl answered vaguely, +for she was puzzled and was almost frightened by the other’s +strange talk. </p> + +<p> “To bed!” said Ysabeau; “and put out the +lights lest he come presently. Or perhaps he fears me now too much +to come to-night. Yet the night approaches, none the less, when I +must lift some arras and find him there, chalk-white, with painted +cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very terribly, or look into some +mirror and behold there not myself but him,—and in that +instant I shall die. Meantime I rule, until my son attains his +manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and so +helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly, +and save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more +fair—But I must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, +God orders matters very shrewdly, my Rosamund.” </p> + +<p> Timidly the girl touched Ysabeau’s shoulder. “In +part, I understand, madame and Queen.” </p> + +<p> “You understand nothing,” said Ysabeau; “how +should you understand whose breasts are yet so tiny? So let us put +out the light! though I dread darkness, Rosamund—For they say +that hell is poorly lighted—and they say—” Then +Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Pensively she blew out each lamp. </p> + +<p> “We know this Gregory Darrell,” the Queen said in +the darkness, “ah, to the marrow we know him, however +steadfastly we blink, and we know the present turmoil of his soul; +and in common-sense what chance have you of victory?” </p> + +<p> “None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. +For man is a being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy +orders, and his life here is one unending warfare between that which +is divine in him and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven +attends as arbiter of the tourney. Always a man’s judgment +misleads him and his faculties allure him to a truce, however brief, +with iniquity. His senses raise a mist about his goings, and there +is not an endowment of the man but in the end plays traitor to his +interest, as of God’s wisdom God intends; so that when the man +is overthrown, the Eternal Father may, in reason, be neither vexed +nor grieved if only the man takes heart to rise again. And when, +betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight out the allotted +battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors which God +Himself accorded, I think that the Saints hold festival in +heaven.” </p> + +<p> “A very pretty sermon,” said the Queen. “Yet I +do not think that our Gregory could very long endure a wife given +over to such high-minded talking. He prefers to hear himself do the +fine talking.” </p> + +<p> Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September +winds; but I believe that neither of these two slept with +profundity. </p> + +<p> About dawn one of the Queen’s attendants roused Sir +Gregory Darrell and conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, +where Ysabeau walked in tranquil converse with Lord Berners. The old +man was in high good-humor. </p> + +<p> “My lad,” said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the +shoulder, “you have, I do protest, the very phoenix of +sisters. I was never happier.” And he went away chuckling. +</p> + +<p> The Queen said in a toneless voice, “We ride for +Blackfriars now.” </p> + +<p> Darrell responded, “I am content, and ask but leave to +speak, briefly, with Dame Rosamund before I die.” </p> + +<p> Then the woman came more near to him. “I am not used to +beg, but within this hour you encounter death, and I have loved no +man in all my life saving only you, Sir Gregory Darrell. Nor have +you loved any person as you loved me once in France. Oh, to-day, I +may speak freely, for with you the doings of that boy and girl are +matters overpast. Yet were it otherwise—eh, weigh the matter +carefully! for I am mistress of England now, and England would I +give you, and such love as that slim, white innocence has never +dreamed of would I give you, Gregory Darrell—No, no! ah, +Mother of God, not you!” The Queen clapped one hand upon his +lips. </p> + +<p> “Listen,” she quickly said; “I spoke to tempt +you. But you saw, and you saw clearly, that it was the sickly whim +of a wanton, and you never dreamed of yielding, for you love this +Rosamund Eastney, and you know me to be vile. Then have a care of +me! The strange woman am I, of whom we read that her house is the +way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. Hoh, many strong +men have been slain by me, and in the gray time to come will many +others be slain by me, it may be; but never you among them, my +Gregory, who are more wary, and more merciful, and who know that I +have need to lay aside at least one comfortable thought against +eternity.” </p> + +<p> “I concede you to have been unwise—” he +hoarsely began. </p> + +<p> About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but +the air of this new day seemed raw and chill. </p> + +<p> Then Rosamund came through the opening in the hedge. “Now, +choose,” she said; “the woman offers life and high place +and wealth, and it may be, a greater love than I am capable of +giving you. I offer a dishonorable death within the moment.” +</p> + +<p> And again, with that peculiar and imperious gesture, the man +flung back his head, and he laughed. Said Gregory Darrell: </p> + +<p> “I am I! and I will so to live that I may face without +shame not only God, but also my own scrutiny.” He wheeled upon +the Queen and spoke henceforward very leisurely. “I love you; +all my life long I have loved you, Ysabeau, and even now I love you: +and you, too, dear Rosamund, I love, though with a difference. And +every fibre of my being lusts for the power that you would give me, +Ysabeau, and for the good which I would do with it in the England +which I or blustering Roger Mortimer must rule; as every fibre of my +being lusts for the man that I would be could I choose death without +debate. And I think also of the man that you would make of me, my +Rosamund. </p> + +<p> “The man! And what is this man, this Gregory Darrell, that +his welfare should be considered?—an ape who chatters to +himself of kinship with the archangels while filthily he digs for +groundnuts! This much I know, at bottom. </p> + +<p> “Yet more clearly do I perceive that this same man, like +all his fellows, is a maimed god who walks the world dependent upon +many wise and evil counsellors. He must measure, to a +hair’s-breadth, every content of the world by means of a +bloodied sponge, tucked somewhere in his skull, a sponge which is +ungeared by the first cup of wine and ruined by the touch of his own +finger. He must appraise all that he judges with no better +instruments than two bits of colored jelly, with a bungling +makeshift so maladroit that the nearest horologer’s apprentice +could have devised a more accurate device. In fine, each man is +under penalty condemned to compute eternity with false weights, to +estimate infinity with a yard-stick: and he very often does it, and +chooses his own death without debate. For though, ‘If then I +do that which I would not I consent unto the law,’ saith even +an Apostle; yet a braver Pagan answers him, ‘Perceive at last +that thou hast in thee something better and more divine than the +things which cause the various effects and, as it were, pull thee by +the strings.’ </p> + +<p> “There lies the choice which every man must +face,—whether rationally, as his reason goes, to accept his +own limitations and make the best of his allotted prison-yard? or +stupendously to play the fool and swear even to himself (while his +own judgment shrieks and proves a flat denial), that he is at will +omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my poor proud Ysabeau; and I +choose now, and differently: for poltroon that I am! being now in a +cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am not very much +afraid, and I choose death without any more debate.” </p> + +<p> It was toward Rosamund that the Queen looked, and smiled a +little pitifully. “Should Queen Ysabeau be angry or vexed or +very cruel now, my Rosamund? for at bottom she is glad.” </p> + +<p> And the Queen said also: “I give you back your plighted +word. I ride homeward to my husks, but you remain. Or rather, the +Countess of Farrington departs for the convent of Ambresbury, +disconsolate in her widowhood and desirous to have done with worldly +affairs. It is most natural she should relinquish to her beloved and +only brother all her dower-lands—or so at least Messire de +Berners acknowledges. Here, then, is the grant, my Gregory, that +conveys to you those lands of Ralph de Belomys which last year I +confiscated. And this tedious Messire de Berners is willing +now—he is eager to have you for a son-in-law.” </p> + +<p> About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but +the air of this new day seemed raw and chill, while, very calmly, +Dame Ysabeau took Sir Gregory’s hand and laid it upon the hand +of Rosamund Eastney. “Our paladin is, in the outcome, a mortal +man, and therefore I do not altogether envy you. Yet he has his +moments, and you are capable. Serve, then, not only his desires but +mine also, dear Rosamund.” </p> + +<p> There was a silence. The girl spoke as though it was a +sacrament. “I will, madame and Queen.” </p> + +<p> Thus did the Queen end her holiday. </p> + +<p> A little later the Countess of Farrington rode from Ordish with +all her train save one; and riding from that place, where love was, +she sang very softly. </p> + +<p> +Sang Ysabeau: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“As with her dupes dealt Circe</p> + <p>Life deals with hers, for she</p> + <p>Reshapes them without mercy,</p> + <p>And shapes them swinishly,</p> + <p>To wallow swinishly,</p> + <p>And for eternity;</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“Though, harder than the witch was,</p> + <p>Life, changing not the whole,</p> + <p>Transmutes the body, which was</p> + <p>Proud garment of the soul,</p> + <p>And briefly drugs the soul,</p> + <p>Whose ruin is her goal;</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“And means by this thereafter</p> + <p>A subtler mirth to get,</p> + <p>And mock with bitterer laughter</p> + <p>Her helpless dupes’ regret,</p> + <p>Their swinish dull regret</p> + <p>For what they half forget.”</p> +</div> + +<p> And within the hour came Hubert Frayne to Ordish, on a +foam-specked horse, as he rode to announce to the King’s men +the King’s barbaric murder overnight, at Berkeley Castle, by +Queen Ysabeau’s order. </p> + +<p> “Ride southward,” said Lord Berners, and panted as +they buckled on his disused armor; “but harkee, Frayne! if you +pass the Countess of Farrington’s company, speak no syllable +of your news, since it is not convenient that a lady so thoroughly +and so praise-worthily—Lord, Lord, how I have +fattened!—so intent on holy things, in fine, should have her +meditations disturbed by any such unsettling tidings. Hey, +son-in-law?” </p> + +<p> Sir Gregory Darrell laughed, very bitterly. “He that is +without blemish among you—” he said. Then they armed +completely, and went forth to battle against the murderous harlot. +</p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE FOURTH NOVEL +</p> +<a name="V"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p>V +</p> + +<p> +THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in"> + “Selh que m blasma vostr’ amor ni m defen</p> + <p>Non podon far en re mon cor mellor,</p> + <p>Ni’l dous dezir qu’ieu ai de vos major,</p> + <p>Ni l’enveya’ ni’l dezir, ni’l talen.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE FIFTH NOVEL.—PHILIPPA OF HAINAULT DARES TO LOVE UNTHRIFTILY, AND +WITH THE PRODIGALITY OF HER AFFECTION SHAMES TREACHERY, AND +COMMON-SENSE, AND HIGH ROMANCE, QUITE STOLIDLY; BUT, AS LOVING GOES, +IS OVERTOPPED BY HER MORE STOLID SQUIRE. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Housewife +</p> + + +<p> +In the year of grace 1326, upon Walburga’s Eve, some three hours after +sunset (thus Nicolas begins), had you visited a certain garden on the +outskirts of Valenciennes, you might there have stumbled upon a big, +handsome boy, prone on the turf, where by turns he groaned and vented +himself in sullen curses. His profanity had its palliation. Heir to +England though he was, you must know that this boy’s father in the +flesh had hounded him from England, as more recently had the lad’s +uncle Charles the Handsome driven him from France. Now had this boy +and his mother (the same Queen Ysabeau about whom I have told you in +the preceding tale) come as suppliants to the court of that stalwart +nobleman Sire William (Count of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand, and +Lord of Friesland), where their arrival had evoked the suggestion that +they depart at their earliest convenience. To-morrow, then, these +footsore royalties, the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales, +would be thrust out-of-doors to resume the weary beggarship, to knock +again upon the obdurate gates of this unsympathizing king or that deaf +emperor. +</p> + +<p> +Accordingly the boy aspersed his destiny. At hand a nightingale +carolled as though an exiled prince were the blithest spectacle the +moon knew. +</p> + +<p> +There came through the garden a tall girl, running, stumbling in her +haste. “Hail, King of England!” she said. +</p> + +<p> “Do not mock me, Philippa!” the boy half-sobbed. +Sulkily he rose to his feet. </p> + +<p> “No mockery here, my fair sweet friend. No, I have told my +father all which happened yesterday. I pleaded for you. He +questioned me very closely. And when I had ended, he stroked his +beard, and presently struck one hand upon the table. ‘Out of +the mouth of babes!’ he said. Then he said: ‘My dear, I +believe for certain that this lady and her son have been driven from +their kingdom wrongfully. If it be for the good of God to comfort +the afflicted, how much more is it commendable to help and succor +one who is the daughter of a king, descended from royal lineage, and +to whose blood we ourselves are related!’ And accordingly he and +your mother have their heads together yonder, planning an invasion +of England, no less, and the dethronement of your wicked father, my +Edward. And accordingly—hail, King of England!” The girl +clapped her hands gleefully. The nightingale sang. </p> + +<p> But the boy kept momentary silence. Not even in youth were the +men of his race handicapped by excessively tender hearts; yesterday +in the shrubbery the boy had kissed this daughter of Count William, +in part because she was a healthy and handsome person, and partly +because great benefit might come of an alliance with her father. +Well! the Prince had found chance-taking not unfortunate. With the +episode as foundation, Count William had already builded up the +future queenship of England. The strong Count could do—and, as +it seemed, was now in train to do—indomitable deeds to serve +his son-in-law; and now the beggar of five minutes since foresaw +himself, with this girl’s love as ladder, mounting to the high +habitations of the King of England, the Lord of Ireland, and the +Duke of Aquitaine. Thus they would herald him. </p> + +<p> So he embraced the girl. “Hail, Queen of England!” +said the Prince; and then, “If I forget—” His +voice broke awkwardly. “My dear, if ever I +forget—!” Their lips met now. The nightingale discoursed +as if on a wager. </p> + +<p> Presently was mingled with the bird’s descant another kind +of singing. Beyond the yew-hedge as these two stood silent, breast +to breast, passed young Jehan Kuypelant, one of the pages, fitting +to the accompaniment of a lute his paraphrase of the song which +Archilochus of Sicyon very anciently made in honor of Venus +Melaenis, the tender Venus of the Dark. </p> + +<p> +At a gap in the hedge the young Brabanter paused. His singing ended, +gulped. These two, who stood heart hammering against heart, saw for an +instant Jehan Kuypelant’s lean face silvered by the moonlight, his +mouth a tiny abyss. Followed the beat of lessening footfalls, while +the nightingale improvised an envoi. +</p> + +<p> +But earlier Jehan Kuypelant also had sung, as though in rivalry with +the bird. +</p> + +<p> +Sang Jehan Kuypelant: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Hearken and heed, Melaenis!</p> + <p>For all that the litany ceased</p> + <p>When Time had pilfered the victim,</p> + <p>And flouted thy pale-lipped priest,</p> + <p>And set astir in the temple</p> + <p>Where burned the fires of thy shrine</p> + <p>The owls and wolves of the desert—</p> + <p>Yet hearken, (the issue is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “For I have followed, nor faltered—</p> + <p>Adrift in a land of dreams</p> + <p>Where laughter and pity and terror</p> + <p>Commingle as confluent streams,</p> + <p>I have seen and adored the Sidonian,</p> + <p>Implacable, fair and divine—</p> + <p>And bending low, have implored thee</p> + <p>To hearken, (the issue is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!”</p> +</div> + +<p> It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of +other matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the +year of grace 1346, Master John Copeland—as men now called +Jehan Kuypelant, now secretary to the Queen of +England,—brought his mistress the unhandsome tidings that +David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty thousand Scots to back +him. The Brabanter found plump Queen Philippa with the +kingdom’s arbitress—Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom +King Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring +in France, very notoriously adored and obeyed. </p> + +<p> This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they +narrate, to release the Countess’ husband, William de +Montacute, from the French prison of the Châtelet. You may +appraise her dominion by this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had +denied all to King Edward, and in consequence he could deny her +nothing; so she sent him to fetch back her husband, whom she almost +loved. That armament had sailed from Southampton on Saint +George’s day. </p> + +<p> These two women, then, shared the Brabanter’s execrable +news. Already Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the +broken meats of King David. </p> + +<p> The Countess presently exclaimed: “Let them weep for this +that must! My place is not here.” </p> + +<p> Philippa said, half hopefully, “Do you forsake Sire +Edward, Catherine?” </p> + +<p> “Madame and Queen,” the Countess answered, “in +this world every man must scratch his own back. My lord has +entrusted to me his castle of Wark, his fiefs in Northumberland. +These, I hear, are being laid waste. Were there a thousand +men-at-arms left in England I would say fight. As it is, our men are +yonder in France and the island is defenceless. Accordingly I ride +for the north to make what terms I may with the King of +Scots.” </p> + +<p> Now you might have seen the Queen’s eye brighten. +“Undoubtedly,” said she, “in her lord’s +absence it is the wife’s part to defend his belongings. And my +lord’s fief is England. I bid you God-speed, Catherine.” +And when the Countess was gone, Philippa turned, her round face +somewhat dazed and flushed. “She betrays him! she compounds +with the Scot! Mother of Christ, let me not fail!” </p> + +<p> “A ship must be despatched to bid Sire Edward +return,” said the secretary. “Otherwise all England is +lost.” </p> + +<p> “Not so, John Copeland! We must let Sire Edward complete +his overrunning of France, if such be the Trinity’s will. You +know perfectly well that he has always had a fancy to conquer +France; and if I bade him return now he would be vexed.” </p> + +<p> “The disappointment of the King,” John Copeland +considered, “is a smaller evil than allowing all of us to be +butchered.” </p> + +<p> “Not to me, John Copeland,” the Queen said. </p> + +<p> Now came many lords into the chamber, seeking Madame Philippa. +“We must make peace with the Scottish rascal!—England is +lost!—A ship must be sent entreating succor of Sire +Edward!” So they shouted. </p> + +<p> “Messieurs,” said Queen Philippa, “who +commands here? Am I, then, some woman of the town?” </p> + +<p> Ensued a sudden silence. John Copeland, standing by the seaward +window, had picked up a lute and was fingering the instrument +half-idly. Now the Marquess of Hastings stepped from the throng. +“Pardon, Highness. But the occasion is urgent.” </p> + +<p> “The occasion is very urgent, my lord,” the Queen +assented, deep in meditation. </p> + +<p> John Copeland flung back his head and without prelude began to +carol lustily. </p> + +<p> +Sang John Copeland: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “There are taller lads than Atys,</p> + <p>And many are wiser than he,—</p> + <p>How should I heed them?—whose fate is</p> + <p>Ever to serve and to be</p> + <p>Ever the lover of Atys,</p> + <p>And die that Atys may dine,</p> + <p>Live if he need me—Then heed me,</p> + <p>And speed me, (the moment is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Fair is the form unbeholden,</p> + <p>And golden the glory of thee</p> + <p>Whose voice is the voice of a vision</p> + <p>Whose face is the foam of the sea,</p> + <p>And the fall of whose feet is the flutter</p> + <p>Of breezes in birches and pine,</p> + <p>When thou drawest near me, to hear me,</p> + <p>And cheer me, (the moment is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!”</p> +</div> + + +<p> I must tell you that the Queen shivered, as if with extreme +cold. She gazed toward John Copeland wonderingly. The secretary was +fretting at his lutestrings, with his head downcast. Then in a while +the Queen turned to Hastings. </p> + +<p> “The occasion is very urgent, my lord,” the Queen +assented. “Therefore it is my will that to-morrow one and all +your men be mustered at Blackheath. We will take the field without +delay against the King of Scots.” </p> + +<p> The riot began anew. “Madness!” they shouted; +“lunar madness! We can do nothing until our King returns with +our army!” </p> + +<p> “In his absence,” the Queen said, “I command +here.” </p> + +<p> “You are not Regent,” the Marquess answered. Then he +cried, “This is the Regent’s affair!” </p> + +<p> “Let the Regent be fetched,” Dame Philippa said, +very quietly. They brought in her son, Messire Lionel, now a boy of +eight years, and, in the King’s absence, Regent of England. +</p> + +<p> Both the Queen and the Marquess held papers. +“Highness,” Lord Hastings began, “for reasons of +state which I lack time to explain, this document requires your +signature. It is an order that a ship be despatched to ask the +King’s return. Your Highness may remember the pony you admired +yesterday?” The Marquess smiled ingratiatingly. “Just +here, your Highness—a crossmark.” </p> + +<p> “The dappled one?” said the Regent; “and all +for making a little mark?” The boy jumped for the pen. </p> + +<p> “Lionel,” said the Queen, “you are Regent of +England, but you are also my son. If you sign that paper you will +beyond doubt get the pony, but you will not, I think, care to ride +him. You will not care to sit down at all, Lionel.” </p> + +<p> The Regent considered. “Thank you very much, my +lord,” he said in the ultimate, “but I do not like +ponies any more. Do I sign here, Mother?” </p> + +<p> Philippa handed the Marquess a subscribed order to muster the +English forces at Blackheath; then another, closing the English +ports. “My lords,” the Queen said, “this boy is +the King’s vicar. In defying him, you defy the King. Yes, +Lionel, you have fairly earned a pot of jam for supper.” </p> + +<p> Then Hastings went away without speaking. That night assembled +at his lodgings, by appointment, Viscount Heringaud, Adam Frere, the +Marquess of Orme, Lord Stourton, the Earls of Neville and Gage, and +Sir Thomas Rokeby. These seven found a long table there littered +with pens and parchment; to the rear of it, with a lackey behind +him, sat the Marquess of Hastings, meditative over a cup of +Bordeaux. </p> + +<p> Presently Hastings said: “My friends, in creating our +womankind the Maker of us all was beyond doubt actuated by laudable +and cogent reasons; so that I can merely lament my inability to +fathom these reasons. I shall obey the Queen faithfully, since if I +did otherwise Sire Edward would have my head off within a day of his +return. In consequence, I do not consider it convenient to oppose +his vicar. To-morrow I shall assemble the tatters of troops which +remain to us, and to-morrow we march northward to inevitable defeat. +To-night I am sending a courier into Northumberland. He is an +obliging person, and would convey—to cite an +instance—eight letters quite as blithely as one.” </p> + +<p> +Each man glanced furtively about. England was in a panic by this, and +knew itself to lie before the Bruce defenceless. The all-powerful +Countess of Salisbury had compounded with King David; now Hastings, +too, their generalissimo, compounded. What the devil! loyalty was a +sonorous word, and so was patriotism, but, after all, one had estates +in the north. +</p> + +<p> +The seven wrote in silence. I must tell you that when they had ended, +Hastings gathered the letters into a heap, and without glancing at the +superscriptures, handed all these letters to the attendant lackey. +“For the courier,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The fellow left the apartment. Presently you heard a departing clatter +of hoofs, and Hastings rose. He was a gaunt, terrible old man, +gray-bearded, and having high eyebrows that twitched and jerked. +</p> + +<p> “We have saved our precious skins,” said he. +“Hey, you fidgeters, you ferments of sour offal! I commend +your common-sense, messieurs, and I request you to withdraw. Even a +damned rogue such as I has need of a cleaner atmosphere in order to +breathe comfortably.” The seven went away without further +speech. </p> + +<p> They narrate that next day the troops marched for Durham, where +the Queen took up her quarters. The Bruce had pillaged and burned +his way to a place called Beaurepair, within three miles of the +city. He sent word to the Queen that if her men were willing to come +forth from the town he would abide and give them battle. </p> + +<p> +She replied that she accepted his offer, and that the barons would +gladly risk their lives for the realm of their lord the King. The +Bruce grinned and kept silence, since he had in his pocket letters +from most of them protesting they would do nothing of the sort. +</p> + +<p> Here is comedy. On one side you have a horde of half-naked +savages, a shrewd master holding them in leash till the moment be +auspicious; on the other, a housewife at the head of a tiny force +lieutenanted by perjurers, by men already purchased. God knows what +dreams she had of miraculous victories, while her barons trafficked +in secret with the Bruce. It is recorded that, on the Saturday +before Michaelmas, when the opposing armies marshalled in the +Bishop’s Park, at Auckland, not a captain on either side +believed the day to be pregnant with battle. There would be a decent +counterfeit of resistance; afterward the little English army would +vanish pell-mell, and the Bruce would be master of the island. The +farce was prearranged, the actors therein were letter-perfect. </p> + +<p> That morning at daybreak John Copeland came to the Queen’s +tent, and informed her quite explicitly how matters stood. He had +been drinking overnight with Adam Frere and the Earl of Gage, and +after the third bottle had found them candid. “Madame and +Queen, we are betrayed. The Marquess of Hastings, our commander, is +inexplicably smitten with a fever. He will not fight to-day. Not one +of your lords will fight to-day.” Master Copeland laid bare +such part of the scheme as yesterday’s conviviality had made +familiar. “Therefore I counsel retreat. Let the King be +summoned out of France.” </p> + +<p> Queen Philippa shook her head, as she cut up squares of toast +and dipped them in milk for the Regent’s breakfast. +“Sire Edward would be vexed. He has always wanted to conquer +France. I shall visit the Marquess as soon as Lionel is +fed,—do you know, John Copeland, I am anxious about Lionel; he +is irritable and coughed five times during the night,—and then +I will attend to this affair.” </p> + +<p> She found the Marquess in bed, groaning, the coverlet pulled up +to his chin. “Pardon, Highness,” said Lord Hastings, +“but I am an ill man. I cannot rise from this couch.” +</p> + +<p> “I do not question the gravity of your disorder,” +the Queen retorted, “since it is well known that the same +illness brought about the death of Iscariot. Nevertheless, I bid you +get up and lead our troops against the Scot.” </p> + +<p> Now the hand of the Marquess veiled his countenance. “I am +an ill man,” he muttered, doggedly. “I cannot rise from +this couch.” </p> + +<p> There was a silence. </p> + +<p> “My lord,” the Queen presently began, “without +is an army prepared—yes, and quite able—to defend our +England. The one requirement of this army is a leader. Afford them +that, my lord—ah, I know that our peers are sold to the Bruce, +yet our yeomen at least are honest. Give them, then, a leader, and +they cannot but conquer, since God also is honest and incorruptible. +Pardieu! a woman might lead these men, and lead them to +victory!” </p> + +<p> Hastings answered: “I am ill. I cannot rise from this +couch.” </p> + +<p> “There is no man left in England,” said the Queen, +“since Sire Edward went into France. Praise God, I am his +wife!” She went away without flurry. </p> + +<p> Through the tent-flap Hastings beheld all that which followed. +The English force was marshalled in four divisions, each commanded +by a bishop and a baron. You could see the men fidgeting, puzzled by +the delay; as a wind goes about a corn-field, vague rumors were +going about those wavering spears. Toward them rode Philippa, upon a +white palfrey, alone and perfectly tranquil. Her eight lieutenants +were now gathered about her in voluble protestation, and she heard +them out. Afterward she spoke, without any particular violence, as +one might order a strange cur from his room. Then the Queen rode on, +as though these eight declaiming persons had ceased to be of +interest. She reined up before her standard-bearer, and took the +standard in her hand. She began again to speak, and immediately the +army was in an uproar; the barons were clustering behind her, in +stealthy groups of two or three whisperers each; all were in the +greatest amazement and knew not what to do; but the army was +shouting the Queen’s name. </p> + +<p> “Now is England shamed,” said Hastings, “since +a woman alone dares to encounter the Scot. She will lead them into +battle—and by God! there is no braver person under heaven than +yonder Dutch Frau! Friend David, I perceive that your venture is +lost, for those men would follow her to storm hell if she desired +it.” </p> + +<p> He meditated, and shrugged. “And so would I,” said +Hastings. </p> + +<p> A little afterward a gaunt and haggard old man, bareheaded and +very hastily dressed, reined his horse by the Queen’s side. +“Madame and Queen,” said Hastings, “I rejoice that +my recent illness is departed. I shall, by God’s grace, on +this day drive the Bruce from England.” </p> + +<p> Philippa was not given to verbiage. Doubtless she had her +emotions, but none was visible upon the honest face. She rested one +plump hand upon the big-veined hand of Hastings. That was all. +“I welcome back the gallant gentleman of yesterday. I was +about to lead your army, my friend, since there was no one else to +do it, but I was hideously afraid. At bottom every woman is a +coward.” </p> + +<p> “You were afraid to do it,” said the Marquess, +“but you were going to do it, because there was no one else to +do it! Ho, madame! had I an army of such cowards I would drive the +Scot not past the Border but beyond the Orkneys.” </p> + +<p> The Queen then said, “But you are unarmed.” </p> + +<p> “Highness,” he replied, “it is surely apparent +that I, who have played the traitor to two monarchs within the same +day, cannot with either decency or comfort survive that day.” +He turned upon the lords and bishops twittering about his +horse’s tail. “You merchandise, get back to your +stations, and if there was ever an honest woman in any of your +families, the which I doubt, contrive to get yourselves killed this +day, as I mean to do, in the cause of the honestest and bravest +woman our time has known.” Immediately the English forces +marched toward Merrington. </p> + +<p> Philippa returned to her pavilion and inquired for John +Copeland. She was informed that he had ridden off, armed, in company +with five of her immediate retainers. She considered this strange, +but made no comment. </p> + +<p> You picture her, perhaps, as spending the morning in prayer, in +beatings upon her breast, and in lamentations. Philippa did nothing +of the sort. She considered her cause to be so clamantly just that +to expatiate to the Holy Father upon its merits would be an +impertinence; it was not conceivable that He would fail her; and in +any event, she had in hand a deal of sewing which required immediate +attention. Accordingly she settled down to her needlework, while the +Regent of England leaned his head against her knee, and his mother +told him that ageless tale of Lord Huon, who in a wood near Babylon +encountered the King of Faëry, and subsequently bereaved an +atrocious Emir of his beard and daughter. All this the industrious +woman narrated in a low and pleasant voice, while the wide-eyed +Regent attended and at the proper intervals gulped his +cough-mixture. </p> + +<p> You must know that about noon Master John Copeland came into the +tent. “We have conquered,” he said. “Now, by the +Face!”—thus, scoffingly, he used her husband’s +favorite oath,—“now, by the Face! there was never a +victory more complete! The Scottish army is fled, it is as utterly +dispersed from man’s seeing as are the sands which dried the +letters King Ahasuerus gave the admirable Esther!” </p> + +<p> “I rejoice,” the Queen said, looking up from her +sewing, “that we have conquered, though in nature I expected +nothing else—Oh, horrible!” She sprang to her feet with +a cry of anguish. Here in little you have the entire woman; the +victory of her armament was to her a thing of course, since her +cause was just, whereas the loss of two front teeth by John Copeland +was a calamity. </p> + +<p> He drew her toward the tent-flap, which he opened. Without was a +mounted knight, in full panoply, his arms bound behind him, +surrounded by the Queen’s five retainers. “In the rout I +took him,” said John Copeland; “though, as my mouth +witnesses, I did not find this David Bruce a tractable +prisoner.” </p> + +<p> “Is that, then, the King of Scots?” Philippa +demanded, as she mixed salt and water for a mouthwash. “Sire +Edward should be pleased, I think. Will he not love me a little now, +John Copeland?” </p> + +<p> John Copeland lifted both plump hands toward his lips. “He +could not choose,” John Copeland said; “madame, he could +no more choose but love you than I could choose.” </p> + +<p> Philippa sighed. Afterward she bade John Copeland rinse his gums +and then take his prisoner to Hastings. He told her the Marquess was +dead, slain by the Knight of Liddesdale. “That is a +pity,” the Queen said. She reflected a while, reached her +decision. “There is left alive in England but one man to whom +I dare entrust the keeping of the King of Scots. My barons are sold +to him; if I retain Messire David by me, one or another lord will +engineer his escape within the week, and Sire Edward will be vexed. +Yet listen, John—” She unfolded her plan. </p> + +<p> “I have long known,” he said, when she had done, +“that in all the world there was no lady more lovable. Twenty +years I have loved you, my Queen, and yet it is only to-day I +perceive that in all the world there is no lady more wise than +you.” </p> + +<p> Philippa touched his cheek, maternally. “Foolish boy! You +tell me the King of Scots has an arrow-wound in his nose? I think a +bread poultice would be best.” She told him how to make this +poultice, and gave other instructions. Then John Copeland left the +tent and presently rode away with his company. </p> + +<p> Philippa saw that the Regent had his dinner, and afterward +mounted her white palfrey and set out for the battle-field. There +the Earl of Neville, as second in command, received her with great +courtesy. God had shown to her Majesty’s servants most +singular favor: despite the calculations of reasonable men,—to +which, she might remember, he had that morning taken the liberty to +assent,—some fifteen thousand Scots were slain. True, her +gallant general was no longer extant, though this was scarcely +astounding when one considered the fact that he had voluntarily +entered the mêlée quite unarmed. A touch of age, +perhaps; Hastings was always an eccentric man: in any event, as +epilogue, this Neville congratulated the Queen that—by blind +luck, he was forced to concede,—her worthy secretary had made +a prisoner of the Scottish King. Doubtless, Master Copeland was an +estimable scribe, and yet—Ah, yes, Lord Neville quite followed +her Majesty—beyond doubt, the wardage of a king was an honor +not lightly to be conferred. Oh, yes, he understood; her Majesty +desired that the office should be given some person of rank. And +pardie! her Majesty was in the right. Eh? said the Earl of Neville. +</p> + +<p> Intently gazing into the man’s shallow eyes, Philippa +assented. Master Copeland had acted unwarrantably in riding off with +his captive. Let him be sought at once. She dictated to +Neville’s secretary a letter, which informed John Copeland +that he had done what was not agreeable in purloining her prisoner. +Let him without delay deliver the King to her good friend the Earl +of Neville. </p> + +<p> To Neville this was satisfactory, since he intended that once in +his possession David Bruce should escape forthwith. The letter, I +repeat, suited this smirking gentleman in its tiniest syllable, and +the single difficulty was to convey it to John Copeland, for as to +his whereabouts neither Neville nor any one else had the least +notion. </p> + +<p> This was immaterial, however, for they narrate that next day a +letter signed with John Copeland’s name was found pinned to +the front of Neville’s tent. I cite a passage therefrom: +“I will not give up my royal prisoner to a woman or a child, +but only to my own lord, Sire Edward, for to him I have sworn +allegiance, and not to any woman. Yet you may tell the Queen she may +depend on my taking excellent care of King David. I have poulticed +his nose, as she directed.” </p> + +<p> Here was a nonplus, not without its comical side. Two great +realms had met in battle, and the king of one of them had vanished +like a soap-bubble. Philippa was in a rage,—you could see that +both by her demeanor and by the indignant letters she dictated; +true, none of these letters could be delivered, since they were all +addressed to John Copeland. Meanwhile, Scotland was in despair, +whereas the traitor English barons were in a frenzy, because they +did not know what had become of their fatal letters to the Bruce, or +of him either. The circumstances were unique, and they remained +unchanged for three feverish weeks. </p> + +<p> We will now return to affairs in France, where on the day of the +Nativity, as night gathered about Calais, John Copeland came +unheralded to the quarters of King Edward, then besieging that city. +Master Copeland entreated audience, and got it readily enough, since +there was no man alive whom Sire Edward more cordially desired to +lay his fingers upon. </p> + +<p> A page brought Master Copeland to the King, that stupendous, +blond and incredibly big person. With Sire Edward were that careful +Italian, Almerigo di Pavia, who afterward betrayed Sire Edward, and +a lean soldier whom Master Copeland recognized as John Chandos. +These three were drawing up an account of the recent victory at +Créçi, to be forwarded to all mayors and sheriffs in +England, with a cogent postscript as to the King’s incidental +and immediate need of money. </p> + +<p> Now King Edward sat leaning far back in his chair, a hand on +either hip, and with his eyes narrowing as he regarded Master +Copeland. Had the Brabanter flinched, the King would probably have +hanged him within the next ten minutes; finding his gaze unwavering, +the King was pleased. Here was a novelty; most people blinked quite +honestly under the scrutiny of those fierce big eyes, which were +blue and cold and of an astounding lustre. The lid of the left eye +drooped a little: this was Count Manuel’s legacy, they +whispered. </p> + +<p> The King rose with a jerk and took John Copeland’s hand. +“Ha!” he grunted, “I welcome the squire who by his +valor has captured the King of Scots. And now, my man, what have you +done with Davie?” </p> + +<p> John Copeland answered: “Highness, you may find him at +your convenience safely locked in Bamborough Castle. Meanwhile, I +entreat you, sire, do not take it amiss if I did not surrender King +David to the orders of my lady Queen, for I hold my lands of you, +and not of her, and my oath is to you, and not to her, unless indeed +by choice.” </p> + +<p> “John,” the King sternly replied, “the loyal +service you have done us is considerable, whereas your excuse for +kidnapping Davie is a farce. Hey, Almerigo, do you and Chandos avoid +the chamber! I have something in private with this fellow.” +When they had gone, the King sat down and composedly said, +“Now tell me the truth, John Copeland.” </p> + +<p> “Sire,” Copeland began, “it is necessary you +first understand I bear a letter from Madame Philippa—” +</p> + +<p> “Then read it,” said the King. “Heart of God! +have I an eternity to waste on you slow-dealing Brabanters!” +</p> + +<p> John Copeland read aloud, while the King trifled with a pen, +half negligent, and in part attendant. </p> + +<p> Read John Copeland: </p> +<blockquote> +<p> “My DEAR LORD,—<i>recommend me to your +lordship with soul and body and all my poor might, and with all this +I thank you, as my dear lord, dearest and best beloved of all +earthly lords I protest to me, and thank you, my dear lord, with all +this as I say before. Your comfortable letter came to me on Saint +Gregory’s day, and I was never so glad as when I heard by your +letter that ye were strong enough in Ponthieu by the grace of God +for to keep you from your enemies. Among them I estimate Madame +Catherine de Salisbury, who would have betrayed you to the Scot. +And, dear lord, if it be pleasing to your high lordship that as soon +as ye may that I might hear of your gracious speed, which may God +Almighty continue and increase, I shall be glad, and also if ye do +continue each night to chafe your feet with a rag of woollen stuff, +as your physician directed. And, my dear lord, if it like you for to +know of my fare, John Copeland will acquaint you concerning the +Bruce his capture, and the syrup he brings for our son Lord +Edward’s cough, and the great malice-workers in these shires +which would have so despitefully wrought to you, and of the manner +of taking it after each meal. I am lately informed that Madame +Catherine is now at Stirling with Robert Stewart and has lost all +her good looks through a fever. God is invariably gracious to His +servants. Farewell, my dear lord, and may the Holy Trinity keep you +from your adversaries and ever send me comfortable tidings of you. +Written at York, in the Castle, on Saint Gregory’s day last +past, by your own poor</i></p> +<p align="right"> +“PHILIPPA.</p> + +<p> “<i>To my true lord</i>.” </p> +</blockquote> + +<p> “H’m!” said the King; “and now give me +the entire story.” </p> + +<p> John Copeland obeyed. I must tell you that early in the +narrative King Edward arose and strode toward a window. +“Catherine!” he said. He remained motionless while +Master Copeland went on without any manifest emotion. When he had +ended, King Edward said, “And where is Madame de Salisbury +now?” </p> + +<p> At this the Brabanter went mad. As a leopard springs he leaped +upon the King, and grasping him by each shoulder, shook that monarch +as one punishing a child. </p> + +<p> “Now by the splendor of God—!” King Edward +began, very terrible in his wrath. He saw that John Copeland held a +dagger to his breast, and he shrugged. “Well, my man, you +perceive I am defenceless.” </p> + +<p> “First you will hear me out,” John Copeland said. +</p> + +<p> “It would appear,” the King retorted, “that I +have little choice.” </p> + +<p> At this time John Copeland began: “Sire, you are the +mightiest monarch your race has known. England is yours, France is +yours, conquered Scotland lies prostrate at your feet. To-day there +is no other man in all the world who possesses a tithe of your +glory; yet twenty years ago Madame Philippa first beheld you and +loved you, an outcast, an exiled, empty-pocketed prince. Twenty +years ago the love of Madame Philippa, great Count William’s +daughter, got for you the armament with which England was regained. +Twenty years ago but for Madame Philippa you had died naked in some +ditch.” </p> + +<p> “Go on,” the King said presently. </p> + +<p> “Afterward you took a fancy to reign in France. You +learned then that we Brabanters are a frugal people: Madame Philippa +was wealthy when she married you, and twenty years had quadrupled +her private fortune. She gave you every penny of it that you might +fit out this expedition; now her very crown is in pawn at Ghent. In +fine, the love of Madame Philippa gave you France as lightly as one +might bestow a toy upon a child who whined for it.” </p> + +<p> The King fiercely said, “Go on.” </p> + +<p> “Eh, sire, I intend to. You left England undefended that +you might posture a little in the eyes of Europe. And meanwhile a +woman preserves England, a woman gives you Scotland as a gift, and +in return asks nothing—God have mercy on us!—save that +you nightly chafe your feet with a bit of woollen. You hear of +it—and inquire, ‘<i>Where is Madame de +Salisbury</i>?’ Here beyond doubt is the cock of Aesop’s +fable,” snarled John Copeland, “who unearthed a gem and +grumbled that his diamond was not a grain of corn.” </p> + +<p> “You shall be hanged at dawn,” the King replied. +“Meanwhile spit out your venom.” </p> + +<p> “I say to you, then,” John Copeland continued, +“that to-day you are master of Europe. I say to you that, but +for this woman whom for twenty years you have neglected, you would +to-day be mouldering in some pauper’s grave. Eh, without +question, you most magnanimously loved that shrew of Salisbury! +because you fancied the color of her eyes, Sire Edward, and admired +the angle between her nose and her forehead. Minstrels unborn will +sing of this great love of yours. Meantime I say to +you”—now the man’s rage was +monstrous—“I say to you, go home to your too-tedious +wife, the source of all your glory! sit at her feet! and let her +teach you what love is!” He flung away the dagger. +“There you have the truth. Now summon your attendants, my +très beau sire, and have me hanged.” </p> + +<p> The King made no movement. “You have been +bold—” he said at last. </p> + +<p> “But you have been far bolder, sire. For twenty years you +have dared to flout that love which is God’s noblest heritage +to His children.” </p> + +<p> King Edward sat in meditation for a long while. The squinting of +his left eye was now very noticeable. “I consider my +wife’s clerk,” he drily said, “to discourse of +love in somewhat too much the tone of a lover.” And a flush +was his reward. </p> + +<p> But when this Copeland spoke he was like one transfigured. His +voice was grave and very tender, and he said: </p> + +<p> “As the fish have their life in the waters, so I have and +always shall have mine in love. Love made me choose and dare to +emulate a lady, long ago, through whom I live contented, without +expecting any other good. Her purity is so inestimable that I cannot +say whether I derive more pride or sorrow from its preeminence. She +does not love me, and she will never love me. She would condemn me +to be hewed in fragments sooner than permit her husband’s +finger to be injured. Yet she surpasses all others so utterly that I +would rather hunger in her presence than enjoy from another all +which a lover can devise.” </p> + +<p> Sire Edward stroked the table through this while, with an +inverted pen. He cleared his throat. He said, half-fretfully: </p> + +<p> “Now, by the Face! it is not given every man to love +precisely in this troubadourish fashion. Even the most generous +person cannot render to love any more than that person happens to +possess. I have read in an old tale how the devil sat upon a +cathedral spire and white doves flew about him. Monks came and told +him to begone. ‘Do not the spires show you, O son of +darkness’ they clamored, ‘that the place is holy?’ +And Satan (in this old tale) replied that these spires were capable +of various interpretations. I speak of symbols, John. Yet I also +have loved, in my own fashion,—and, it would seem, I win the +same reward as you.” </p> + +<p> The King said more lately: “And so she is at Stirling now? +hobnob with my armed enemies, and cajoling that red lecher Robert +Stewart?” He laughed, not overpleasantly. “Eh, yes, it +needed a bold person to bring all your tidings! But you Brabanters +are a very thorough-going people.” </p> + +<p> The King rose and flung back his high head. “John, the +loyal service you have done us and our esteem for your valor are so +great that they may well serve you as an excuse. May shame fall on +those who bear you any ill-will! You will now return home, and take +your prisoner, the King of Scotland, and deliver him to my wife, to +do with as she may elect. You will convey to her my +entreaty—not my orders, John,—that she come to me here +at Calais. As remuneration for this evening’s insolence, I +assign lands as near your house as you can choose them to the value +of £500 a year for you and for your heirs.” </p> + +<p> You must know that John Copeland fell upon his knees before King +Edward. “Sire—” he stammered. </p> + +<p> But the King raised him. “No, no,” he said, +“you are the better man. Were there any equity in fate, John +Copeland, your lady had loved you, not me. As it is, I must strive +to prove not altogether unworthy of my fortune. But I make no large +promises,” he added, squinting horribly, “because the +most generous person cannot render to love any more than that person +happens to possess. So be off with you, John Copeland,—go, my +squire, and bring me back my Queen!” </p> + +<p> Presently he heard John Copeland singing without. And through +that instant, they say, his youth returned to Edward Plantagenet, +and all the scents and shadows and faint sounds of Valenciennes on +that ancient night when a tall girl came to him, running, stumbling +in her haste to bring him kingship. “She waddles now,” +he thought forlornly. “Still, I am blessed.” But +Copeland sang, and the Brabanter’s heart was big with joy. +</p> + +<p> +Sang John Copeland: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Long I besought thee, nor vainly,</p> + <p>Daughter of Water and Air—</p> + <p>Charis! Idalia! Hortensis!</p> + <p>Hast thou not heard the prayer,</p> + <p>When the blood stood still with loving,</p> + <p>And the blood in me leapt like wine,</p> + <p>And I cried on thy name, Melaenis?—</p> + <p>That heard me, (the glory is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Falsely they tell of thy dying,</p> + <p>Thou that art older than Death,</p> + <p>And never the Hörselberg hid thee,</p> + <p>Whatever the slanderer saith,</p> + <p>For the stars are as heralds forerunning,</p> + <p>When laughter and love combine</p> + <p>At twilight, in thy light, Melaenis—</p> + <p>That heard me, (the glory is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!”</p> +</div> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE FIFTH NOVEL +</p> +<a name="VI"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +VI +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Je suis voix au désert criant</p> + <p> Que chascun soyt rectifiant</p> + <p>La voye de Sauveur; non suis,</p> + <p>Et accomplir je ne le puis.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE SIXTH NOVEL.—ANNE OF BOHEMIA HAS ONE SOLE FRIEND, AND BY HIM +PLAYS THE FRIEND’S PART; AND IN DOING SO ACHIEVES THEIR COMMON +ANGUISH, AS WELL AS THE CONFUSION OF STATECRAFT AND THE POULTICING OF +A GREAT DISEASE. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Satraps +</p> + +<p> +In the year of grace 1381 (Nicolas begins) was Dame Anne magnificently +fetched from remote Bohemia, and at Westminster married to Sire +Richard, the second monarch of that name to reign in England. This +king, I must tell you, had succeeded while he was yet an infant, to +the throne of his grandfather, the third King Edward, about whom I +have told you in the story preceding this. +</p> + +<p> +Queen Anne had presently noted a certain priest who went forbiddingly +about her court, where he was accorded a provisional courtesy, and who +went also into many hovels, where pitiable wrecks of humankind +received his alms and ministrations. +</p> + +<p> Queen Anne made inquiries. This young cleric was amanuensis to +the Duke of Gloucester, she learned, and was notoriously a by-blow +of the Duke’s brother, dead Lionel of Clarence. She sent for +this Edward Maudelain. When he came her first perception was, +“How wonderful is his likeness to the King!” while the +thought’s commentary ran, unacknowledged, “Yes, as an +eagle resembles a falcon!” For here, to the observant eye, was +a more zealous person, already passion-wasted, and a far more +dictatorial and stiff-necked person than the lazy and amiable King; +also, this Maudelain’s face and nose were somewhat too long +and high: the priest was, in a word, the less comely of the pair by +a very little, and to an immeasurable extent the more kinglike. </p> + +<p> “You are my cousin now, messire,” the Queen told +him, and innocently offered to his lips her own. </p> + +<p> He never moved; but their glances crossed, and for that instant +she saw the face of a man who has just stepped into a quicksand. She +grew red, without knowing why. Then he spoke, composedly, of trivial +matters. </p> + +<p> Thus began the Queen’s acquaintance with Edward Maudelain. +She was by this time the loneliest woman in the island. Her husband +granted her a bright and fresh perfection of form and color, but +desiderated any appetizing tang, and lamented, in his phrase, a +certain kinship to the impeccable loveliness of some female saint in +a jaunty tapestry; bright as ice in sunshine, just so her beauty +chilled you, he complained: moreover, this daughter of the Caesars +had been fetched into England, chiefly, to breed him children, and +this she had never done. Undoubtedly he had made a bad +bargain,—he was too easy-going, people presumed upon it. His +barons snatched their cue and esteemed Dame Anne to be negligible; +whereas the clergy, finding that she obstinately read the Scriptures +in the vulgar tongue, under the irrelevant plea of not comprehending +Latin, began to denounce her from their pulpits as a heretic and as +the evil woman prophesied by Ezekiel. </p> + +<p> It was the nature of this desolate child to crave affection, as +a necessary, and pitifully she tried to purchase it through +almsgiving. In the attempt she could have found no coadjutor more +ready than Edward Maudelain. Giving was with these two a sort of +obsession, though always he gave in a half scorn of his fellow +creatures which was not more than half concealed. This bastard was +charitable and pious because he knew his soul, conceived in double +sin, to be doubly evil, and therefore doubly in need of redemption +through good works. </p> + +<p> Now in and about the Queen’s lonely rooms the woman and +the priest met daily to discuss now this or that point of theology, +or now (to cite a single instance) Gammer Tudway’s obstinate +sciatica. Considerate persons found something of the pathetic in +their preoccupation by these matters while, so clamantly, the +dissension between the young King and his uncles gathered to a head. +The King’s uncles meant to continue governing England, with +the King as their ward, as long as they could; he meant to relieve +himself of this guardianship, and them of their heads, as soon as he +was able. War seemed inevitable, the air was thick with portents; +and was this, then, an appropriate time, the judicious demanded of +high Heaven, for the Queen of imperilled England to concern herself +about a peasant’s toothache? </p> + +<p> +Long afterward was Edward Maudelain to remember this quiet and amiable +period of his life, and to wonder over the man that he had been +through this queer while. Embittered and suspicious she had found him, +noted for the carping tongue he lacked both power and inclination to +bridle; and she had, against his nature, made Maudelain see that every +person is at bottom lovable, and that human vices are but the stains +of a traveller midway in a dusty journey; and had incited the priest +no longer to do good for his soul’s health, but simply for his +fellow’s benefit. +</p> + +<p> +In place of that monstrous passion which had at first view of her +possessed the priest, now, like a sheltered taper, glowed an adoration +which made him yearn, in defiance of common-sense, to suffer somehow +for this beautiful and gracious comrade; though very often pity for +her loneliness and knowledge that she dared trust no one save him +would throttle Maudelain like two assassins, and would move the +hot-blooded young man to a rapture of self-contempt and exultation. +</p> + +<p> +Now Maudelain made excellent songs, it was a matter of common report. +Yet but once in their close friendship did the Queen command him to +make a song for her. This had been at Dover, about vespers, in the +starved and tiny garden overlooking the English Channel, upon which +her apartments faced; and the priest had fingered his lute for an +appreciable while before he sang, more harshly than was his custom. +</p> + +<p> +Sang Maudelain: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Ave Maria! now cry we so</p> + <p>That see night wake and daylight go.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Mother and Maid, in nothing incomplete,</p> + <p>This night that gathers is more light and fleet</p> + <p>Than twilight trod alway with stumbling feet,</p> + <p>Agentes semper uno animo.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Ever we touch the prize we dare not take!</p> + <p>Ever we know that thirst we dare not slake!</p> + <p>Yet ever to a dreamed-of goal we make—</p> + <p>Est tui coeli in palatio!</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Long, long the road, and set with many a snare;</p> + <p>And to how small sure knowledge are we heir</p> + <p>That blindly tread, with twilight everywhere!</p> + <p>Volo in toto; sed non valeo!</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Long, long the road, and very frail are we</p> + <p>That may not lightly curb mortality,</p> + <p>Nor lightly tread together steadfastly,</p> + <p>Et parvum carmen unum facio:</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Mater, ora filium,</p> + <p>Ut post hoc exilium</p> + <p>Nobis donet gaudium</p> + <p>Beatorum omnium!”</p> +</div> + +<p> Dame Anne had risen. She said nothing. She stayed in this +posture for a lengthy while, one hand yet clasping each breast. Then +she laughed, and began to speak of Long Simon’s recent fever. +Was there no method of establishing him in another cottage? No, the +priest said, the peasants, like the cattle, were always deeded with +the land, and Simon could not lawfully be taken away from his owner. +</p> + +<p> One day, about the hour of prime, in that season of the year +when fields smell of young grass, the Duke of Gloucester sent for +Edward Maudelain. The court was then at Windsor. The priest came +quickly to his patron. He found the Duke in company with the +King’s other uncle Edmund of York and bland Harry of Derby, +who was John of Gaunt’s oldest son, and in consequence the +King’s cousin. Each was a proud and handsome man: Derby alone +(who was afterward King of England) had inherited the squint that +distinguished this family. To-day Gloucester was gnawing at his +finger nails, big York seemed half-asleep, and the Earl of Derby +appeared patiently to await something as yet ineffably remote. </p> + +<p> “Sit down!” snarled Gloucester. His lean and evil +countenance was that of a tired devil. The priest obeyed, wondering +that so high an honor should be accorded him in the view of three +great noblemen. Then Gloucester said, in his sharp way: +“Edward, you know, as England knows, the King’s +intention toward us three and our adherents. It has come to our +demolishment or his. I confess a preference in the matter. I have +consulted with the Pope concerning the advisability of taking the +crown into my own hands. Edmund here does not want it, and my +brother John is already achieving one in Spain. Eh, in imagination I +was already King of England, and I had dreamed—Well! to-day +the prosaic courier arrived. Urban—the Neapolitan +swine!—dares give me no assistance. It is decreed I shall +never reign in these islands. And I had dreamed—Meanwhile, de +Vere and de la Pole are at the King day and night, urging revolt. As +matters go, within a week or two, the three heads before you will be +embellishing Temple Bar. You, of course, they will only hang.” +</p> + +<p> “We must avoid England, then, my noble patron,” the +priest considered. </p> + +<p> Angrily the Duke struck a clenched fist upon the table. +“By the Cross! we remain in England, you and I and all of us. +Others avoid. The Pope and the Emperor will have none of me. They +plead for the Black Prince’s heir, for the legitimate heir. +Dompnedex! they shall have him!” </p> + +<p> Maudelain recoiled, for he thought this twitching man insane. +</p> + +<p> “Besides, the King intends to take from me my fief at +Sudbury,” said the Duke of York, “in order to give it to +de Vere. That is both absurd and monstrous and abominable.” +</p> + +<p> Openly Gloucester sneered. “Listen!” he rapped out +toward Maudelain; “when they were drawing up the Great Peace +at Brétigny, it happened, as is notorious, that the Black +Prince, my brother, wooed in this town the Demoiselle Alixe Riczi, +whom in the outcome he abducted. It is not so generally known, +however, that, finding this sister of the Vicomte de Montbrison a +girl of obdurate virtue, my brother had prefaced the action by +marriage.” </p> + +<p> “And what have I to do with all this?” said Edward +Maudelain. </p> + +<p> Gloucester retorted: “More than you think. For this Alixe +was conveyed to Chertsey, here in England, where at the year’s +end she died in childbirth. A little before this time had Sir Thomas +Holland seen his last day,—the husband of that Joane of Kent +whom throughout life my brother loved most marvellously. The +disposition of the late Queen-Mother is tolerably well known. I make +no comment save that to her moulding my brother was as so much wax. +In fine, the two lovers were presently married, and their son reigns +to-day in England. The abandoned son of Alixe Riczi was reared by +the Cistercians at Chertsey, where some years ago I found +you.” </p> + +<p> He spoke with a stifled voice, wrenching forth each sentence; +and now with a stiff forefinger flipped a paper across the table. +“<i>In extremis</i> my brother did more than confess. He +signed,—your Majesty,” said Gloucester. The Duke on a +sudden flung out his hands, like a wizard whose necromancy fails, +and the palms were bloodied where his nails had cut the flesh. </p> + +<p> “Moreover, my daughter was born at Sudbury,” said +the Duke of York. </p> + +<p> And of Maudelain’s face I cannot tell you. He made +pretence to read the paper carefully, but his eyes roved, and he +knew that he stood among wolves. The room was oddly shaped, with +eight equal sides: the ceiling was of a light and brilliant blue, +powdered with many golden stars, and the walls were hung with smart +tapestries which commemorated the exploits of Theseus. “Then I +am King,” this Maudelain said aloud, “of France and +England, and Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine! I perceive that +Heaven loves a jest.” He wheeled upon Gloucester and spoke +with singular irrelevance, “And what is to be done with the +present Queen?” </p> + +<p> Again the Duke shrugged. “I had not thought of the dumb +wench. We have many convents.” </p> + +<p> Now Maudelain twisted the paper between his long, wet fingers +and appeared to meditate. </p> + +<p> “It would be advisable, your Grace,” observed the +Earl of Derby, suavely, and breaking his silence for the first time, +“that you yourself should wed Dame Anne, once the Apostolic +See has granted the necessary dispensation. Treading too close upon +the fighting requisite to bring about the dethronement and death of +our nominal lord the so-called King, a war with Bohemia, which would +be only too apt to follow this noble lady’s assassination, +would be highly inconvenient, and, lacking that, we would have to +pay back her dowry.” </p> + +<p> Then these three princes rose and knelt before the priest; they +were clad in long bright garments, and they glittered with gold and +many jewels. He standing among them shuddered in his sombre robe. +“Hail, King of England!” cried these three. </p> + +<p> “Hail, ye that are my kinsmen!” he answered; +“hail, ye that spring of an accursed race, as I! And woe to +England for that hour wherein Manuel of Poictesme held traffic with +the Sorceress of Provence, and the devil’s son begot an heir +for England! Of ice and of lust and of hell-fire are all we sprung; +old records attest it; and fickle and cold and ravenous and without +shame are all our race until the end. Of your brother’s +dishonor ye make merchandise to-day, and to-day fratricide whispers +me, and leers, and, Heaven help me! I attend. O God of Gods! wilt +Thou dare bid a man live stainless, having aforetime filled his +veins with such a venom? Then haro, will I cry from Thy deepest +hell.... Oh, now let the adulterous Redeemer of Poictesme rejoice in +his tall fires, to note that his descendants know of what wood to +make a crutch! You are very wise, my kinsmen. Take your measures, +messieurs who are my kinsmen! Though were I of any other race, with +what expedition would I now kill you, I that recognize within me the +strength to do it! Then would I slay you! without any animosity, +would I slay you then, just as I would kill as many splendid +snakes!” </p> + +<p> He went away, laughing horribly. Gloucester drummed upon the +table, his brows contracted. But the lean Duke said nothing; big +York seemed to drowse; and Henry of Derby smiled as he sounded a +gong for that scribe who would draw up the necessary letters. The +Earl’s time was not yet come, but it was nearing. </p> + +<p> In the antechamber the priest encountered two men-at-arms +dragging a dead body from the castle. The Duke of Kent, Maudelain +was informed, had taken a fancy to a peasant girl, and in +remonstrance her misguided father had actually tugged at his +Grace’s sleeve. </p> + +<p> Maudelain went into the park of Windsor, where he walked for a +long while alone. It was a fine day in the middle spring; and now he +seemed to understand for the first time how fair was his England. +For all England was his fief, held in vassalage to God and to no man +alive, his heart now sang; allwhither his empire spread, opulent in +grain and metal and every revenue of the earth, and in stalwart men +(his chattels), and in strong orderly cities, where the windows +would be adorned with scarlet hangings, and women (with golden hair +and red lax lips) would presently admire as King Edward rode slowly +by at the head of a resplendent retinue. And always the King would +bow, graciously and without haste, to his shouting people.... He +laughed to find himself already at rehearsal of the gesture. </p> + +<p> It was strange, though, that in this glorious fief of his so +many persons should, as yet, live day by day as cattle live, +suspicious of all other moving things (with reason), and roused from +their incurious and filthy apathy only when some glittering baron, +like a resistless eagle, swept uncomfortably near as he passed on +some by-errand of the more bright and windy upper-world. East and +north they had gone yearly, for so many centuries, these dumb +peasants, to fight out their master’s uncomprehended quarrel, +and to manure with their carcasses the soil of France and of +Scotland. Give these serfs a king, now, who (being absolute), might +dare to deal in perfect equity with rich and poor, who with his +advent would bring Peace into England as his bride, as Trygaeus did +very anciently in Athens—“And then,” the priest +paraphrased, “may England recover all the blessings she has +lost, and everywhere the glitter of active steel will cease.” +For everywhere men would crack a rustic jest or two, unhurriedly. +Virid fields would heave brownly under their ploughs; they would +find that with practice it was almost as easy to chuckle as it was +to cringe. </p> + +<p> Meanwhile on every side the nobles tyrannized in their degree, +well clothed and nourished, but at bottom equally comfortless in +condition. As illuminate by lightning Maudelain saw the many +factions of his barons squabbling for gross pleasures, like wolves +over a corpse, and blindly dealing death to one another to secure at +least one more delicious gulp before that inevitable mangling by the +teeth of some burlier colleague. The complete misery of England +showed before Maudelain like a winter landscape. The thing was +questionless. He must tread henceforward without fear among frenzied +beasts, and to their ultimate welfare. On a sudden Maudelain knew +himself to be invincible and fine, and hesitancy ebbed. </p> + +<p> True, Richard, poor fool, must die. Squarely the priest faced +that stark and hideous circumstance; to spare Richard was beyond his +power, and the boy was his brother; yes, this oncoming King Edward +would be a fratricide, and after death would be irrevocably damned. +To burn, and eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the +torment was eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of +Richard’s ignoble life and of Edward’s inconsiderable +soul, to win so many men to manhood was not a bargain to be refused. +</p> + +<p> The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden +which adjoined Dame Anne’s apartments. He found the Queen +there, alone, as nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused +to wonder at her bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd was +this beauty, he reflected, too; how alien in its effect to that of +any other woman in sturdy England, and how associable it was, +somehow, with every wild and gracious denizen of the woods which +blossomed yonder. </p> + +<p> In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but +undiluted. They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short +to ripple, which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and +left, birds sang as if in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint +and radiant blue throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the +zenith, so that the Queen’s brows cast honey-colored shadows +upon either cheek. The priest was greatly troubled by the proud and +heatless brilliancies, the shrill joys, of every object within the +radius of his senses. </p> + +<p> She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, +tinted like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and wore over +all a gown of white, cut open on each side as far as the hips. This +garment was embroidered with golden leopards and was trimmed with +ermine. About her yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein +emeralds glowed. Her blue eyes were as large and shining and +changeable (he thought) as two oceans in midsummer; and Maudelain +stood motionless and seemed to himself but to revere, as the Earl +Ixion did, some bright unstable wisp of cloud, while somehow all +elation departed from him as water does from a wetted sponge +compressed. He laughed discordantly. </p> + +<p> “Wait—! O my only friend—!” said +Maudelain. Then in a level voice he told her all, unhurriedly and +without any apparent emotion. </p> + +<p> She had breathed once, with a deep inhalation. She had screened +her countenance from his gaze the while you might have counted +fifty. Presently she said: “This means more war, for de Vere +and Tressilian and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons +know that the King’s fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands +die to-morrow.” </p> + +<p> He answered, “It means a war which will make me King of +England, and will make you my wife.” </p> + +<p> “In that war the nobles will ride abroad with banners and +gay surcoats, and will kill and ravish in the pauses of their songs; +while daily in that war the naked peasants will kill the one the +other, without knowing why.” </p> + +<p> His thought had forerun hers. “Yes, some must die, so that +in the end I may be King, and the general happiness may rest at my +disposal. The adventure of this world is wonderful, and it goes +otherwise than under the strict tutelage of reason.” </p> + +<p> “It would not be yours, but Gloucester’s and his +barons’. Friend, they would set you on the throne to be their +puppet and to move only as they pulled the strings. Thwart them in +their maraudings and they will fling you aside, as the barons have +pulled down every king that dared oppose them. No, they desire to +live pleasantly, to have fish on Fridays, and white bread and the +finest wine the whole year through, and there is not enough for all, +say they. Can you alone contend against them? and conquer them? for +not unless you can do this may I dare bid you reign.” </p> + +<p> The sun had grown too bright, too merciless, but as always she +drew the truth from him. “I could not venture to oppose in +anything the barons who supported my cause: for if I did, I would +not endure a fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor I nor any one +may transform through any personal force this bitter world, this +piercing, cruel place of frost and sun. Charity and Truth are +excommunicate, and a king is only an adorned and fearful person who +leads wolves toward their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and +devour him. Everywhere the powerful labor to put one another out of +worship, and each to stand the higher with the other’s corpse +as his pedestal; and Lechery and Greed and Hatred sway these proud +and inconsiderate fools as winds blow at will the gay leaves of +autumn. We walk among shining vapors, we aspire to overpass a +mountain of unstable sparkling sand! We two alone in all the +scuffling world! Oh, it is horrible, and I think that Satan plans +the jest! We dream for a while of refashioning this bright +desolation, and know that we alone can do it! we are as demigods, +you and I, in those gallant dreams! and at the end we can but +poultice some dirty rascal!” </p> + +<p> The Queen answered sadly: “Once and only once did God +tread this tangible world, for a very little while, and, look you, +to what trivial matters He devoted that brief space! Only to chat +with fishermen, and to talk with light women, and to consort with +rascals, and at last to die between two cutpurses, ignominiously! If +Christ Himself achieved so little that seemed great and admirable, +how should we two hope to do any more?” </p> + +<p> He answered: “It is true. Of anise and of cumin the Master +gets His tithe—” Maudelain broke off with a yapping +laugh. “Puf! Heaven is wiser than we. I am King of England. It +is my heritage.” </p> + +<p> “It means war. Many will die, thousands will die, and to +no betterment of affairs.” </p> + +<p> “I am King of England. I am Heaven’s satrap here, +and answerable to Heaven alone. It is my heritage.” And now +his large and cruel eyes were aflame as he regarded her. </p> + +<p> And visibly beneath their glare the woman changed. “My +friend, must I not love you any longer? You would be content with +happiness? Then I am jealous of that happiness! for you are the one +friend that I have had, and so dear to me—Look you!” she +said, with a light, wistful laugh, “there have been times when +I was afraid of everything you touched, and I hated everything you +looked at. I would not have you stained; I desired to pass my whole +life between the four walls of some dingy and eternal gaol, forever +alone with you, lest you become like other men. I would in that +period have been the very bread you eat, the least perfume which +delights you, the clod you touch in crushing it, and I have often +loathed some pleasure I derived from life because I might not +transfer it to you undiminished. For I wanted somehow to make you +happy to my own anguish.... It was wicked, I suppose, for the +imagining of it made me happy, too.” </p> + +<p> Now while he listened to this dear and tranquil speaking, Edward +Maudelain’s raised hands had fallen like so much lead, and +remembering his own nature, he longed for annihilation, before she +had appraised his vileness. He said: </p> + +<p> “With reason Augustine crieth out against the lust of the +eyes. ‘For pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, +fragrant, savory, and soft; but this disease those contrary as well, +not for the sake of suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of +making trial of them!’ Ah! ah! too curiously I planned my own +damnation, too presumptuously I had esteemed my soul a worthy +scapegoat, and I had gilded my enormity with many lies. Yet indeed, +indeed, I had believed brave things, I had planned a not ignoble +bargain—! Ey, say, is it not laughable, madame?—as my +birth-right Heaven accords me a penny, and with that only penny I +must presently be seeking to bribe Heaven.” </p> + +<p> Then he said: “Yet are we indeed God’s satraps, as +but now I cried in my vainglory, and we hold within our palms the +destiny of many peoples. Depardieux! God is wiser than we are. +Still, Satan offers no unhandsome bribes—bribes that are +tangible and sure. For Satan, too, is wiser than we are.” </p> + +<p> They stood like effigies, lit by the broad, unsparing splendor +of the morning, but again their kindling eyes had met, and again the +man shuddered. “Decide! oh, decide very quickly, my only +friend!” he said, “for throughout I am all filth!” +</p> + +<p> Closer she drew to him, and laid one hand upon each shoulder. +“O my only friend!” she breathed, with red lax lips +which were very near to his, “through these six years I have +ranked your friendship as the chief of all my honors! and I pray God +with an entire heart that I may die so soon as I have done what I +must do to-day!” </p> + +<p> Now Maudelain was trying to smile, but he could not quite manage +it. “God save King Richard!” said the priest. “For +by the cowardice and greed and ignorance of little men is Salomon +himself confounded, and by them is Hercules lightly unhorsed. Were I +Leviathan, whose bones were long ago picked clean by pismires, I +could perform nothing against the will of many human pismires. +Therefore do you pronounce my doom.” </p> + +<p> “O King,” then said Dame Anne, “I bid you go +forever from the court and live forever a landless man, friendless, +and without even any name. Otherwise, you can in no way escape being +made an instrument to bring about the misery and death of many +thousands. This doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are +royal and God’s satraps, you and I.” </p> + +<p> Twice or thrice his dry lips moved before he spoke. He was aware +of innumerable birds that carolled with a piercing and intolerable +sweetness. “O Queen!” he hoarsely said, “O fellow +satrap! Heaven has many fiefs. A fair province is wasted and accords +to Heaven no revenue. So wastes beauty, and a shrewd wit, and an +illimitable charity, which of their pride go in fetters and achieve +no increase. To-day the young King junkets with his flatterers, and +but rarely thinks of England. You have that beauty by which men are +lightly conquered, and the mere sight of which may well cause a +man’s voice to tremble as my voice trembles now, and through +desire of which—But I tread afield! Of that beauty you have +made no profit. O daughter of the Caesars, I bid you now gird either +loin for an unlovely traffic. Old Legion must be fought with fire. +True that the age is sick, true that we may not cure, we can but +salve the hurt—” His hand had torn open his sombre gown, +and the man’s bared breast shone in the sunlight, and on his +breast heaved sleek and glittering beads of sweat. Twice he cried +the Queen’s name. In a while he said: “I bid you weave +incessantly such snares of brain and body as may lure King Richard +to be swayed by you, until against his will you daily guide this +shallow-hearted fool to some commendable action. I bid you live as +other folk do hereabouts. Coax! beg! cheat! wheedle! lie!” he +barked like a teased dog, “and play the prostitute for him +that wears my crown, till you achieve in part the task which is +denied me. This doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are +royal and God’s satraps, you and I.” </p> + +<p> She answered with a tiny, wordless sound. But presently, +“I take my doom,” the Queen proudly said. “I shall +be lonely now, my only friend, and yet—it does not +matter,” the Queen said, with a little shiver. “No, +nothing will ever greatly matter now, I think, now that I may not +ever see you any more, my dearest.” </p> + +<p> Her eyes had filled with tears; she was unhappy, and, as always, +this knowledge roused in Maudelain a sort of frenzied pity and a +hatred, quite illogical, of all other things existent. She was +unhappy, that only he comprehended: and for her to be made unhappy +was unjust. </p> + +<p> So he stood thus for an appreciable silence, staying motionless +save that behind his back his fingers were bruising one another. +Everywhere was this or that bright color and an incessant melody. It +was unbearable. Then it was over; the ordered progress of all +happenings was apparent, simple, and natural; and contentment came +into his heart like a flight of linnets over level fields at dawn. +He left her, and as he went he sang. </p> + +<p> Sang Maudelain: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="i2"> + “Christ save us all, as well He can, </p> + <p>A solis ortus cardine! </p> + <p>For He is both God and man, </p> + <p>Qui natus est de virgine, </p> + <p>And we but part of His wide plan </p> + <p>That sing, and heartily sing we, </p> + <p>‘Gloria Tibi, Domine!’ </p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Between a heifer and an ass </p> + <p>Enixa est puerpera; </p> + <p>In ragged woollen clad He was </p> + <p>Qui régnât super aethera, </p> + <p>And patiently may we then pass </p> + <p>That sing, and heartily sing we, </p> + <p>‘Gloria Tibi, Domine!’” </p> +</div> + +<p> The Queen shivered in the glad sunlight. “I am, it must +be, pitiably weak,” she said at last, “because I cannot +sing as he does. And, since I am not very wise, were he to return +even now—But he will not return. He will never return,” +the Queen repeated, carefully. “It is strange I cannot +comprehend that he will never return! Ah, Mother of God!” she +cried, with a steadier voice, “grant that I may weep! nay, of +thy infinite mercy let me presently find the heart to weep!” +And about the Queen of England many birds sang joyously. </p> + +<p> She sent for the King that evening, after supper, and they may +well have talked of many matters, for he did not return to his own +apartments that night. Next day the English barons held a council, +and in the midst of it King Richard demanded to be told his age. +</p> + +<p> “Your Grace is in your twenty-second year,” said the +uneasy Gloucester, who was now with reason troubled, since he had +been vainly seeking everywhere for the evanished Maudelain. </p> + +<p> “Then I have been under tutors and governors longer than +any other ward in my dominion. My lords, I thank you for your past +services, but I need them no more.” They had no check handy, +and Gloucester in particular foreread his death-warrant, but of +necessity he shouted with the others, “Hail, King of +England!” </p> + +<p> That afternoon the King’s assumption of all royal +responsibility was commemorated by a tournament, over which Dame +Anne presided. Sixty of her ladies led as many knights by silver +chains into the tilting-grounds at Smithfield, and it was remarked +that the Queen appeared unusually mirthful. The King was in high +good humor, a pattern of conjugal devotion; and the royal pair +retired at dusk to the Bishop of London’s palace at Saint +Paul’s, where was held a merry banquet, with dancing both +before and after supper. </p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE SIXTH NOVEL +</p> +<a name="VII"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +VII +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> +<p class="in">“Pour vous je suis en prison mise,</p> + <p>En ceste chambre à voulte grise,</p> + <p>Et traineray ma triste vie</p> + <p>Sans que jamais mon cueur varie,</p> + <p>Car toujours seray vostre amye.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE SEVENTH NOVEL.—ISABEL OF VALOIS, BEING FORSAKEN BY ALL +OTHERS, IS BEFRIENDED BY A PRIEST, WHO IN CHIEF THROUGH A +CHILD’S INNOCENCE, CONTRIVES AND EXECUTES A LAUDABLE +IMPOSTURE, AND WINS THEREBY TO DEATH. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Heritage +</p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1399 (Nicolas begins) dwelt in a hut near +Caer Dathyl in Arvon, as he had dwelt for some five years, a gaunt +hermit, notoriously consecrate, whom neighboring Welshmen revered as +the Blessed Evrawc. There had been a time when people called him +Edward Maudelain, but this period he dared not often remember. </p> + +<p> For though in macerations of the flesh, in fasting, and in +hour-long prayers he spent his days, this holy man was much troubled +by devils. He got little rest because of them. Sometimes would come +into his hut Belphegor in the likeness of a butler, and whisper, +“Sire, had you been King, as was your right, you had drunk +to-day not water but the wines of Spain and Hungary.” Or +Asmodeus saying, “Sire, had you been King, as was your right, +you had lain now not upon the bare earth but on cushions of +silk.” </p> + +<p> One day in early spring, they say, the spirit called Orvendile +sent the likeness of a fair woman with yellow hair and large blue +eyes. She wore a massive crown which seemed too heavy for her +frailness to sustain. Soft tranquil eyes had lifted from her book. +“You are my cousin now, messire,” this phantom had +appeared to say. </p> + +<p> That was the worst, and Maudelain began to fear he was a little +mad because even this he had resisted with many aves. </p> + +<p> There came also to his hut, through a sullen snowstorm, upon the +afternoon of All Soul’s day, a horseman in a long cloak of +black. He tethered his black horse and he came noiselessly through +the doorway of the hut, and upon his breast and shoulders the snow +was white as the bleached bones of those women that died in +Merlin’s youth. </p> + +<p> “Greetings in God’s name, Messire Edward +Maudelain,” the stranger said. </p> + +<p> Since the new-comer spoke intrepidly of holy things a cheerier +Maudelain knew that this at least was no demon. +“Greetings!” he answered. “But I am Evrawc. You +name a man long dead.” </p> + +<p> “But it is from a certain Bohemian woman I come. What +matter, then, if the dead receive me?” And thus speaking, the +stranger dropped his cloak. </p> + +<p> He was clad, as you now saw, in flame-colored satin, which +shimmered with each movement like a high flame. He had the +appearance of a tall, lean youngster, with crisp, curling, very dark +red hair. He now regarded Maudelain. He displayed peculiarly +wide-set brown eyes; and their gaze was tender, and the tears +somehow had come to Maudelain’s eyes because of his great love +for this tall stranger. “Eh, from the dead to the dead I +travel, as ever,” said the new-comer, “with a message +and a token. My message runs, <i>Time is, O fellow satrap!</i> and +my token is this.” </p> + +<p> In this packet, wrapped with white parchment and tied with a +golden cord, was only a lock of hair. It lay like a little yellow +serpent in Maudelain’s palm. “And yet five years +ago,” he mused, “this hair was turned to dust. God keep +us all!” Then he saw the tall lean emissary puffed out like a +candle-flame; and upon the floor he saw the huddled cloak waver and +spread like ink, and he saw the white parchment slowly dwindle, as +snow melts under the open sun. But in his hand remained the lock of +yellow hair. </p> + +<p> “O my only friend,” said Maudelain, “I may not +comprehend, but I know that by no unhallowed art have you won back +to me.” Hair by hair he scattered upon the floor that which he +held. “<i>Time is!</i> and I have not need of any token to +spur my memory.” He prized up a corner of the hearthstone, +took out a small leather bag, and that day purchased a horse and a +sword. </p> + +<p> At dawn the Blessed Evrawc rode eastward in secular apparel. Two +weeks later he came to Sunninghill; and it happened that the same +morning the Earl of Salisbury, who had excellent reason to consider +... </p> + +<blockquote> +<p> <i>Follows a lacuna of fourteen pages. Maudelain’s +successful imposture of his half-brother, Richard the Second, so +strangely favored by their physical resemblance, and the subsequent +fiasco at Circencester, are now, however, tolerably well known to +students of history.</i> </p> + +<p> <i>In one way or another, Maudelain contrived to take the place +of his now dethroned brother, and therewith also the punishment +designed for Richard. It would seem evident, from the Argument of +the story in hand, that Nicolas de Caen attributes a large part of +this mysterious business to the co-operancy of Isabel of Valois, +King Richard’s eleven year old wife. And (should one have a +taste for the deductive) the foregoing name of Orvendile, when +compared with “THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD,” would +certainly hint that Owain Glyndwyr had a finger in the affair.</i> +</p> + +<p> <i>It is impossible to divine by what method, according to +Nicolas, this Edward Maudelain was substituted for his younger +brother. Nicolas, if you are to believe his “EPILOGUE,” +had the best of reasons for knowing that the prisoner locked up in +Pontefract Castle in the February of 1400, after Harry of Derby had +seized the crown of England, was not Richard Plantagenet: as is +attested, also, by the remaining fragment of this same</i> +“STORY OF THE HERITAGE.” </p> +</blockquote> + +<p> ... and eight men-at-arms followed him. </p> + +<p> Quickly Maudelain rose from the table, pushing his tall chair +aside, and as he did this, one of the soldiers closed the door +securely. “Nay, eat your fill, Sire Richard,” said Piers +Exton, “since you will not ever eat again.” </p> + +<p> “Is it so?” the trapped man answered quietly. +“Then indeed you come in a good hour.” Once only he +smote upon his breast. “<i>Mea culpa!</i> O Eternal Father, do +Thou shrive me very quickly of all those sins I have committed, both +in thought and deed, for now the time is very short.” </p> + +<p> And Exton spat upon the dusty floor. “Foh, they had told +me I would find a king here. I discover only a cat that +whines.” </p> + +<p> “Then ’ware his claws!” As a viper leaps +Maudelain sprang upon the nearest fellow and wrested away his +halberd. “Then ’ware his claws, my men! For I come of an +accursed race. And now let some of you lament that hour wherein the +devil’s son begot an heir for England! For of ice and of lust +and of hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and +fickle and cold and ravenous and without fear are all our race until +the end. Hah, until the end! O God of Gods!” this Maudelain +cried, with a great voice, “wilt Thou dare bid a man die +patiently, having aforetime filled his veins with such a venom? For +I lack the grace to die as all Thy saints have died, without one +carnal blow struck in my own defence. I lack the grace, my Father, +for even at the last the devil’s blood You gave me is not +quelled. I dare atone for that old sin done by my father in the +flesh, but yet I must atone as befits the race of Oriander!” +</p> + +<p> Then it was he and not they who pressed to the attack. Their +meeting was a bloody business, for in that dark and crowded room +Maudelain raged among his nine antagonists like an angered lion +among wolves. </p> + +<p> They struck at random and cursed shrilly, for they were now +half-afraid of this prey they had entrapped; so that presently he +was all hacked and bleeding, though as yet he had no mortal wound. +Four of these men he had killed by this time, and Piers Exton also +lay at his feet. </p> + +<p> Then the other four drew back a little. “Are ye tired so +soon?” said Maudelain, and he laughed terribly. “What, +even you! Why, look ye, my bold veterans, I never killed before +to-day, and I am not breathed as yet.” </p> + +<p> Thus he boasted, exultant in his strength. But the other men saw +that behind him Piers Exton had crawled into the chair from which +(they thought) King Richard had just risen, and they saw Exton +standing erect in this chair, with both arms raised. They saw this +Exton strike the King with his pole-axe, from behind, once only, and +they knew no more was needed. </p> + +<p> “By God!” said one of them in the ensuing stillness, +and it was he who bled the most, “that was a felon’s +blow.” </p> + +<p> But the dying man who lay before them made as though to smile. +“I charge you all to witness,” he faintly said, +“how willingly I render to Caesar’s daughter that which +was ever hers.” </p> + +<p> Then Exton fretted, as if with a little trace of shame: +“Who would have thought the rascal had remembered that first +wife of his so long? Caesar’s daughter, saith he! and dares in +extremis to pervert Holy Scripture like any Wycliffite! Well, he is +as dead as that first Caesar now, and our gracious King, I think, +will sleep the better for it. And yet—God only knows! for they +are an odd race, even as he said—these men that have old +Manuel’s blood in them.” </p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE SEVENTH NOVEL +</p> + +<a name="VIII"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +VIII +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Ainsi il avait trouvé sa mie</p> + <p>Si belle qu’on put souhaiter.</p> + <p>N’avoit cure d’ailleurs plaider,</p> + <p>Fors qu’avec lui manoir et estre.</p> + <p>Bien est Amour puissant et maistre.” </p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE EIGHTH NOVEL.—BRANWEN OF WALES GETS A KING’S +LOVE UNWITTINGLY, AND IN ALL INNOCENCE CONVINCES HIM OF THE +LITTLENESS OF HIS KINGDOM; SO THAT HE BESIEGES AND IN DUE COURSE +OCCUPIES ANOTHER REALM AS YET UNMAPPED. +</div> + + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Scabbard +</p> + + +<p> In the year of grace 1400 (Nicolas begins) King Richard, the +second monarch of that name to rule in England, wrenched his own +existence, and nothing more, from the close wiles of his cousin, +Harry of Derby, who was now sometimes called Henry of Lancaster, and +sometimes Bolingbroke. The circumstances of this evasion having been +recorded in the preceding tale, it suffices here to record that this +Henry was presently crowned King of England in Richard’s +place. All persons, saving only Owain Glyndwyr and Henry of +Lancaster, believed King Richard dead at that period when Richard +attended his own funeral, as a proceeding taking to the fancy, and, +among many others, saw the body of Edward Maudelain interred with +every regal ceremony in the chapel at Langley Bower. Then alone Sire +Richard crossed the seas, and at thirty-three set out to inspect a +transformed and gratefully untrammelling world wherein not a foot of +land belonged to him. </p> + +<p> Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his +half-brothers; and to detail his Asian wanderings would be tedious +and unprofitable. But at the end of each four months would come to +him a certain messenger from Glyndwyr, supposed by Richard to be the +imp Orvendile, who notoriously ran every day around the world upon +the Welshman’s business. It was in the Isle of Taprobane, +where the pismires are as great as hounds, and mine and store the +gold of which the inhabitants afterward rob them through a very +cunning device, that this emissary brought the letter which read +simply, “Now is England fit pasture for the White Hart.” +Presently Richard Holland was in Wales, and then he rode to +Sycharth. </p> + +<p> There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long +stewardship. It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless +machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the +barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their +squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester, +Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open +revolt. “By the God I do not altogether serve,” Owain +ended, “you have but to declare yourself, sire, and within the +moment England is yours.” </p> + +<p> Richard spoke with narrowed eyes. “You forget that while +Henry of Lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign +tranquilly in these islands. Come then! the hour strikes; and we +will coax the devil for once in a way to serve God.” </p> + +<p> “Oh, but there is a boundary appointed,” Glyndwyr +moodily returned. “You, too, forget that in cold blood this +Henry stabbed my best-loved son. But I do not forget this, and I +have tried divers methods which we need not speak of,—I who +can at will corrupt the air, and cause sickness and storms, raise +heavy mists, and create plagues and fires and shipwrecks; yet the +life itself I cannot take. For there is a boundary appointed, sire, +and beyond that frontier the Master of our Sabbaths cannot serve us +even though he would.” </p> + +<p> Richard crossed himself. “You horribly mistake my meaning. +Your practices are your own affair, and in them I decline to dabble. +I merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait. For you +have a fief at Caer Idion, I think?—Very well! I intend to +herd your sheep there, for a week or two, after the honorable +example of Apollo. It is your part to see that Henry knows I am +living disguised and defenceless at Caer Idion.” </p> + +<p> The gaunt Welshman chuckled. “Yes, squinting Henry of +Lancaster would cross the world, much less the Severn, to make quite +sure of Richard’s death. He would come in his own person with +at most some twenty trustworthy followers. I will have a hundred +there; and certain aging scores will then be settled in that +place.” Glyndwyr meditated afterward, very evilly. +“Sire,” he said without prelude, “I do not +recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have garnered much in +travelling!” </p> + +<p> “Why, look you,” Richard returned, “I have +garnered so much that I do not greatly care whether this scheme +succeed or no. With age I begin to contend even more indomitably +that a wise man will consider nothing very seriously. You barons +here believe it an affair of importance who may chance to be the +King of England, say, this time next year; you take sides between +Henry and me. I tell you frankly that neither of us, that no man in +the world, by reason of innate limitations, can ever rule otherwise +than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything save discord. Nor +can I see how this matters either, since the discomfort of an +ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking disaster. No, +Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, depend upon +it, to the burden of <i>Fools All</i>. For I am as liberally endowed +as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my performances, +my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would appraise those of +another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive that common-sense, +much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself about the actions +of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least, +impossible.” </p> + +<p> “I have known the thought,” said +Owain,—“though rarely since I found the Englishwoman +that was afterward my wife, and never since my son, my Gruffyd, was +murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than the others, +people said.... You are as yet the empty scabbard, powerless alike +for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword, sire, that +informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we are as +gods.” </p> + +<p> “Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen +kingdoms.” </p> + +<p> “We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves +par amours the second time he may safely assume that he has never +been in love at all.” </p> + +<p> “—And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the +devil.” </p> + +<p> “I greatly fear,” said Owain with a sigh, +“lest it may be your irreparable malady to hate nothing, not +even that which you dislike. No, you consider things with both eyes +open, with an unmanly rationality: whereas Sire Henry views all +matters with that heroic squint which came into your family from +Poictesme.” </p> + +<p> “Be off with your dusty scandals!” said Richard, +laughing. </p> + +<p> So then Glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of +Caerdyf, while at Caer Idion Richard Holland abode tranquilly for +some three weeks. There was in this place only Caradawc (the former +shepherd), his wife Alundyne, and their sole daughter Branwen. They +gladly perceived Sire Richard was no more a peasant than he was a +curmudgeon; as Caradawc observed: “It is perfectly apparent +that the robe of Padarn Beisrudd, which refuses to adjust itself to +any save highborn persons, would fit him as a glove does the hand; +but we will ask no questions, since it is not wholesome to dispute +the orderings of Owain Glyndwyr.” </p> + +<p> Now day by day would Richard Holland drive the flocks to pasture +near the Severn, and loll there in the shade, and make songs to his +lute. He grew to love this leisured life of bright and open spaces; +and its long solitudes, grateful with the warm odors of growing +things and with poignant bird-noises; and the tranquillity of these +meadows, that were always void of hurry, bedrugged the man through +many fruitless and contented hours. </p> + +<p> Each day at noon Branwen would bring his dinner, and she would +sometimes chat with him while he ate. After supper he would +discourse to Branwen of remote kingdoms, through which, as aimlessly +as a wind veers, he had ridden at adventure, among sedate and alien +peoples who adjudged him a madman; and she, in turn, would tell him +curious tales from the <i>Red Book of Hergest</i>,—telling of +Gwalchmai, and Peredur, and Geraint, in each one of which fine +heroes she had presently discerned an inadequate forerunnership of +Richard’s existence. </p> + +<p> This Branwen was a fair wench, slender and hardy. She had the +bold demeanor of a child who is ignorant of evil and in consequence +of suspicion. Happily, though, had she been named for that unhappy +lady of old, the wife of King Matholwch, for this Branwen, too, had +a white, thin, wistful face, like that of an empress on a silver +coin which is a little worn. Her eyes were large and brilliant, +colored like clear emeralds, and her abundant hair was so much +cornfloss, only it was more brightly yellow and was of immeasurably +finer texture. In full sunlight her cheeks were frosted like the +surface of a peach, but the underlying cool pink of them was rather +that of a cloud just after sunset, Richard decided. In all, a taking +morsel! though her shapely hands were hard with labor, and she +rarely laughed; for, as if in recompense, her heart was tender, and +she rarely ceased to smile as though she were thinking of some +peculiar and wonderful secret which she intended, in due time, to +share with you and with nobody else. Branwen had many lovers, and +preferred among them young Gwyllem ap Llyr, a portly lad, who was +handsome enough, though he had tiny and piggish eyes, and who sang +divinely. </p> + +<p> One day this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. +“Saxon,” he said, “you appear a stout man. Take +your pick of these, then, and have at you.” </p> + +<p> “Such are not the weapons I would have named,” +Richard answered: “yet in reason, Messire Gwyllem, I can deny +you nothing that means nothing to me.” </p> + +<p> With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In +these unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had +anticipated, but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and +he managed somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he +contrived this he never ascertained. </p> + +<p> “I have forgotten what we are fighting about,” he +observed, after ten minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; +“or, to be perfectly exact, I never knew. But we will fight no +more in this place. Come and go with me to Welshpool, Messire +Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a conclusion over good sack and +claret.” </p> + +<p> “Content!” cried Gwyllem; “but only if you +yield me Branwen.” </p> + +<p> “Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling +over a woman?” Richard demanded; “like two children in a +worldwide toyshop over any one particular toy? Then devil take me if +I am not heartily ashamed of my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I +would speak naught save commendation of these delicate and +livelily-tinted creatures so long as one is able to approach them in +a becoming spirit of levity: it is only their not infrequent misuse +which I would condemn; and in my opinion the person who elects to +build a shrine for any one of them has only himself to blame if his +chosen goddess will accept no burnt-offering except his honor and +happiness. Yet since time’s youth have many fine men been +addicted to this insane practice, as, for example, were Hercules and +Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and, indeed, the more I +reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of other venerable +and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I ashamed of my +sex.” </p> + +<p> Gwyllem said: “This lazy gabbling of yours is all very +fine. Perhaps it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not +reason.” </p> + +<p> “I was endeavoring to prove that,” said Richard +gently. Then they went to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem’s +horse. Tongue loosened by the claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of +Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to each rapture Richard affably +assented. In his heart he likened the boy to Dionysos at Naxos, and +could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover, the room was comfortably +dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the windows, rustling and +tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content. </p> + +<p> “She does not love me?” Gwyllem cried. “It is +well enough. I do not come to her as one merchant to another, since +love was never bartered. Listen, Saxon!” He caught up +Richard’s lute. The strings shrieked beneath Gwyllem’s +fingers as he fashioned his rude song. </p> + +<p> +Sang Gwyllem: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2">“Love me or love me not, it is enough</p> + <p>That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is</p> + <p>Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,—</p> + <p>My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred</p> + <p>With tavern-catches, which that pity of his</p> + <p>Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word,</p> + <p>O Branwen!</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“I have accorded you incessant praise</p> + <p>And song and service, dear, because of this;</p> + <p>And always I have dreamed incessantly</p> + <p>Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days</p> + <p>This man or that shall love you, and at last</p> + <p>This man or that shall win you, it must be</p> + <p>That, loving him, you will have pity on me</p> + <p>When happiness engenders memory</p> + <p>And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past,</p> + <p>O Branwen!</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2">“Of this I know not surely, who am sure</p> + <p>That I shall always love you while I live,</p> + <p>And that, when I am dead, with naught to give</p> + <p>Of song or service, Love will yet endure,</p> + <p>And yet retain his last prerogative,</p> + <p>When I lie still, and sleep out centuries,</p> + <p>With dreams of you and the exceeding love</p> + <p>I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,</p> + <p>And give God thanks for all, and so find peace,</p> + <p>O Branwen!”</p> + +</div> +<p> “Now, were I to get as tipsy as that,” Richard +enviously thought, midway in a return to his stolid sheep, “I +would simply go to sleep and wake up with a headache. And were I to +fall as many fathoms deep in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, +rather, as he hurls himself with a splurge, I would perform—I +wonder, now, what miracle?” </p> + +<p> For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so +young, so earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so +untroubled by forethought: each least desire controlled him, as +varying winds sport with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to +superior vagaries the boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a +fashion Gwyllem was superb. “And heigho!” said Richard, +“I am attestedly a greater fool than he, but I begin to weary +of a folly so thin-blooded.” </p> + +<p> The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He +declared himself a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who +perfectly recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker +crossed over into England. </p> + +<p> Richard whistled. “Now my cousin will be quite sure, and +now my anxious cousin will come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux. +And now, by every saint in the calendar! I am as good as King of +England.” </p> + +<p> He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades +of grass between his fingers while he meditated. Undoubtedly he +would kill this squinting Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience +and even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort +of vermin, but, hand upon heart, Richard was unable to avow any +particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel’s death. Thus +crudely to demolish the knave’s adroit and year-long schemings +savored actually of grossness. The spider was venomous, and his +destruction laudable; granted, but in crushing him you ruined his +web, a miracle of patient machination, which, despite yourself, +compelled hearty admiring and envy. True, the process would recrown +a certain Richard, but then, as Richard recalled it, being King was +rather tedious. Richard was not now quite sure that he wanted to be +King, and, in consequence, be daily plagued by a host of vexatious +and ever-squabbling barons. “I shall miss the little huzzy, +too,” he thought. </p> + +<p> “Heigho!” said Richard, “I shall console +myself with purchasing all beautiful things that can be touched and +handled. Life is a flimsy vapor which passes and is not any more: +presently Branwen will be married to this Gwyllem and will be grown +fat and old, and I shall be remarried to little Dame Isabel, and +shall be King of England: and a trifle later all four of us shall be +dead. Pending this deplorable consummation a wise man will endeavor +to amuse himself.” </p> + +<p> Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the +latter send the promised implements to Caer Idion. Richard, +returning to the hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, +and grovelling at the threshold. Her forehead was bloodied when she +raised it and through tearless sobs told of what had happened. A +half-hour earlier, while she and Branwen were intent upon their +milking, Gwyllem had ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. +Branwen had called him sot, had bidden him go home. “That I +will do,” said Gwyllem and suddenly caught up the girl. +Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist Gwyllem struck her +twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away with Branwen. </p> + +<p> Richard made no observation. In silence he fetched his horse, +and did not pause to saddle it. Quickly he rode to Gwyllem’s +house, and broke in the door. Against the farther wall stood lithe +Branwen fighting silently: her breasts and shoulders were naked, +where Gwyllem had torn away her garments. He wheedled, laughed, +swore, and hiccoughed, turn by turn, but she was silent. </p> + +<p> “On guard!” Richard barked. Gwyllem wheeled. His +head twisted toward his left shoulder, and one corner of his mouth +convulsively snapped upward, so that his teeth were bared. There was +a knife at Richard’s girdle, which he now unsheathed and flung +away. He stepped eagerly toward the snarling Welshman, and with both +hands seized the thick and hairy throat. What followed was brutal. +</p> + +<p> For many minutes Branwen stood with averted face, shuddering. +She very dimly heard the sound of Gwyllem’s impotent fists as +they beat against the countenance and body of Richard, and heard the +thin splitting vicious noise of torn cloth as Gwyllem clutched at +Richard’s tunic and tore it many times. Richard did not utter +any articulate word, and Gwyllem could not. There was entire silence +for a heart-beat, and the thudding fall of something ponderous and +limp. </p> + +<p> “Come!” Richard said then. Through the hut’s +twilight he came, as glorious in her eyes as Michael fresh from that +primal battle with old Satan. Tall Richard came to her, his face all +blood, and lifted her in his arms lest Branwen’s skirt be +soiled by the demolished thing which sprawled across their path. She +never spoke. She could not speak. In his arms she rode homeward, +passive, and content. The horse trod with deliberation. In the east +the young moon was taking heart as the darkness thickened, and +innumerable stars awoke. Branwen noted these things incuriously. +</p> + +<p> Richard was horribly afraid. He it had been, in sober verity it +had been Richard of Bordeaux, that some monstrous force had seized, +and had lifted, and had curtly utilized as its handiest implement. +He had been, and in the moment had known himself to be, the thrown +spear as yet in air, about to kill and quite powerless to refrain +from killing. It was a full three minutes before he had got the +better of his bewilderment and laughed, very softly, lest he disturb +this Branwen, who was so near his heart.... </p> + +<p> Next day she came to him at noon, bearing as always the little +basket. It contained to-day a napkin, some garlic, a ham, and a +small soft cheese; some shalots, salt, nuts, wild apples, lettuce, +onions, and mushrooms. “Behold a feast!” said Richard. +He noted then that she carried also a blue pitcher filled with thin +wine, and two cups of oak-bark. She thanked him for last +night’s performance, and drank a mouthful of wine to his +health. </p> + +<p> “Decidedly, I shall be sorry to have done with +shepherding,” said Richard as he ate. </p> + +<p> Branwen answered, “I too shall be sorry, lord, when the +masquerade is ended.” And it seemed to Richard that she +sighed, and he was the happier. </p> + +<p> But he only shrugged. “I am the wisest person unhanged, +since I comprehend my own folly. Yet I grant you that he was wise, +too, the minstrel of old time that sang: ‘Over wild lands and +tumbling seas flits Love, at will, and maddens the heart and +beguiles the senses of all whom he attacks, whether his quarry be +some monster of the ocean or some fierce denizen of the forest, or +man; for thine, O Love, thine alone is the power to make playthings +of us all.’” </p> + +<p> “Your bard was wise, no doubt, yet it was not in such +terms that Gwyllem sang of this passion. Lord,” she demanded +shyly, “how would you sing of love?” </p> + +<p> Richard was replete and contented with the world. He took up the +lute, in full consciousness that his compliance was in large part +cenatory. “In courtesy, thus—” </p> + +<p> +Sang Richard: +</p> +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2"> + “The gods in honor of fair Branwen’s worth</p> + <p>Bore gifts to her:—and Jove, Olympus’ lord,</p> + <p>Co-rule of Earth and Heaven did accord,</p> + <p>And Hermes brought that lyre he framed at birth,</p> + <p>And Venus her famed girdle (to engirth</p> + <p>A fairer beauty now), and Mars his sword,</p> + <p>And wrinkled Plutus half the secret hoard </p> + <p>And immemorial treasure of mid-earth;—</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “And while the careful gods were pondering</p> + <p>Which of these goodly gifts the goodliest was, </p> + <p>Young Cupid came among them carolling </p> + <p>And proffered unto her a looking-glass, </p> + <p>Wherein she gazed, and saw the goodliest thing</p> + <p>That Earth had borne, and Heaven might not surpass.” </p> +</div> + +<p> “Three sounds are rarely heard,” said Branwen; +“and these are the song of the birds of Rhiannon, an +invitation to feast with a miser, and a speech of wisdom from the +mouth of a Saxon. The song you have made of courtesy is tinsel. Sing +now in verity.” </p> + +<p> Richard laughed, though he was sensibly nettled and perhaps a +shade abashed. Presently he sang again. </p> + +<p> +Sang Richard: +</p> + + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Catullus might have made of words that seek</p> + <p>With rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways,</p> + <p>The perfect song, or in remoter days</p> + <p>Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek;</p> + <p>But I am not as they,—and dare not speak</p> + <p>Of you unworthily, and dare not praise</p> + <p>Perfection with imperfect roundelays,</p> + <p>And desecrate the prize I dare to seek.</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2">“I do not woo you, then, by fashioning</p> + <p>Vext analogues ’twixt you and Guenevere,</p> + <p>Nor do I come with agile lips that bring</p> + <p>The sugared periods of a sonneteer,</p> + <p>And bring no more—but just with, lips that cling</p> + <p>To yours, in murmuring, ‘I love you, dear!’”</p> +</div> + +<p> Richard had resolved that Branwen should believe him. Tinsel, +indeed! then here was yet more tinsel which she must receive as +gold. He was very angry, because his vanity was hurt, and the +pin-prick spurred him to a counterfeit so specious that consciously +he gloried in it. He was superb, and she believed him now; there was +no questioning the fact, he saw it plainly, and with exultant +cruelty; then curt as lightning came the knowledge that what Branwen +believed was the truth. </p> + +<p> Richard had taken just two strides toward this fair girl. +Branwen stayed motionless, her lips a little parted. The affairs of +earth and heaven were motionless throughout the moment, attendant, +it seemed to him; and to him his whole life was like a wave that +trembled now at full height, and he was aware of a new world all +made of beauty and of pity. Then the lute fell from his spread out +hands, and Richard sighed, and shrugged. </p> + +<p> “There is a task set me,” he said—“it is +God’s work, I think. But I do not know—I only know that +you are very beautiful, Branwen,” he said, and in the name he +found a new and piercing loveliness. </p> + +<p> And he said also: “Go! For I have loved many women, and, +God help me! I know that I have but to wheedle you and you, too, +will yield! Yonder is God’s work to be done, and within me +rages a commonwealth of devils. Child! child!” he cried, +“I am, and ever was, a coward, too timid to face life without +reserve, and always I laughed because I was afraid to concede that +anything is serious!” </p> + +<p> For a long while Richard lay at his ease in the lengthening +shadows of the afternoon. </p> + +<p> “I love her. She thinks me an elderly imbecile with a flat +and reedy singing-voice, and she is perfectly right. She has never +even entertained the notion of loving me. That is well, for +to-morrow, or, it may be, the day after, we must part forever. I +would not have the parting make her sorrowful—or not, at +least, too unalterably sorrowful. It is very well that Branwen does +not love me. </p> + +<p> “Why should she? I am almost twice her age, an aging +fellow now, battered and selfish and too indolent to love +her—say, as Gwyllem loved her. I did well to kill that +Gwyllem. I am profoundly glad I killed him, and I thoroughly enjoyed +doing it; but, after all, the man loved her in his fashion, and to +the uttermost reach of his gross nature. I love her in a rather more +decorous and acceptable fashion, it is true, but only a half of me +loves her. The other half of me remembers that I am aging, that +Caradawc’s hut is leaky, that, in fine, bodily comfort is the +single luxury of which one never tires. I am a very contemptible +creature, the empty scabbard of a man, precisely as Owain +said.” This settled, Richard whistled to his dog. </p> + +<p> The sun had set. There were no shadows anywhere as Richard and +his sheep went homeward, but on every side the colors of the world +were more sombre. Twice his flock roused a covey of partridges which +had settled for the night. The screech-owl had come out of his hole, +and bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. +There was as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and +this was very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical +that he trudged away from this star. </p> + +<p> Next morning the Welshmen came, and now the trap was ready for +Henry of Lancaster. </p> + +<p> It befell just two days later, about noon, that while Richard +idly talked with Branwen a party of soldiers, some fifteen in +number, rode down the river’s bank from the ford above. Their +leader paused, then gave an order. The men drew rein. He cantered +forward. </p> + +<p> “God give you joy, fair sir,” said Richard, when the +cavalier was near him. </p> + +<p> The new-comer raised his visor. “God give you eternal joy, +my fair cousin,” he said, “and very soon. Now send away +this woman before that happens which must happen.” </p> + +<p> “Do you plan,” said Richard, “to disfigure the +stage of our quiet pastorals with murder?” </p> + +<p> “I design my own preservation,” King Henry answered, +“for while you live my rule is insecure.” </p> + +<p> “I am sorry,” Richard said, “that in part my +blood is yours.” </p> + +<p> Twice he sounded his horn, and everywhere from rustling +underwoods arose the half-naked Welshmen. Said Richard: “You +should read history more carefully, Cousin Henry. You might have +profited, as I have done, by considering the trick which our +grandfather, old Edward Longshanks, played on the French King at +Mezelais. As matters stand, your men are one to ten. You are +impotent. Now, now we balance our accounts! These persons here will +first deal with your followers. Then they will conduct you to +Glyndwyr, who has long desired to deal with you himself, in privacy, +since that Whit-Monday when you murdered his son.” </p> + +<p> The King began, “In mercy, sire—!” and Richard +laughed a little, saying: </p> + +<p> “That virtue is not overabundant among us of +Oriander’s blood, as we both know. No, cousin, Fate and Time +are merry jesters. See, now, their latest mockery! You the King of +England ride to Sycharth to your death, and I the tender of sheep +depart into London, without any hindrance, to reign henceforward +over these islands. To-morrow you are worm’s-meat, Cousin +Henry: to-morrow, as yesterday, I am King of England.” </p> + +<p> Then Branwen gave one sharp, brief cry, and Richard forgot all +things saving this girl, and strode to her. He had caught up her +hard, lithe hands; against his lips he strained them close and very +close. </p> + +<p> “Branwen—!” he said. His eyes devoured her. +</p> + +<p> “Yes, King,” she answered. “O King of England! +O fool that I have been to think you less!” </p> + +<p> In a while Richard said: “Well, I at least am not fool +enough to think of making you a king’s whore. So I must choose +between a peasant wench and England. Now I choose, and how gladly! +Branwen, help me to be more than King of England!” </p> + +<p> Low and very low he spoke, and long and very long he gazed at +her, and neither seemed to breathe. Of what she thought I cannot +tell you; but in Richard there was no power of thought, only a great +wonderment. Why, between this woman’s love and aught else +there was no choice for him, he knew upon a sudden. Perhaps he would +thus worship her always, he reflected: and then again, perhaps he +would be tired of her before long, just as all other persons seemed +to abate in these infatuations: meanwhile it was certain that he was +very happy. No, he could not go back to the throne and to the little +French girl who was in law his wife. </p> + +<p> And, as if from an immense distance, came to Richard the dogged +voice of Henry of Lancaster. “It is of common report in these +islands that I have a better right to the throne than you. As much +was told our grandfather, King Edward of happy memory, when he +educated you and had you acknowledged heir to the crown, but his +love was so strong for his son the Prince of Wales that nothing +could alter his purpose. And indeed if you had followed even the +example of the Black Prince you might still have been our King; but +you have always acted so contrarily to his admirable precedents as +to occasion the rumor to be generally believed throughout England +that you were not, after all, his son—” </p> + +<p> Richard had turned impatiently. “For the love of Heaven, +truncate your abominable periods. Be off with you. Yonder across +that river is the throne of England, which you appear, through some +lunacy, to consider a desirable possession. Take it, then; for, +praise God! the sword has found its sheath.” </p> + +<p> The King answered: “I do not ask you to reconsider your +dismissal, assuredly—Richard,” he cried, a little +shaken, “I perceive that until your death you will win +contempt and love from every person.” </p> + +<p> “Yes, yes, for many years I have been the playmate of the +world,” said Richard; “but to-day I wash my hands, and +set about another and more laudable business. I had dreamed certain +dreams, indeed—but what had I to do with all this strife +between the devil and the tiger? No, Glyndwyr will set up Mortimer +against you now, and you two must fight it out. I am no more his +tool, and no more your enemy, my cousin—Henry,” he said +with quickening voice, “there was a time when we were boys and +played together, and there was no hatred between us, and I regret +that time!” </p> + +<p> “As God lives, I too regret that time!” the bluff, +squinting King replied. He stared at Richard for a while wherein +each understood. “Dear fool,” Sire Henry said, +“there is no man in all the world but hates me saving only +you.” Then the proud King clapped spurs to his proud horse and +rode away. </p> + +<p> More lately Richard dismissed his wondering marauders. Now he +and Branwen were alone and a little troubled, since each was afraid +of that oncoming moment when their eyes must meet. </p> + +<p> So Richard laughed. “Praise God!” he wildly cried, +“I am the greatest fool unhanged!” </p> + +<p> She answered: “I am the happier for your folly. I am the +happiest of God’s creatures.” </p> + +<p> And Richard meditated. “Faith of a gentleman!” he +declared; “but you are nothing of the sort, and of this fact I +happen to be quite certain.” Their lips met then and afterward +their eyes; and each of these ragged peasants was too glad for +laughter. </p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE EIGHTH NOVEL +</p> +<a name="IX"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +IX +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“J’ay en mon cueur joyeusement</p> + <p> Escript, afin que ne l’oublie,</p> + <p>Ce refrain qu’ayme chierement,</p> + <p>C’estes vous de qui suis amye.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE NINTH NOVEL.—JEHANE OF NAVARRE, AFTER A WITHSTANDING OF +ALL OTHER ASSAULTS, IS IN A LONG DUEL, WHEREIN TIME AND COMMON-SENSE +ARE FLOUTED, AND KINGDOMS ARE SHAKEN, DETHRONED AND RECOMPENSED BY +AN ENDURING LUNACY. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Navarrese +</p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1386, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew +(thus Nicolas begins), came to the Spanish coast Messire Peyre de +Lesnerac, in a war-ship sumptuously furnished and manned by many +persons of dignity and wealth, in order suitably to escort the +Princess Jehane into Brittany, where she was to marry the Duke of +that province. There were now rejoicings throughout Navarre, in +which the Princess took but a nominal part and young Antoine Riczi +none at all. </p> + +<p> This Antoine Riczi came to Jehane that August twilight in the +hedged garden. “King’s daughter!” he sadly greeted +her. “Duchess of Brittany! Countess of Rougemont! Lady of +Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of Toufon and Guerche!” +</p> + +<p> She answered, “No, my dearest,—I am that Jehane, +whose only title is the Constant Lover.” And in the green +twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging star alone, their lips and +desperate young bodies clung, now, it might be, for the last time. +</p> + +<p> Presently the girl spoke. Her soft mouth was lax and tremulous, +and her gray eyes were more brilliant than the star yonder. The +boy’s arms were about her, so that neither could be quite +unhappy, yet. </p> + +<p> “Friend,” said Jehane, “I have no choice. I +must wed with this de Montfort. I think I shall die presently. I +have prayed God that I may die before they bring me to the +dotard’s bed.” </p> + +<p> Young Riczi held her now in an embrace more brutal. “Mine! +mine!” he snarled toward the obscuring heavens. </p> + +<p> “Yet it may be I must live. Friend, the man is very old. +Is it wicked to think of that? For I cannot but think of his great +age.” </p> + +<p> Then Riczi answered: “My desires—may God forgive +me!—have clutched like starving persons at that sorry +sustenance. Friend! ah, fair, sweet friend! the man is human and +must die, but love, we read, is immortal. I am wishful to kill +myself, Jehane. But, oh, Jehane! dare you to bid me live?” +</p> + +<p> “Friend, as you love me, I entreat you to live. Friend, I +crave of the Eternal Father that if I falter in my love for you I +may be denied even the one bleak night of ease which Judas +knows.” The girl did not weep; dry-eyed she winged a perfectly +sincere prayer toward incorruptible saints. Riczi was to remember +the fact, and through long years of severance. </p> + +<p> For even now, as Riczi went away from Jehane, a shrill +singing-girl was rehearsing, yonder behind the yew-hedge, the song +which she was to sing at Jehane’s bridal feast. </p> + +<p> Sang this joculatrix: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2">“When the Morning broke before us </p> + <p>Came the wayward Three astraying, </p> + <p>Chattering in babbling chorus, </p> + <p>(Obloquies of Aether saying),— </p> + <p>Hoidens that, at pegtop playing, </p> + <p>Flung their Top where yet it whirls </p> + <p>Through the coil of clouds unstaying, </p> + <p>For the Fates are captious girls!” </p> +</div> + +<p> And upon the next day de Lesnerac bore young Jehane from +Pampeluna and presently to Saillé, where old Jehan the Brave +took her to wife. She lived as a queen, but she was a woman of +infrequent laughter. </p> + +<p> She had Duke Jehan’s adoration, and his barons’ +obeisancy, and his villagers applauded her passage with stentorian +shouts. She passed interminable days amid bright curious arrasses +and trod listlessly over pavements strewn with flowers. She had +fiery-hearted jewels, and shimmering purple cloths, and much +furniture adroitly carven, and many tapestries of Samarcand and +Baldach upon which were embroidered, by brown fingers that time had +turned long ago to Asian dust, innumerable asps and deer and +phoenixes and dragons and all the motley inhabitants of air and of +the thicket; but her memories, too, she had, and for a dreary while +she got no comfort because of them. Then ambition quickened. </p> + +<p> Young Antoine Riczi likewise nursed his wound as best he might; +but at the end of the second year after Jehane’s wedding his +uncle, the Vicomte de Montbrison—a gaunt man, with preoccupied +and troubled eyes—had summoned Antoine into Lyonnois and, +after appropriate salutation, had informed the lad that, as the +Vicomte’s heir, he was to marry the Demoiselle Gerberge de +Nérac upon the ensuing Michaelmas. </p> + +<p> “That I may not do,” said Riczi; and since a +chronicler that would tempt fortune should never stretch the fabric +of his wares too thin (unlike Sir Hengist), I merely tell you these +two dwelt together at Montbrison for a decade: and the Vicomte swore +at his nephew and predicted this or that disastrous destination as +often as Antoine declined to marry the latest of his uncle’s +candidates,—in whom the Vicomte was of an astonishing +fertility. </p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1401 came the belated news that Duke Jehan +had closed his final day. “You will be leaving me!” the +Vicomte growled; “now, in my decrepitude, you will be leaving +me! It is abominable, and I shall in all likelihood disinherit you +this very night.” </p> + +<p> “Yet it is necessary,” Riczi answered; and, filled +with no unhallowed joy, he rode for Vannes, in Brittany, where the +Duchess-Regent held her court. Dame Jehane had within that fortnight +put aside her mourning. She sat beneath a green canopy, gold-fringed +and powdered with many golden stars, when Riczi came again to her, +and the rising saps of spring were exercising their august and +formidable influence. She sat alone, by prearrangement, to one end +of the high-ceiled and radiant apartment; midway in the hall her +lords and divers ladies were gathered about a saltatrice and a +jongleur, who were diverting the courtiers, to the mincing +accompaniment of a lute; but Jehane sat apart from these, frail, and +splendid with many jewels, and a little sad. </p> + +<p> And Antoine Riczi found no power of speech within him at the +first. Silent he stood before her, still as an effigy, while +meltingly the jongleur sang. </p> + +<p> “Jehane!” said Antoine Riczi, in a while, +“have you, then, forgotten, O Jehane?” </p> + +<p> The resplendent woman had not moved at all. It was as though she +were some tinted and lavishly adorned statue of barbaric heathenry, +and he her postulant; and her large eyes appeared to judge an +immeasurable path, beyond him. Now her lips fluttered somewhat. +“I am the Duchess of Brittany,” she said, in the phantom +of a voice. “I am the Countess of Rougemont. The Lady of +Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of Toufon and Guerche!... Jehane +is dead.” </p> + +<p> The man had drawn one audible breath. “You are that +Jehane, whose only title is the Constant Lover!” </p> + +<p> “Friend, the world smirches us,” she said +half-pleadingly, “I have tasted too deep of wealth and power. +I am drunk with a deadly wine, and ever I thirst—I +thirst—” </p> + +<p> “Jehane, do you remember that May morning in Pampeluna +when first I kissed you, and about us sang many birds? Then as now +you wore a gown of green, Jehane.” </p> + +<p> “Friend, I have swayed kingdoms since.” </p> + +<p> “Jehane, do you remember that August twilight in Pampeluna +when last I kissed you? Then as now you wore a gown of green, +Jehane.” </p> + +<p> “But I wore no such chain as this about my neck,” +the woman answered, and lifted a huge golden collar garnished with +emeralds and sapphires and with many pearls. “Friend, the +chain is heavy, yet I lack the will to cast it off. I lack the will, +Antoine.” And now with a sudden shout of mirth her courtiers +applauded the evolutions of the saltatrice. </p> + +<p> “King’s daughter!” said Riczi then; “O +perilous merchandise! a god came to me and a sword had pierced his +breast. He touched the gold hilt of it and said, ‘Take back +your weapon.’ I answered, ‘I do not know you.’ +‘I am Youth’ he said; ‘take back your +weapon.’” </p> + +<p> “It is true,” she responded, “it is lamentably +true that after to-night we are as different persons, you and +I.” </p> + +<p> He said: “Jehane, do you not love me any longer? Remember +old years and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God +abhors nothing so much as unfaith. For your own sake, +Jehane,—ah, no, not for your sake nor for mine, but for the +sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, so you tell me, time has +slain!” </p> + +<p> Once or twice she blinked, as if dazzled by a light of +intolerable splendor, but otherwise she stayed rigid. “You +have dared, messire, to confront me with the golden-hearted, +clean-eyed Navarrese that once was I! and I requite.” The +austere woman rose. “Messire, you swore to me, long since, +eternal service. I claim my right in domnei. +Yonder—gray-bearded, the man in black and silver—is the +Earl of Worcester, the King of England’s ambassador, in common +with whom the wealthy dowager of Brittany has signed a certain +contract. Go you, then, with Worcester into England, as my proxy, +and in that island, as my proxy, become the wife of the King of +England. Messire, your audience is done.” </p> + +<p> Riczi said this: “Can you hurt me any more, +Jehane?—no, even in hell they cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at +least, keep faith, and in your face I fling faith like a +glove—old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,—and I will +go, Jehane.” </p> + +<p> Her heart raged. “Poor, glorious fool!” she thought; +“had you but the wit even now to use me brutally, even now to +drag me from this daïs—!” Instead he went away from +her smilingly, treading through the hall with many affable +salutations, while the jongleur sang. </p> + +<p> Sang the jongleur: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2">“There is a land those hereabout</p> + <p>Ignore ... Its gates are barred</p> + <p>By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt.</p> + <p>These mercifully guard</p> + <p>That land we seek—the land so fair!—</p> + <p>And all the fields thereof,</p> + <p>Where daffodils flaunt everywhere</p> + <p>And ouzels chant of love,—</p> + <p>Lest we attain the Middle-Land,</p> + <p>Whence clouded well-springs rise,</p> + <p>And vipers from a slimy strand</p> + <p >Lift glittering cold eyes.</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2">“Now, the parable all may understand,</p> + <p>And surely you know the name of the land!</p> + <p>Ah, never a guide or ever a chart</p> + <p>May safely lead you about this land,—</p> + <p>The Land of the Human Heart!” </p> +</div> + +<p> And the following morning, being duly empowered, Antoine Riczi +sailed for England in company with the Earl of Worcester; and upon +Saint Richard’s day the next ensuing was, at Eltham, as proxy +of Jehane, married in his own person to the bloat King Henry, the +fourth of that name to reign. This king was that same squinting +Harry of Derby (called also Henry of Lancaster and Bolingbroke) who +stole his cousin’s crown, and about whom I have told you in +the preceding story. First Sire Henry placed the ring on +Riczi’s finger, and then spoke Antoine Riczi, very loud and +clear: </p> + +<p> “I, Antoine Riczi,—in the name of my worshipful +lady, Dame Jehane, the daughter of Messire Charles until lately King +of Navarre, the Duchess of Brittany and the Countess of +Rougemont,—do take you, Sire Henry of Lancaster, King of +England and in title of France, and Lord of Ireland, to be my +husband; and thereto I, Antoine Riczi, in the spirit of my said +lady”—the speaker paused here to regard the gross hulk +of masculinity before him, and then smiled very +sadly—“in precisely the spirit of my said lady, I plight +you my troth.” </p> + +<p> Afterward the King made him presents of some rich garments of +scarlet trimmed with costly furs, and of four silk belts studded +with silver and gold, and with valuable clasps, of which the owner +might well be proud, and Riczi returned to Lyonnois. +“Depardieux!” his uncle said; “so you return +alone!” </p> + +<p> “I return as did Prince Troilus,” said +Riczi—“to boast to you of liberal entertainment in the +tent of Diomede.” </p> + +<p> “You are certainly an inveterate fool,” the Vicomte +considered after a prolonged appraisal of his face, “since +there is always a deal of other pink-and-white flesh as yet +unmortgaged—Boy with my brother’s eyes!” the +Vicomte said, in another voice; “I have heard of the task put +upon you: and I would that I were God to punish as is fitting! But +you are welcome home, my lad.” </p> + +<p> So these two abode together at Montbrison for a long time, and +in the purlieus of that place hunted and hawked, and made sonnets +once in a while, and read aloud from old romances some five days out +of the seven. The verses of Riczi were in the year of grace 1410 +made public, not without acclamation; and thereafter the stripling +Comte de Charolais, future heir to all Burgundy and a zealous patron +of rhyme, was much at Montbrison, and there conceived for Antoine +Riczi such admiration as was possible to a very young man only. </p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1412 the Vicomte, being then bedridden, +died without any disease and of no malady save the inherencies of +his age. “I entreat of you, my nephew,” he said at last, +“that always you use as touchstone the brave deed you did at +Eltham. It is necessary for a gentleman to serve his lady according +to her commandments, but you performed the most absurd and the most +cruel task which any woman ever imposed upon her lover and servitor +in domnei. I laugh at you, and I envy you.” Thus he died, +about Martinmas. </p> + +<p> Now was Antoine Riczi a powerful baron, but he got no comfort of +his lordship, because that old incendiary, the King of Darkness, +daily added fuel to a smouldering sorrow until grief quickened into +vaulting flames of wrath and of disgust. </p> + +<p> “What now avail my riches?” said the Vicomte. +“How much wealthier was I when I was loved, and was myself an +eager lover! I relish no other pleasures than those of love. I am +Love’s sot, drunk with a deadly wine, poor fool, and ever I +thirst. All my chattels and my acres appear to me to be bright +vapors, and the more my dominion and my power increase, the more +rancorously does my heart sustain its bitterness over having been +robbed of that fair merchandise which is the King of +England’s. To hate her is scant comfort and to despise her +none at all, since it follows that I who am unable to forget the +wanton am even more to be despised than she. I will go into England +and execute what mischief I may against her.” </p> + +<p> The new Vicomte de Montbrison set forth for Paris, first to do +homage for his fief, and secondly to be accredited for some +plausible mission into England. But in Paris he got disquieting +news. Jehane’s husband was dead, and her stepson Henry, the +fifth monarch of that name to reign in Britain, had invaded France +to support preposterous claims which the man advanced to the crown +of that latter kingdom; and as the earth is altered by the advent of +winter, so was the appearance of France transformed by King +Henry’s coming, and everywhere the nobles were stirred up to +arms, the castles were closed, the huddled cities were fortified, +and on every side arose entrenchments. </p> + +<p> Thus through this sudden turn was the new Vicomte, the dreamer +and the recluse, caught up by the career of events, as a straw is +borne away by a torrent, when the French lords marched with their +vassals to Harfleur, where they were soundly drubbed by the King of +England; as afterward at Agincourt. </p> + +<p> But in the year of grace 1417 there was a breathing space for +discredited France, and presently the Vicomte de Montbrison was sent +into England, as ambassador. He got in London a fruitless audience +of King Henry, whose demands were such as rendered a renewal of the +war inevitable; and afterward got, in the month of April, about the +day of Palm Sunday, at the Queen’s dower-palace of +Havering-Bower, an interview with Queen Jehane.<a id="footnotetag5" name="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> </p> + +<p> A curled pert page took the Vicomte to where she sat alone, by +prearrangement, in a chamber with painted walls, profusely lighted +by the sun, and made pretence to weave a tapestry. When the page had +gone she rose and cast aside the shuttle, and then with a glad and +wordless cry stumbled toward the Vicomte. “Madame and +Queen—!” he coldly said. </p> + +<p> His judgment found in her a quite ordinary, frightened woman, +aging now, but still very handsome in these black and shimmering +gold robes; but all his other faculties found her desirable: and +with a contained hatred he had perceived, as if by the terse +illumination of a thunderbolt, that he could never love any woman +save the woman whom he most despised. </p> + +<p> She said: “I had forgotten. I had remembered only you, +Antoine, and Navarre, and the clean-eyed Navarrese—” Now +for a little, Jehane paced the gleaming and sun-drenched apartment +as a bright leopardess might tread her cage. Then she wheeled. +“Friend, I think that God Himself has deigned to avenge you. +All misery my reign has been. First Hotspur, then prim Worcester +harried us. Came Glyndwyr afterward to prick us with his +devils’ horns. Followed the dreary years that linked me to the +rotting corpse which God’s leprosy devoured while the poor +furtive thing yet moved, and endured its share in the punishment of +Manuel’s poisonous blood. All misery, Antoine! And now I live +beneath a sword.” </p> + +<p> “You have earned no more,” he said. “You have +earned no more, O Jehane! whose only title is the Constant +Lover!” He spat it out. </p> + +<p> She came uncertainly toward him, as though he had been some not +implacable knave with a bludgeon. “For the King hates +me,” she plaintively said, “and I live beneath a sword. +The big, fierce-eyed boy has hated me from the first, for all his +lip-courtesy. And now he lacks the money to pay his troops, and I am +the wealthiest person within his realm. I am a woman and alone in a +foreign land. So I must wait, and wait, and wait, Antoine, till he +devises some trumped-up accusation. Friend, I live as did Saint +Damoclus, beneath a sword. Antoine!” she wailed—for now +the pride of Queen Jehane was shattered utterly—“I am +held as a prisoner for all that my chains are of gold.” </p> + +<p> “Yet it was not until of late,” he observed, +“that you disliked the metal which is the substance of all +crowns.” </p> + +<p> And now the woman lifted toward him her massive golden necklace, +garnished with emeralds and sapphires and with many pearls, and in +the sunlight the gems were tawdry things. “Friend, the chain +is heavy, and I lack the power to cast it off. The Navarrese we know +of wore no such perilous fetters. Ah, you should have mastered me at +Vannes. You could have done so, very easily. But you only +talked—oh, Mary pity us! you only talked!—and I could +find only a servant where I had sore need to find a master. Let all +women pity me!” </p> + +<p> But now came many armed soldiers into the apartment. With spirit +Queen Jehane turned to meet them, and you saw that she was of royal +blood, for now the pride of many emperors blazed and informed her +body as light occupies a lantern. “At last you come for me, +messieurs?” </p> + +<p> “Whereas,” the leader of these soldiers read from a +parchment—“whereas the King’s stepmother, Queen +Jehane, is accused by certain persons of an act of witch-craft that +with diabolical and subtile methods wrought privily to destroy the +King, the said Dame Jehane is by the King committed (all her +attendants being removed) to the custody of Sir John Pelham, who +will, at the King’s pleasure, confine her within Pevensey +Castle, there to be kept under Sir John’s control: the lands +and other properties of the said Dame Jehane being hereby forfeit to +the King, whom God preserve!” </p> + +<p> “Harry of Monmouth!” said Jehane,—“ah, +my tall stepson, could I but come to you, very quietly, with a +knife—!” She shrugged her shoulders, and the gold about +her person glittered in the sunlight. “Witchcraft! +ohimé, one never disproves that. Friend, now are you avenged +the more abundantly.” </p> + +<p> “Young Riczi is avenged,” the Vicomte said; +“and I came hither desiring vengeance.” </p> + +<p> She wheeled, a lithe flame (he thought) of splendid fury. +“And in the gutter Jehane dares say what Queen Jehane upon the +throne might never say. Had I reigned all these years as mistress +not of England but of Europe,—had nations wheedled me in the +place of barons,—young Riczi had been none the less avenged. +Bah! what do these so-little persons matter? Take now your petty +vengeance! drink deep of it! and know that always within my heart +the Navarrese has lived to shame me! Know that to-day you despise +Jehane, the purchased woman! and that Jehane loves you! and that the +love of proud Jehane creeps like a beaten cur toward your feet, in +the sight of common men! and know that Riczi is avenged,—you +milliner!” </p> + +<p> “Into England I came desiring vengeance—Apples of +Sodom! O bitter fruit!” the Vicomte thought; “O fitting +harvest of a fool’s assiduous husbandry!” </p> + +<p> They took her from him: and that afternoon, after long +meditation, the Vicomte de Montbrison entreated a second private +audience of King Henry, and readily obtained it. “Unhardy is +unseely,” the Vicomte said at this interview’s +conclusion. The tale tells that the Vicomte returned to France and +within this realm assembled all such lords as the abuses of the +Queen-Regent Isabeau had more notoriously dissatisfied. </p> + +<p> The Vicomte had upon occasion an invaluable power of speech; and +now, so great was the devotion of love’s dupe, so heartily, so +hastily, did he design to remove the discomforts of Queen Jehane, +that now his eloquence was twin to Belial’s insidious talking +when that fiend tempts us to some proud iniquity. </p> + +<p> Then presently these lords had sided with King Henry, as did the +Vicomte de Montbrison, in open field. Next, as luck would have it, +Jehan Sans-Peur was slain at Montereau; and a little later the new +Duke of Burgundy, who loved the Vicomte as he loved no other man, +had shifted his coat, forsaking France. These treacheries brought +down the wavering scales of warfare, suddenly, with an aweful +clangor; and now in France clean-hearted persons spoke of the +Vicomte de Montbrison as they would speak of Ganelon or of Iscariot, +and in every market-place was King Henry proclaimed as governor of +the realm. </p> + +<p> Meantime Queen Jehane had been conveyed to prison and lodged +therein. She had the liberty of a tiny garden, high-walled, and of +two scantily furnished chambers. The brace of hard-featured females +whom Pelham had provided for the Queen’s attendance might +speak to her of nothing that occurred without the gates of Pevensey, +and she saw no other persons save her confessor, a triple-chinned +Dominican; had men already lain Jehane within the massive and gilded +coffin of a queen the outer world would have made as great a +turbulence in her ears. </p> + +<p> But in the year of grace 1422, upon the feast of Saint +Bartholomew, and about vespers—for thus it wonderfully fell +out,—one of those grim attendants brought to her the first +man, save the fat confessor, whom the Queen had seen within five +years. The proud, frail woman looked and what she saw was the +inhabitant of all her dreams. </p> + +<p> Said Jehane: “This is ill done. Time has avenged you. Be +contented with that knowledge, and, for Heaven’s sake, do not +endeavor to moralize over the ruin which Heaven has made, and justly +made, of Queen Jehane, as I perceive you mean to do.” She +leaned backward in the chair, very coarsely clad in brown, but +knowing that her coloring was excellent, that she had miraculously +preserved her figure, and that she did not look her real age by a +good ten years. Such reflections beget spiritual comfort even in a +prison. </p> + +<p> “Friend,” the lean-faced man now said, “I do +not come with such intent, as my mission will readily attest, nor to +any ruin, as your mirror will attest. Instead, madame, I come as the +emissary of King Henry, now dying at Vincennes, and with letters to +the lords and bishops of his council. Dying, the man restores to you +your liberty and your dower-lands, your bed and all your movables, +and six gowns of such fashion and such color as you may +elect.” </p> + +<p> Then with hurried speech he told her of five years’ +events: of how within that period King Henry had conquered France, +and had married the French King’s daughter, and had begotten a +boy who would presently inherit the united realms of France and +England, since in the supreme hour of triumph King Henry had been +stricken with a mortal sickness, and now lay dying, or perhaps +already dead, at Vincennes; and of how with his penultimate breath +the prostrate conqueror had restored to Queen Jehane all properties +and all honors which she formerly enjoyed. </p> + +<p> “I shall once more be Regent,” the woman said when +the Vicomte had made an end; “Antoine, I shall presently be +Regent both of France and of England, since Dame Katharine is but a +child.” Jehane stood motionless save for the fine hands that +plucked the air. “Mistress of Europe! absolute mistress, and +with an infant ward! now, may God have mercy on my unfriends, for +they will soon perceive great need of it!” </p> + +<p> “Yet was mercy ever the prerogative of royal +persons,” the Vicomte suavely said, “and the Navarrese +we know of was both royal and very merciful, O Constant +Lover.” </p> + +<p> The speech was as a whip-lash. Abruptly suspicion kindled in her +shrewd gray eyes. “Harry of Monmouth feared neither man nor +God. It needed more than any death-bed repentance to frighten him +into restoring my liberty.” There was a silence. “You, a +Frenchman, come as the emissary of King Henry who has devastated +France! are there no English lords, then, left alive of his, +army?” </p> + +<p> The Vicomte de Montbrison said; “There is at all events no +person better fitted to patch up this dishonorable business of your +captivity, in which no clean man would care to meddle.” </p> + +<p> She appraised this, and said with entire irrelevance: “The +world has smirched you, somehow. At last you have done something +save consider how badly I treated you. I praise God, Antoine, for it +brings you nearer.” </p> + +<p> He told her all. King Henry, it appeared, had dealt with him at +Havering in perfect frankness. The King needed money for his wars in +France, and failing the seizure of Jehane’s enormous wealth, +had exhausted every resource. “And France I mean to +have,” the King said. “Now the world knows you enjoy the +favor of the Comte de Charolais; so get me an alliance with Burgundy +against my imbecile brother of France, and Dame Jehane shall +repossess her liberty. There you have my price.” </p> + +<p> “And this price I paid,” the Vicomte sternly said, +“for ‘Unhardy is unseely,’ Satan whispered, and I +knew that Duke Philippe trusted me. Yea, all Burgundy I marshalled +under your stepson’s banner, and for three years I fought +beneath his loathed banner, until at Troyes we had trapped and slain +the last loyal Frenchman. And to-day in France my lands are +confiscate, and there is not an honest Frenchman but spits upon my +name. All infamy I come to you for this last time, Jehane! as a man +already dead I come to you, Jehane, for in France they thirst to +murder me, and England has no further need of Montbrison, her +blunted and her filthy instrument!” </p> + +<p> The woman nodded here. “You have set my thankless service +above your life, above your honor. I find the rhymester glorious and +very vile.” </p> + +<p> “All vile,” he answered; “and outworn! +King’s daughter, I swore to you, long since, eternal service. +Of love I freely gave you yonder in Navarre, as yonder at Eltham I +crucified my innermost heart for your delectation. Yet I, at least, +keep faith, and in your face I fling faith like a +glove—outworn, it may be, and God knows, unclean! Yet I, at +least, keep faith! Lands and wealth have I given, up for you, O +king’s daughter, and life itself have I given you, and +lifelong service have I given you, and all that I had save honor; +and at the last I give you honor, too. Now let the naked fool +depart, Jehane, for he has nothing more to give.” </p> + +<p> While the Vicomte de Montbrison spoke thus, she had leaned upon +the sill of an open casement. “Indeed, it had been +better,” she said, still with her face averted, and gazing +downward at the tree-tops beneath, “it had been far better had +we never met. For this love of ours has proven a tyrannous and evil +lord. I have had everything, and upon each feast of will and sense +the world afforded me this love has swept down, like a +harpy—was it not a harpy you called the bird in that old poem +of yours?—to rob me of delight. And you have had nothing, for +he has pilfered you of life, giving only dreams in exchange, my poor +Antoine, and he has led you at the last to infamy. We are as God +made us, and—I may not understand why He permits this +despotism.” </p> + +<p> Thereafter, somewhere below, a peasant sang as he passed +supperward through the green twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging +star alone. </p> + +<p> Sang the peasant: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2"> + “King Jesus hung upon the Cross,</p> + <p>‘And have ye sinned?’ quo’ He,—.</p> + <p>‘Nay, Dysmas, ’tis no honest loss</p> + <p>When Satan cogs the dice ye toss,</p> + <p>And thou shall sup with Me,—</p> + <p>Sedebis apud angelos,</p> + <p>Quia amavisti!’</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “At Heaven’s Gate was Heaven’s Queen,</p> + <p>‘And have ye sinned?’ quo’ She,—</p> + <p>‘And would I hold him worth a bean</p> + <p>That durst not seek, because unclean,</p> + <p>My cleansing charity?—</p> + <p>Speak thou that wast the Magdalene,</p> + <p>Quia amavisti!’”</p> +</div> + +<p> “It may be that in some sort the jingle answers me!” +then said Jehane; and she began with an odd breathlessness, +“Friend, when King Henry dies—and even now he +dies—shall I not as Regent possess such power as no woman has +ever wielded in Europe? can aught prevent this?” </p> + +<p> “It is true,” he answered. “You leave this +prison to rule over England again, and over conquered France as +well, and naught can prevent it.” </p> + +<p> “Unless, friend, I were wedded to a Frenchman. Then would +the stern English lords never permit that I have any finger in the +government.” She came to him with conspicuous deliberation and +rested her hands upon his breast. “Friend, I am weary of these +tinsel splendors. What are this England and this France to me, who +crave the real kingdom?” </p> + +<p> Her mouth was tremulous and lax, and her gray eyes were more +brilliant than the star yonder. The man’s arms were about her, +and of the man’s face I cannot tell you. “King’s +daughter! mistress of half Europe! I am a beggar, an outcast, as a +leper among honorable persons.” </p> + +<p> But it was as though he had not spoken. “Friend, it was +for this I have outlived these garish, fevered years, it was this +which made me glad when I was a child and laughed without knowing +why. That I might to-day give up this so-great power for love of +you, my all-incapable and soiled Antoine, was, as I now know, the +end to which the Eternal Father created me. For, look you,” +she pleaded, “to surrender absolute dominion over half Europe +is a sacrifice. Assure me that it is a sacrifice, Antoine! O +glorious fool, delude me into the belief that I surrender much in +choosing you! Nay, I know it is as nothing beside what you have +given up for me, but it is all I have—it is all I have, +Antoine!” </p> + +<p> He drew a deep and big-lunged breath that seemed to inform his +being with an indomitable vigor; and grief and doubtfulness went +quite away from him. “Love leads us,” he said, +“and through the sunlight of the world Love leads us, and +through the filth of it Love leads us, but always in the end, if we +but follow without swerving, Love leads upward. Yet, O God upon the +Cross! Thou that in the article of death didst pardon Dysmas! as +what maimed warriors of life, as what bemired travellers in muddied +byways, must we presently come to Thee!” </p> + +<p> “Ah, but we will come hand in hand,” she answered; +“and He will comprehend.” </p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE NINTH NOVEL +</p> +<a name="X"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p>X</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE FOX-BRUSH +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Dame serez de mon cueur, sans debat,</p> + <p>Entierement, jusques mort me consume.</p> + <p>Laurier souëf qui pour mon droit combat,</p> + <p>Olivier franc, m’ostant toute amertume.” </p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE TENTH NOVEL.—KATHARINE OF VALOIS IS LOVED BY A HUNTSMAN, +AND LOVES HIM GREATLY; THEN FINDS HIM, TO HER HORROR, AN IMPOSTOR; +AND FOR A SUFFICIENT REASON CONSENTS TO MARRY QUITE ANOTHER PERSON, +NOT ALL UNWILLINGLY. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Fox-Brush +</p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1417, about Martinmas (thus Nicolas +begins), Queen Isabeau fled with her daughter the Lady Katharine to +Chartres. There the Queen was met by the Duke of Burgundy, and these +two laid their heads together to such good effect that presently +they got back into Paris, and in its public places massacred some +three thousand Armagnacs. That, however, is a matter which touches +history; the root of our concernment is that, when the Queen and the +Duke rode off to attend to this butcher’s business, the Lady +Katharine was left behind in the Convent of Saint Scholastica, which +then stood upon the outskirts of Chartres, in the bend of the Eure +just south of that city. She dwelt for a year in this well-ordered +place. </p> + +<p> There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint +John the Baptist, the fine August morning that starts the tale. +Katharine the Fair, men called her, with considerable show of +reason. She was very tall, and slim as a rush. Her eyes were large +and black, having an extreme lustre, like the gleam of undried +ink,—a lustre at some times uncanny. Her abundant hair, too, +was black, and to-day seemed doubly sombre by contrast with the gold +netting which confined it. Her mouth was scarlet, all curves, and +her complexion was famous for its brilliancy; only a precisian would +have objected that she possessed the Valois nose, long and thin and +somewhat unduly overhanging the mouth. </p> + +<p> To-day as she came through the orchard, crimson garbed, she +paused with lifted eyebrows. Beyond the orchard wall there was a +hodgepodge of noises, among which a nice ear might distinguish the +clatter of hoofs, a yelping and scurrying, and a contention of soft +bodies, and above all a man’s voice commanding the turmoil. +She was seventeen, so she climbed into the crotch of an apple-tree +and peered over the wall. </p> + +<p> He was in rusty brown and not unshabby; but her regard swept +over this to his face, and there noted how his eyes shone like blue +winter stars under the tumbled yellow hair, and noted the flash of +his big teeth as he swore between them. He held a dead fox by the +brush, which he was cutting off; two hounds, lank and wolfish, were +scaling his huge body in frantic attempts to get at the carrion. A +horse grazed close at hand. </p> + +<p> So for a heart-beat she saw him. Then he flung the tailless body +to the hounds, and in the act spied two black eyes peeping through +the apple-leaves. He laughed, all mirth to the heels of him. +“Mademoiselle, I fear we have disturbed your devotions. But I +had not heard that it was a Benedictine custom to rehearse aves in +tree-tops.” Then, as she leaned forward, both elbows resting +more comfortably upon the wall, and thereby disclosing her slim body +among the foliage like a crimson flower green-calyxed, he said, +“You are not a nun—Blood of God! you are the Princess +Katharine!” </p> + +<p> The nuns, her present guardians, would have declared the ensuing +action horrific, for Katharine smiled frankly at him and asked how +could he thus recognise her at one glance. </p> + +<p> He answered slowly: “I have seen your portrait. Hah, your +portrait!” he jeered, head flung back and big teeth glinting +in the sunlight. “There is a painter who merits +crucifixion.” </p> + +<p> She considered this indicative of a cruel disposition, but also +of a fine taste in the liberal arts. Aloud she stated: </p> + +<p> “You are not a Frenchman, messire. I do not understand how +you can have seen my portrait.” </p> + +<p> The man stood for a moment twiddling the fox-brush. “I am +a harper, my Princess. I have visited the courts of many kings, +though never that of France. I perceive I have been woefully +unwise.” </p> + +<p> This trenched upon insolence—the look of his eyes, indeed, +carried it well past the frontier,—but she found the statement +interesting. Straightway she touched the kernel of those +fear-blurred legends whispered about Dom Manuel’s reputed +descendants. </p> + +<p> “You have, then, seen the King of England?” </p> + +<p> “Yes, Highness.” </p> + +<p> “Is it true that in him, the devil blood of Oriander has +gone mad, and that he eats children—like Agrapard and +Angoulaffre of the Broken Teeth?” </p> + +<p> His gaze widened. “I have heard a deal of scandal +concerning the man. But certainly I never heard that.” </p> + +<p> Katharine settled back, luxuriously, in the crotch of the +apple-tree. “Tell me about him.” </p> + +<p> Composedly he sat down upon the grass and began to acquaint her +with his knowledge and opinions concerning Henry, the fifth of that +name to reign in England, and the son of that squinting Harry of +Derby about whom I have told you so much before. </p> + +<p> Katharine punctuated the harper’s discourse with eager +questionings, which are not absolutely to our purpose. In the main, +this harper thought the man now buffeting France a just king, and he +had heard, when the crown was laid aside, Sire Henry was +sufficiently jovial, and even prankish. The harper educed anecdotes. +He considered that the King would manifestly take Rouen, which the +insatiable man was now besieging. Was the King in treaty for the +hand of the Infanta of Aragon? Yes, he undoubtedly was. </p> + +<p> Katharine sighed her pity for this ill-starred woman. “And +now tell me about yourself.” </p> + +<p> He was, it appeared, Alain Maquedonnieux, a harper by vocation, +and by birth a native of Ireland. Beyond the fact that it was a +savage kingdom adjoining Cataia, Katharine knew nothing of Ireland. +The harper assured her that in this she was misinformed, since the +kings of England claimed Ireland as an appanage, though the Irish +themselves were of two minds as to the justice of these pretensions; +all in all, he considered that Ireland belonged to Saint Patrick, +and that the holy man had never accredited a vicar. </p> + +<p> “Doubtless, by the advice of God,” Alain said: +“for I have read in Master Roger de Wendover’s +Chronicles of how at the dread day of judgment all the Irish are to +muster before the high and pious Patrick, as their liege lord and +father in the spirit, and by him be conducted into the presence of +God; and of how, by virtue of Saint Patrick’s request, all the +Irish will die seven years to an hour before the second coming of +Christ, in order to give the blessed saint sufficient time to +marshal his company, which is considerable.” Katharine +admitted the convenience of this arrangement, as well as the neglect +of her education. Alain gazed up at her for a long while, as if in +reflection, and presently said: “Doubtless the Lady Heleine of +Argos also was thus starry-eyed and found in books less diverting +reading than in the faces of men.” It flooded +Katharine’s cheeks with a livelier hue, but did not vex her +irretrievably; if she chose to read this man’s face, the +meaning was plain enough. </p> + +<p> I give you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is +trivial. But it was a day when one entered love’s wardship +with a plunge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by +bit, as though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a +long while, with laughter mutually provoked and shared, with divers +eloquent and dangerous pauses. The harper squatted upon the ground, +the Princess leaned over the wall; but to all intent they sat +together upon the loftiest turret of Paradise, and it was a full two +hours before Katharine hinted at departure. </p> + +<p> Alain rose, approaching the wall. “To-morrow I ride for +Milan to take service with Duke Filippo. I had broken my journey +these three days past at Châteauneuf yonder, where this fox +has been harrying my host’s chickens. To-day I went out to +slay him, and he led me, his murderer, to the fairest lady earth may +boast. Do you not think that, in returning good for evil, this fox +was a true Christian, my Princess?” </p> + +<p> Katharine said: “I lament his destruction. Farewell, +Messire Alain! And since chance brought you hither—” +</p> + +<p> “Destiny brought me hither,” Alain affirmed, a +mastering hunger in his eyes. “Destiny has been kind; I shall +make a prayer to her that she continue so.” But when Katharine +demanded what this prayer would be, Alain shook his tawny head. +“Presently you shall know, Highness, but not now. I return to +Châteauneuf on certain necessary businesses; to-morrow I set +out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti’s livery. +Farewell!” He mounted and rode away in the golden August +sunlight, the hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened +in his hat. Thus Tristran de Léonois may have ridden +a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, thus statelily and composedly, +Katharine thought, gazing after him. She went to her apartments, +singing an inane song about the amorous and joyful time of spring +when everything and everybody is happy,— </p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2"> + “El tems amoreus plein de joie,</p> + <p>El tems où tote riens s’esgaie,—”</p> +</div> + +<p> and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were born every +day, she reflected, such hosts of women-children, who were not +princesses, and therefore compelled to marry detestable kings. </p> + +<p> Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a +cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant +trees. In the slaty twilight the garden’s verdure was +lustreless, the grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where +dewdrops showed like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there +absolute shadow, nowhere a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way +between horizon and zenith, two belts of coppery light flared +against the gray sky like embers swaddled by ashes. The birds were +waking; there were occasional scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts +of peevish twittering to attest as much; and presently came a +singing, less musical than that of many a bird perhaps, but far more +grateful to the girl who heard it, heart in mouth. A lute +accompanied the song demurely. </p> + +<p> +Sang Alain: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,</p> + <p>Be not too obdurate to us who pray</p> + <p>That this our transient grant of youth be spent</p> + <p>In laughter as befits a holiday,</p> + <p>From which the evening summons us away,</p> + <p>From which to-morrow wakens us to strife</p> + <p>And toil and grief and wisdom,—and to-day</p> + <p>Grudge us not life!</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,</p> + <p>Why need our elders trouble us at play?</p> + <p>We know that very soon we shall repent</p> + <p>The idle follies of our holiday,</p> + <p>And being old, shall be as wise as they:</p> + <p>But now we are not wise, and lute and fife</p> + <p>Plead sweetlier than axioms,—so to-day</p> + <p>Grudge us not life! </p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,</p> + <p>You have given us youth—and must we cast away</p> + <p>The cup undrained and our one coin unspent</p> + <p>Because our elders’ beards and hearts are gray?</p> + <p>They have forgotten that if we delay</p> + <p>Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife</p> + <p>Or cord or fever flouts the prayer we pray—</p> + <p>‘Grudge us not life!’</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Madam, recall that in the sun we play</p> + <p>But for an hour, then have the worm for wife,</p> + <p>The tomb for habitation—and to-day</p> + <p>Grudge us not life!” </p> + +</div> + +<p> Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the +crotch of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but +the Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort. </p> + +<p> “You came!” this harper said, transfigured; and then +again, “You came!” </p> + +<p> She breathed, “Yes.” </p> + +<p> So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found +adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man’s +mind not a grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to +leer at his unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man +and woman, meeting, knew no sweeter terror. </p> + +<p> It was by the minstrel that a familiar earth and the grating +speech of earth were earlier regained. “The affair is of the +suddenest,” Alain observed, and he now swung the lute behind +him. He indicated no intention of touching her, though he might +easily have done so as he sat there exalted by the height of his +horse. “A meteor arrives with more prelude. But Love is an +arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has seized it, and accordingly +I would now brave hell to come to you, and finding you there, would +esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already made my prayer to +Destiny that she concede me love. Now of God, our Father and Master, +I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For, God willing, I +shall come to you again, even if in order to do this I have to split +the world like a rotten orange.” </p> + +<p> “Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!” Katharine said. +“You are a minstrel and I am a king’s daughter.” +</p> + +<p> “Is it madness? Why, then, I think sane persons are to be +commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this some design. Across half +the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Hey, God’s face!” +Alain swore; “the foxes which Samson, that old sinewy captain, +loosed among the corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as +this fox has set afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and +olives spoilt, a bushel or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms +topple on the brink of ruin. There will be martial argument shortly +if you bid me come again.” </p> + +<p> “I bid you come,” said Katharine; and after they had +stared at each other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It +was through a dank and tear-flawed world that she stumbled +conventward, while out of the east the sun came bathed in mists, a +watery sun no brighter than a silver coin. </p> + +<p> And for a month the world seemed no less dreary, but about +Michaelmas the Queen-Regent sent for her. At the Hôtel de +Saint-Pol matters were much the same. Katharine found her mother in +foul-mouthed rage over the failure of a third attempt to poison the +Dauphin of Vienne, as Queen Isabeau had previously poisoned her two +elder sons; I might here trace out a curious similitude between the +Valois and that dragon-spawned race which Jason very anciently slew +at Colchis, since the world was never at peace so long as any two of +them existed. But King Charles greeted his daughter with ampler +deference, esteeming her to be the wife of Presbyter John, the +tyrant of Aethiopia. However, ingenuity had just suggested +card-playing for King Charles’ amusement, and he paid little +attention nowadays to any one save his opponent at this new game. +</p> + +<p> So the French King chirped his senile jests over the card-table, +while the King of England was besieging the French city of Rouen +sedulously and without mercy. In late autumn an armament from +Ireland joined Henry’s forces. The Irish fought naked, it was +said, with long knives. Katharine heard discreditable tales of these +Irish, and reflected how gross are the exaggerations of rumor. </p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1419, in January, the burgesses of Rouen, +having consumed their horses, and finding frogs and rats +unpalatable, yielded the town. It was the Queen-Regent who brought +the news to Katharine. </p> + +<p> “God is asleep,” the Queen said; “and while He +nods, the Butcher of Agincourt has stolen our good city of +Rouen.” She sat down and breathed heavily. “Never was +any poor woman so pestered as I! The puddings to-day were quite +uneatable, as you saw for yourself, and on Sunday the Englishman +entered Rouen in great splendor, attended by his chief nobles; but +the Butcher rode alone, and before him went a page carrying a +fox-brush on the point of his lance. I put it to you, is that the +contrivance of a sane man? Euh! euh!” Dame Isabeau squealed on +a sudden; “you are bruising me.” </p> + +<p> Katharine had gripped her by the shoulder. “The King of +England—a tall, fair man? with big teeth? a tiny wen upon his +neck—here—and with his left cheek scarred? with blue +eyes, very bright, bright as tapers?” She poured out her +questions in a torrent, and awaited the answer, seeming not to +breathe at all. </p> + +<p> “I believe so,” the Queen said, “and they say, +too, that he has the damned squint of old Manuel the Redeemer.” </p> + +<p> “O God!” said Katharine. </p> + +<p> “Ay, our only hope now. And may God show him no more mercy +than has this misbegotten English butcher shown us!” the good +lady desired, with fervor. “The hog, having won our Normandy, +is now advancing on Paris itself. He repudiated the Aragonish +alliance last August; and until last August he was content with +Normandy, they tell us, but now he swears to win all France. The man +is a madman, and Scythian Tamburlaine was more lenient. And I do not +believe that in all France there is a cook who understands his +business.” She went away whimpering, and proceeded to get +tipsy. </p> + +<p> The Princess remained quite still, as Dame Isabeau had left her; +you may see a hare crouch so at sight of the hounds. Finally the +girl spoke aloud. “Until last August!” Katharine said. +“Until last August! <i>Poised kingdoms topple on the brink of +ruin, now that you bid me come to you again</i>. And I bade this +devil’s grandson come to me, as my lover!” Presently she +went into her oratory and began to pray. </p> + +<p> In the midst of her invocation she wailed: “Fool, fool! +How could I have thought him less than a king!” </p> + +<p> You are to imagine her breast thus adrum with remorse and hatred +of herself, the while that town by town fell before the invader like +card-houses. Every rumor of defeat—and the news of some fresh +defeat came daily—was her arraignment; impotently she cowered +at God’s knees, knowing herself a murderess, whose infamy was +still afoot, outpacing her prayers, whose victims were battalions. +Tarpeia and Pisidicé and Rahab were her sisters; she hungered +in her abasement for Judith’s nobler guilt. </p> + +<p> In May he came to her. A truce was patched up, and French and +English met amicably in a great plain near Meulan. A square space +was staked out and on three sides boarded in, the fourth side being +the river Seine. This enclosure the Queen-Regent, Jehan of Burgundy, +and Katharine entered from the French side. Simultaneously the +English King appeared, accompanied by his brothers the Dukes of +Clarence and Gloucester, and followed by the Earl of Warwick. +Katharine raised her eyes with I know not what lingering hope; but +it was he, a young Zeus now, triumphant and uneager. In his helmet +in place of a plume he wore a fox-brush spangled with jewels. </p> + +<p> These six entered the tent pitched for the conference—the +hanging of blue velvet embroidered with fleurs-de-lys of gold +blurred before the girl’s eyes,—and there the Earl of +Warwick embarked upon a sea of rhetoric. His French was indifferent, +his periods were interminable, and his demands exorbitant; in brief, +the King of England wanted Katharine and most of France, with a +reversion at the French King’s death of the entire kingdom. +Meanwhile Sire Henry sat in silence, his eyes glowing. </p> + +<p> “I have come,” he said, under cover of +Warwick’s oratory—“I have come again, my +lady.” </p> + +<p> Katharine’s gaze flickered over him. “Liar!” +she said, very softly. “Has God no thunders remaining in His +armory that this vile thief still goes unblasted? Would you steal +love as well as kingdoms?” </p> + +<p> His ruddy face was now white. “I love you, +Katharine.” </p> + +<p> “Yes,” she answered, “for I am your pretext. I +can well believe, messire, that you love your pretext for theft and +murder.” </p> + +<p> Neither spoke after this, and presently the Earl of Warwick +having come to his peroration, the matter was adjourned till the +next day. The party separated. It was not long before Katharine had +informed her mother that, God willing, she would never again look +upon the King of England’s face uncoffined. Isabeau found her +a madwoman. The girl swept opposition before her with gusts of +demoniacal fury, wept, shrieked, tore at her hair, and eventually +fell into a sort of epileptic seizure; between rage and terror she +became a horrid, frenzied beast. I do not dwell upon this, for it is +not a condition in which the comeliest maid shows to advantage. But, +for the Valois, insanity always lurked at the next corner, and they +knew it; to save the girl’s reason the Queen was forced to +break off all discussion of the match. Accordingly, the Duke of +Burgundy went next day to the conference alone. Jehan began with +“ifs,” and over these flimsy barriers Henry, already +fretted by Katharine’s scorn, presently vaulted to a towering +fury. </p> + +<p> “Fair cousin,” the King said, after a deal of +vehement bickering, “we wish you to know that we will have the +daughter of your King, and that we will drive both him and you out +of this kingdom.” </p> + +<p> The Duke answered, not without spirit, “Sire, you are +pleased to say so; but before you have succeeded in ousting my lord +and me from this realm, I am of the opinion that you will be very +heartily tired.” </p> + +<p> At this the King turned on his heel; over his shoulder he flung: +“I am tireless; also, I am agile as a fox in the pursuit of my +desires. Say that to your Princess.” Then he went away in a +rage. </p> + +<p> It had seemed an approvable business to win love incognito, +according to the example of many ancient emperors, but in practice +he had tripped over an ugly outgrowth from the legendary custom. The +girl hated him, there was no doubt about it; and it was equally +certain he loved her. Particularly caustic was the reflection that a +twitch of his finger would get him Katharine as his wife, for before +long the Queen-Regent was again attempting secret negotiations to +bring this about. Yes, he could get the girl’s body by a +couple of pen-strokes, and had he been older that might have +contented him: as it was, what he wanted was to rouse the look her +eyes had borne in Chartres orchard that tranquil morning, and this +one could not readily secure by fiddling with seals and parchments. +You see his position: this high-spirited young man now loved the +Princess too utterly to take her on lip-consent, and this marriage +was now his one possible excuse for ceasing from victorious warfare. +So he blustered, and the fighting recommenced; and he slew in a +despairing rage, knowing that by every movement of his arm he became +to her so much the more detestable. </p> + +<p> Then the Vicomte de Montbrison, as you have heard, betrayed +France, and King Henry began to strip the French realm of provinces +as you peel the layers from an onion. By the May of the year of +grace 1420 France was, and knew herself to be, not beaten but +demolished. Only a fag-end of the French army lay entrenched at +Troyes, where King Charles and his court awaited Henry’s +decision as to the morrow’s action. If he chose to destroy +them root and branch, he could; and they knew such mercy as was in +the man to be quite untarnished by previous using. Sire Henry drew +up a small force before the city and made no overtures toward either +peace or throat-cutting. </p> + +<p> This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday +after Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in +his apartments at the Hôtel de Ville. The King was pursing his +lips over an alternative play, when somebody began singing below in +the courtyard. </p> + +<p> +Sang the voice: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2">“I can find no meaning in life,</p> + <p>That have weighed the world,—and it was</p> + <p>Abundant with folly, and rife</p> + <p>With sorrows brittle as glass,</p> + <p>And with joys that flicker and pass</p> + <p>Like dreams through a fevered head;</p> + <p>And like the dripping of rain</p> + <p>In gardens naked and dead</p> + <p>Is the obdurate thin refrain</p> + <p>Of our youth which is presently dead.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “And she whom alone I have loved</p> + <p>Looks ever with loathing on me,</p> + <p>As one she hath seen disproved</p> + <p>And stained with such smirches as be</p> + <p>Not ever cleansed utterly;</p> + <p>And is both to remember the days</p> + <p>When Destiny fixed her name</p> + <p>As the theme and the goal of my praise;</p> + <p>And my love engenders shame,</p> + <p>And I stain what I strive for and praise.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “O love, most perfect of all,</p> + <p>Just to have known you is well!</p> + <p>And it heartens me now to recall</p> + <p>That just to have known you is well,</p> + <p>And naught else is desirable</p> + <p>Save only to do as you willed</p> + <p>And to love you my whole life long;—</p> + <p>But this heart in me is filled</p> + <p>With hunger cruel and strong,</p> + <p>And with hunger unfulfilled.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Fond heart, though thy hunger be</p> + <p>As a flame that wanders unstilled,</p> + <p>There is none more perfect than she!” </p> +</div> + +<p>Malise now came into the room, and, without speaking, laid a fox-brush before the Princess.</p> + +<p> Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered +table. “So you are in his pay, Malise? I am sorry. But you +know that your employer is master here. Who am I to forbid him +entrance?” The girl went away silently, abashed, and the +Princess sat quite still, tapping the brush against the table. </p> + +<p> “They do not want me to sign another treaty, do +they?” her father asked timidly. “It appears to me they +are always signing treaties, and I cannot see that any good comes of +it. And I would have won the last game, Katharine, if Malise had not +interrupted us. You know I would have won.” </p> + +<p> “Yes, Father, you would have won. Oh, he must not see +you!” Katharine cried, a great tide of love mounting in her +breast, the love that draws a mother fiercely to shield her backward +boy. “Father, will you not go into your chamber? I have a new +book for you, Father—all pictures, dear. Come—” +She was coaxing him when Sire Henry appeared in the doorway. </p> + +<p> “But I do not wish to look at pictures,” Charles +said, peevishly; “I wish to play cards. You are an ungrateful +daughter, Katharine. You are never willing to amuse me.” He +sat down with a whimper and began to pluck at his dribbling lips. +</p> + +<p> Katharine had moved a little toward the door. Her face was +white. “Now welcome, sire!” she said. “Welcome, O +great conqueror, who in your hour of triumph can find no nobler +recreation than to shame a maid with her past folly! It was +valorously done, sire. See, Father; here is the King of England come +to observe how low we sit that yesterday were lords of +France.” </p> + +<p> “The King of England!” echoed Charles, and he rose +now to his feet. “I thought we were at war with him. But my +memory is treacherous. You perceive, brother of England, I am +planning a new mouse-trap, and my mind is somewhat preëmpted. I +recall now that you are in treaty for my daughter’s hand. +Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but I +suppose—” He paused, as if to regard and hear some +invisible counsellor, and then briskly resumed: “Yes, I +suppose policy demands that she should marry you. We trammelled +kings can never go free of policy—ey, my compère of +England? No; it was through policy I wedded her mother; and we have +been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in your ear, son-in-law: +Madame Isabeau’s soul formerly inhabited a sow, as Pythagoras +teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the influence +of the moon drew it hither.” </p> + +<p> Henry did not say anything. Steadily his calm blue eyes +appraised Dame Katharine. And King Charles went on, very knowingly: +</p> + +<p> “Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, +though by ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy +again, son-in-law: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the +great hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten +flies— very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of +parricides,—and afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the +Mediterranean hath its sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at +cards. Cheats, sir!—and I her father!” The incessant +peering, the stealthy cunning with which Charles whispered this, the +confidence with which he clung to his destroyer’s hand, was +that of a conspiring child. </p> + + +<p> “Come, Father,” Katharine said. “Come away to +bed, dear.” </p> + +<p> “Hideous basilisk!” he spat at her; “dare you +rebel against me? Am I not King of France, and is it not blasphemy +for a King of France to be mocked? Frail moths that flutter about my +splendor,” he shrieked, in an unheralded frenzy, “beware +of me, beware! for I am omnipotent! I am King of France, +Heaven’s regent. At my command the winds go about the earth, +and nightly the stars are kindled for my recreation. Perhaps I am +mightier than God, but I do not remember now. The reason is written +down and lies somewhere under a bench. Now I sail for England. Eia! +eia! I go to ravage England, terrible and merciless. But I must have +my mouse-traps, Goodman Devil, for in England the cats of the +middle-sea wait unfed.” He went out of the room, giggling, and +in the corridor began to sing: </p> + + + <div class="poem"> + <p class="i6"> + “A hundred thousand times good-bye!</p> + <p>I go to seek the Evangelist,</p> + <p>For here all persons cheat and lie ...” </p> +</div> + +<p> All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon +Katharine. Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the +boulder, and they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But +she turned and met his gaze squarely. She noted now for the first +time how oddly his left eyebrow drooped. Katharine said: “And +that is the king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable +conquest to overcome so wise a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? +There are cut-throats in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would +scorn the action. Now shall I fetch my mother, sire? the commander +of that great army which you overcame? As the hour is late, she is +by this time tipsy, but she will come. Or perhaps she is with some +paid lover, but if this conqueror, this second Alexander, wills it +she will come. O God!” the girl wailed, on a sudden; “O +just and all-seeing God! are not we of Valois so contemptible that +in conquering us it is the victor who is shamed?” </p> + +<p> “Flower of the marsh!” he said, and his voice pulsed +with tender cadences—“flower of the marsh! it is not the +King of England who now comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry +Plantagenet God has led hither by the hand to punish the sins of +this realm, and to reign in it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet +will cast out the Valois from the throne they have defiled, as +Darius cast out Belshazzar, for such is the desire and the intent of +God. But to you comes Alain the harper, not as a conqueror but as a +suppliant,—Alain who has loved you whole-heartedly these two +years past, and who now kneels before you entreating grace.” +</p> + +<p> Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he +had fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood +that he believed France to be his by Divine favor and Heaven’s +peculiar intervention. He thought himself God’s factor, not +His rebel. He was rather stupid, this huge, handsome, squinting boy; +and as she comprehended this, her hand went to his shoulder, half +maternally. </p> + +<p> “It is nobly done, sire. But I understand. You must marry +me in order to uphold your claim to France. You sell, and I with my +body purchase, peace for France. There is no need of a lover’s +posture when hucksters meet.” </p> + +<p> “So changed!” he said, and he was silent for an +interval, still kneeling. Then he began: “You force me to +point out that I do not need any pretext for holding France. France +lies before me prostrate. By God’s singular grace I reign in +this fair kingdom, mine by right of conquest, and an alliance with +the house of Valois will neither make nor mar me.” She was +unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact. “But I love +you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you not +understand that there can be between us no question of expediency? +Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know +of; now in Troyes they meet again,—not as princess and king, +but as man and maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your +heart, I think. And now in all the world there is one thing I +covet—to gain for the poor king some portion of that love you +would have squandered on the harper.” His hand closed upon her +hand. </p> + +<p> At his touch the girl’s composure vanished. “My +lord, you woo too timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced +advocates. I am daughter to the King of France, and next to my +soul’s salvation I esteem the welfare of France. Can I, then, +fail to love the King of England, who chooses the blood of my +countrymen as a judicious garb to come a-wooing in? How else, since +you have ravaged my native land, since you have besmirched the name +I bear, since yonder afield every wound in my dead and yet unburied +Frenchmen is to me a mouth which shrieks your infamy?” </p> + +<p> He rose. “And yet, for all that, you love me.” </p> + +<p> She could not at the first effort find words with which to +answer him, but presently she said, quite simply, “To see you +lying in your coffin I would willingly give up my hope of heaven, +for heaven can afford no sight more desirable.” </p> + +<p> “You loved Alain.” </p> + +<p> “I loved the husk of a man. You can never comprehend how +utterly I loved him.” </p> + +<p> “You are stubborn. I shall have trouble with you. But this +notion of yours is plainly a mistaken notion. That you love me is +indisputable, and this I propose to demonstrate. You will observe +that I am quite unarmed except for this dagger, which I now throw +out of the window—” with the word it jangled in the +courtyard below. “I am in Troyes alone among some thousand +Frenchmen, any one of whom would willingly give his life for the +privilege of taking mine. You have but to sound the gong beside you, +and in a few moments I shall be a dead man. Strike, then! For with +me dies the English power in France. Strike, Katharine! If you see +in me but the King of England.” </p> + +<p> She was rigid; and his heart leapt when he saw it was because of +terror. </p> + +<p> “You came alone! You dared!” </p> + +<p> He answered, with a wonderful smile, “Proud spirit! How +else might I conquer you?” </p> + +<p> “You have not conquered!” Katharine lifted the baton +beside the gong, poising it. God had granted her prayer—to +save France. Now the past and the ignominy of the past might be +merged in Judith’s nobler guilt. But I must tell you that in +the supreme hour, Destiny at her beck, her main desire was to slap +the man for his childishness. Oh, he had no right thus to besot +himself with adoration! This dejection at her feet of his high +destiny awed her, and pricked her, too, with her inability to +understand him. Angrily she flung away the baton. “Go! Ah, +go!” she cried, like one strangling. “There has been +enough of bloodshed, and I must spare you, loathing you as I do, for +I cannot with my own hand murder you.” </p> + +<p> But the King was a kindly tyrant, crushing independence from his +associates as lesser folk squeeze water from a sponge. “I +cannot go thus. Acknowledge me to be Alain, the man you love, or +else strike upon the gong.” </p> + +<p> “You are cruel!” she wailed, in her torture. </p> + +<p> “Yes, I am cruel.” </p> + +<p> Katharine raised straining arms above her head in a hard gesture +of despair. “You have conquered. You know that I love you. Oh, +if I could find words to voice my shame, to shriek it in your face, +I could better endure it! For I love you. With all my body and heart +and soul I love you. Mine is the agony, for I love you! and +presently I shall stand quite still and see little Frenchmen +scramble about you as hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill +you. And after that I shall live! I preserve France, but after I +have slain you, Henry, I must live. Mine is the agony, the enduring +agony.” She stayed motionless for an interval. “God, +God! Let me not fail!” Katharine breathed; and then: “O +fair sweet friend, I am about to commit a vile action, but it is for +the sake of the France that I love next to God. As Judith gave her +body to Holofernes, I crucify my heart for the preservation of +France.” Very calmly she struck upon the gong. </p> + +<p> If she could have found any reproach in his eyes during the +ensuing silence, she could have borne it; but there was only love. +And with all that, he smiled like one who knew the upshot of this +matter. </p> + +<p> A man-at-arms came into the room. “Germain—” +said Katharine, and then again, “Germain—” She +gave a swallowing motion and was silent. When she spoke it was with +crisp distinctness. “Germain, fetch a harp. Messire Alain here +is about to play for me.” </p> + +<p> At the man’s departure she said: “I am very pitiably +weak. Need you have dragged my soul, too, in the dust? God heard my +prayer, and you have forced me to deny His favor, as Peter denied +Christ. My dear, be very kind to me, for I come to you naked of +honor.” She fell at the King’s feet, embracing his +knees. “My master, be very kind to me, for there remains only +your love.” </p> + +<p> He raised her to his breast. “Love is enough,” he +said. </p> + +<p> She was conscious, as he held her thus, of the chain mail under +his jerkin. He had come armed; he had his soldiers no doubt in the +corridor; he had tricked her, it might be from the first. But that +did not matter now. </p> + +<p> “Love is enough,” she told her master docilely. </p> + +<p> Next day the English entered Troyes and in the cathedral church +these two were betrothed. Henry was there magnificent in a curious +suit of burnished armor; in place of his helmet-plume he wore a +fox-brush ornamented with jewels, which unusual ornament afforded +great matter of remark among the busybodies of both armies. </p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> THE END OF THE TENTH NOVEL </p> + +<a name="epi"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +THE EPILOGUE +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + “Et je fais sçavoir à tous + lecteurs de ce Livret que les choses que je dis avoir vues et sues + sont enregistrés icy, afin que vous pouviez les regarder + selon vostre bon sens, s’il vous plaist.” +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +HERE IS APPENDED THE EPILOGUE THAT MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN AFFIXED TO +THE BOOK WHICH HE HAD MADE ACCORDING TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY; AND +WHICH (IN CONSEQUENCE) HE DARED NOT APPRAISE. +</div> + + +<p class="subhead"> +The Epilogue</p> + + + +<p class="salutation">A Son Livret</p> + + +<p> Intrepidly depart, my little book, into the presence of that +most illustrious lady who bade me compile you. Bow down before her +judgment. And if her sentence be that of a fiery death, I counsel +you not to grieve at what cannot be avoided. </p> + +<p> But, if by any miracle that glorious, strong fortress of the +weak consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pass thence, my +little book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live +out your little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your +appointed season perish and be forgotten. Thus may you share your +betters’ fate, and be at one with those famed comedies of +Greek Menander and all the poignant songs of Sappho. <i>Et quid +Pandoniae</i>—thus, little book, I charge you to poultice your +more-merited oblivion—<i>quid Pandoniae restat nisi nomen +Athenae</i>? </p> + +<p> Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with +those who will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and +protest assertions which are only fables. To these you will reply +that I, your maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of +the most high and noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at +and about her house of Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person +with Dame Katharine, then happily remarried to a private gentleman +of Wales; and so obtained the matter of the ninth story and of the +tenth authentically. You will say also that Messire de Montbrison +afforded me the main matter of the sixth and seventh stories, and +many of the songs which this book contains; and that, moreover, I +once journeyed to Caer Idion and talked for some two hours with +Richard Holland (whom I found a very old and garrulous and cheery +person), and got of him the matter of the eighth tale in this +dizain, together with much information as concerns the sixth and the +seventh. And you will add that the matter of the fourth and fifth +tales was in every detail related to me by my most illustrious +mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this information from +her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady, and one that +was in youth Dame Philippa’s most dear associate. For the rest +you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book to +be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say) even +in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd +times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always +endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me. </p> + +<p> I have pieced together these tales about the women who +intermarried, not very enviably, with the demon-tainted blood of +Edward Longshanks, because it seems to me that these tales, when +they are rightly considered, compose the initial portion of a +troubling history. Whether (as some declare) the taint came from +Manuel of Poictesme, or whether (as yet others say) this poison was +inherited from the demon wife whom Foulques Plantagenet fetched out +of hell, the blood in these men was not all human. These men might +not tread equally with human beings: their wives suffered therefor, +just as they that had inherited this blood suffered therefor, and +all England suffered therefor. And the upshot of it I have narrated +elsewhere, in the book called and entitled <i>The Red Cuckold</i>, +which composes the final portion of this history, and tells of the +last spilling and of the extinction of this blood. </p> + +<p> Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people +who will jeer at you, and will say that you and I have cheated them +of your purchase-money. To these you will reply, with Plutarch, +<i>Non mi aurum posco, nec mi pretium</i>. Secondly you will say +that, of necessity, the tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; +and that he cannot undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering +Orion suitably when the resources of his shop amount to only a few +yards of cambric. Indeed had I the power to make you better, my +little book, I would have exercised that power to the utmost. A good +conscience is a continual feast, and I summon high Heaven to be my +witness that had I been Homer you had awed the world, another Iliad. +I lament your inability to do this, as heartily as any person +living; yet Heaven willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven +these aforementioned cavillers should rightfully complain. </p> + +<p> So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless +indeed you should elect to answer them by repetition of this song +which I now make for you, my little book, at your departure from me. +And the song runs in this fashion: </p> + + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2"> + Depart, depart, my book! and live and die</p> + <p>Dependent on the idle fantasy</p> + <p>Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + For I am fond, and willingly mistake</p> + <p>My book to be the book I meant to make,</p> + <p>And cannot judge you, for that phantom’s sake.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill</p> + <p>In making you, that never spared the will</p> + <p>To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I</p> + <p>Had wrought in you some wizardry so high</p> + <p>That no man but had listened ...</p> + +<p class="stanzail"> + They pass by,</p> + <p>And shrug—as we, who know that unto us</p> + <p>It has been granted never to fare thus,</p> + <p>And never to be strong and glorious.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + Is it denied me to perpetuate</p> + <p>What so much loving labor did create?—</p> + <p>I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate,</p> + <p>And acquiesce, not all disconsolate.</p> + +<p class="stanzai6"> + For I have got such recompense</p> + <p class="i4">Of that high-hearted excellence</p> + <p class="i4">Which the contented craftsman knows,</p> + <p class="i4">Alone, that to loved labor goes,</p> + <p class="i4">And daily does the work he chose,</p> + <p class="i4">And counts all else impertinence!</p> +</div> +<br /> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +EXPLICIT DECAS REGINARUM +</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<h4>FOOTNOTES</h4> +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a> +1. +For this perplexing matter the curious may consult Paul +Verville’s <i>Notice sur la vie de Nicolas de Caen</i>, p. +93 <i>et seq</i>. The indebtedness to Antoine Riczi is, of course, +conceded by Nicolas in his “EPILOGUE.” +<a href="#footnotetag1">(Return)</a></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a> +2. She was the daughter of King Ferdinand of Leon and Castile, +whose conversion to sainthood the inquisitive may find recorded +elsewhere. <a href="#footnotetag2">(Return)</a></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a> +3. Not without indulgence in anachronism. But Nicolas, be it repeated, +was no Gradgrindian. +<a href="#footnotetag3">(Return)</a></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a> +4. Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, for obvious reasons, his +translator would prefer to do otherwise. +<a href="#footnotetag4">(Return)</a></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a> +5. Nicolas unaccountably omits to mention that during the French +wars she had ruled England as Regent with signal +capacity,—although this fact, as you will see more lately, is +the pivot of his chronicle. +<a href="#footnotetag5">(Return)</a></blockquote> +<br /> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11752 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4a202e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #11752 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11752) diff --git a/old/11752-8.txt b/old/11752-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7313531 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11752-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7321 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Chivalry, by James Branch Cabell, et al + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Chivalry + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Release Date: March 28, 2004 [eBook #11752] +[Date last updated: September 30, 2005] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: iso-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIVALRY*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Joris Van Dael, Susan Lucy, and Project +Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + +CHIVALRY + +JAMES BRANCH CABELL + +1921 + + + + + + +TO +ANNE BRANCH CABELL + + + "AINSI A VOUS, MADAME, A MA TRÈS HAULTE ET + TRÈS NOBLE DAME, A QUI J'AYME A DEVOIR + ATTACHEMENT ET OBÉISSANCE, + J'ENVOYE CE LIVRET." + + + + + +Introduction + + +Few of the more astute critics who have appraised the work of James +Branch Cabell have failed to call attention to that extraordinary +cohesion which makes his very latest novel a further flowering of the +seed of his very earliest literary work. Especially among his later +books does the scheme of each seem to dovetail into the scheme of the +other and the whole of his writing take on the character of an +uninterrupted discourse. To this phenomenon, which is at once a fact and +an illusion of continuity, Mr. Cabell himself has consciously +contributed, not only by a subtly elaborate use of conjunctions, by +repetition, and by reintroducing characters from his other books, but by +actually setting his expertness in genealogy to the genial task of +devising a family tree for his figures of fiction. + +If this were an actual continuity, more tangible than that fluid +abstraction we call the life force; if it were merely a tireless +reiteration and recasting of characters, Mr. Cabell's work would have an +unbearable monotony. But at bottom this apparent continuity has no more +material existence than has the thread of lineal descent. To insist +upon its importance is to obscure, as has been obscured, the epic range +of Mr. Cabell's creative genius. It is to fail to observe that he has +treated in his many books every mainspring of human action and that his +themes have been the cardinal dreams and impulses which have in them +heroic qualities. Each separate volume has a unity and harmony of a +complete and separate life, for the excellent reason that with the +consummate skill of an artist he is concerned exclusively in each book +with one definite heroic impulse and its frustrations. + +It is true, of course, that like the fruit of the tree of life, Mr. +Cabell's artistic progeny sprang from a first conceptual germ--"In the +beginning was the Word." That animating idea is the assumption that if +life may be said to have an aim it must be an aim to terminate in +success and splendor. It postulates the high, fine importance of excess, +the choice or discovery of an overwhelming impulse in life and a +conscientious dedication to its fullest realization. It is the quality +and intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological +norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the +exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, +aimless mediocrities about him. What the dream is, matters not at +all--it may be a dream of sainthood, kingship, love, art, asceticism or +sensual pleasure--so long as it is fully expressed with all the +resources of self. It is this sort of completion which Mr. Cabell has +elected to depict in all his work: the complete sensualist in +Demetrios, the complete phrase-maker in Felix Kennaston, the complete +poet in Marlowe, the complete lover in Perion. In each he has shown that +this complete self-expression is achieved at the expense of all other +possible selves, and that herein lies the tragedy of the ideal. +Perfection is a costly flower and is cultured only by an uncompromising, +strict husbandry. + +All this is, we see, the ideational gonfalon under which surge the +romanticists; but from the evidence at hand it is the banner to which +life also bears allegiance. It is in humanity's records that it has +reserved its honors for its romantic figures. It remembers its Caesars, +its saints, its sinners. It applauds, with a complete suspension of +moral judgment, its heroines and its heroes who achieve the greatest +self-realization. And from the splendid triumphs and tragic defeats of +humanity's individual strivings have come our heritage of wisdom and of +poetry. + +Once we understand the fundamentals of Mr. Cabell's artistic aims, it is +not easy to escape the fact that in _Figures of Earth_ he undertook the +staggering and almost unsuspected task of rewriting humanity's sacred +books, just as in _Jurgen_ he gave us a stupendous analogue of the +ceaseless quest for beauty. For we must accept the truth that Mr. Cabell +is not a novelist at all in the common acceptance of the term, but a +historian of the human soul. His books are neither documentary nor +representational; his characters are symbols of human desires and +motives. By the not at all simple process of recording faithfully the +projections of his rich and varied imagination, he has written thirteen +books, which he accurately terms biography, wherein is the bitter-sweet +truth about human life. + + +II + +Among the scant certainties vouchsafed us is that every age lives by its +special catchwords. Whether from rebellion against the irking monotony +of its inherited creeds or from compulsions generated by its own +complexities, each age develops its code of convenient illusions which +minimize cerebration in dilemmas of conduct by postulating an +unequivocal cleavage between the current right and the current wrong. It +works until men tire of it or challenge the cleavage, or until +conditions render the code obsolete. It has in it, happily, a certain +poetic merit always; it presents an ideal to be lived up to; it gives +direction to the uncertain, stray impulses of life. + +The Chivalric code is no worse than most and certainly it is prettier +than some. It is a code peculiar to an age, or at least it flourishes +best in an age wherein sentiment and the stuff of dreams are easily +translatable into action. Its requirements are less of the intellect +than of the heart. It puts God, honor, and mistress above all else, and +stipulates that a knight shall serve these three without any +reservation. It requires of its secular practitioners the holy virtues +of an active piety, a modified chastity, and an unqualified obedience, +at all events, to the categorical imperative. The obligation of poverty +it omits, for the code arose at a time when the spiritual snobbery of +the meek and lowly was not pressing the simile about the camel and the +eye of the needle. It leads to charming manners and to delicate +amenities. It is the opposite of the code of Gallantry, for while the +code of Chivalry takes everything with a becoming seriousness, the code +of Gallantry takes everything with a wink. If one should stoop to pick +flaws with the Chivalric ideal, it would be to point out a certain +priggishness and intolerance. For, while it is all very well for one to +cherish the delusion that he is God's vicar on earth and to go about his +Father's business armed with a shining rectitude, yet the unhallowed may +be moved to deprecate the enterprise when they recall, with discomfort, +the zealous vicarship of, say, the late Anthony J. Comstock. + +But here I blunder into Mr. Cabell's province. For he has joined many +graceful words in delectable and poignant proof of just that lamentable +tendency of man to make a mess of even his most immaculate conceivings. +When he wrote _Chivalry_, Mr. Cabell was yet young enough to view the +code less with the appraising eye of a pawnbroker than with the ardent +eye of an amateur. He knew its value, but he did not know its price. So +he made of it the thesis for a dizain of beautiful happenings that are +almost flawless in their verbal beauty. + + +III + +It is perhaps of historical interest here to record the esteem in which +Mark Twain held the genius of Mr. Cabell as it was manifested as early +as a dozen years ago. Mr. Cabell wrote _The Soul of Melicent_, or, as it +was rechristened on revision, _Domnei_, at the great humorist's request, +and during the long days and nights of his last illness it was Mr. +Cabell's books which gave Mark Twain his greatest joy. This knowledge +mitigates the pleasure, no doubt, of those who still, after his fifteen +years of writing, encounter him intermittently with a feeling of having +made a great literary discovery. The truth is that Mr. Cabell has been +discovered over and over with each succeeding book from that first fine +enthusiasm with which Percival Pollard reviewed _The Eagle's Shadow_ to +that generous acknowledgment by Hugh Walpole that no one in England, +save perhaps Conrad and Hardy, was so sure of literary permanence as +James Branch Cabell. + +With _The Cream of the Jest, Beyond Life_, and _Figures of Earth_ before +him, it is not easy for the perceptive critic to doubt this permanence. +One might as sensibly deny a future to Ecclesiastes, _The Golden Ass, +Gulliver's Travels_, and the works of Rabelais as to predict oblivion +for such a thesaurus of ironic wit and fine fantasy, mellow wisdom and +strange beauty as _Jurgen_. But to appreciate the tales of _Chivalry_ +is, it seems, a gift more frequently reserved for the general reader +than for the professional literary evaluator. Certainly years before +discussion of Cabell was artificially augmented by the suppression of +_Jurgen_ there were many genuine lovers of romance who had read these +tales with pure enjoyment. That they did not analyse and articulate +their enjoyment for the edification of others does not lessen the +quality of their appreciation. Even in those years they found in +Cabell's early tales what we find who have since been directed to them +by the curiosity engendered by his later work, namely, a superb +craftsmanship in recreating a vanished age, an atmosphere in keeping +with the themes, a fluid, graceful, personal style, a poetic ecstasy, a +fine sense of drama, and a unity and symmetry which are the hall-marks +of literary genius. + +BURTON RASCOE. New York City, September, 1921. + + + + +Contents + +PRECAUTIONAL + +THE PROLOGUE + + + I THE STORY OF THE SESTINA + + II THE STORY OF THE TENSON + + III THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP + + IV THE STORY OF THE CHOICES + + V THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE + + VI THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS + + VII THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE + +VIII THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD + + IX THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE + + X THE STORY OF THE FOX-BRUSH + + THE EPILOGUE + + + + + +Precautional + + +Imprimis, as concerns the authenticity of these tales perhaps the less +debate may be the higher wisdom, if only because this Nicolas de Caen, +by common report, was never a Gradgrindian. And in this volume in +particular, writing it (as Nicolas is supposed to have done) in 1470, as +a dependant on the Duke of Burgundy, it were but human nature should he, +in dealing with the putative descendants of Dom Manuel and Alianora of +Provence, be niggardly in his ascription of praiseworthy traits to any +member of the house of Lancaster or of Valois. Rather must one in common +reason accept old Nicolas as confessedly a partisan writer, who upon +occasion will recolor an event with such nuances as will be least +inconvenient to a Yorkist and Burgundian bias. + +The reteller of these stories needs in addition to plead guilty of +having abridged the tales with a free hand. Item, these tales have been +a trifle pulled about, most notably in "The Story of the Satraps," where +it seemed advantageous, on reflection, to put into Gloucester's mouth a +history which in the original version was related _ab ovo_, and as a +sort of bungling prologue to the story proper. + +Item, the re-teller of these stories desires hereby to tender +appropriate acknowledgment to Mr. R.E. Townsend for his assistance in +making an English version of the lyrics included hereinafter; and to +avoid discussion as to how freely, in these lyrics, Nicolas has +plagiarized from Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and other elder poets.[1] + +And--"sixth and lastly"--should confession be made that in the present +rendering a purely arbitrary title has been assigned this little book; +chiefly for commercial reasons, since the word "dizain" has been +adjudged both untranslatable and, in its pristine form, repellantly +_outré_. + + +2 + +You are to give my titular makeshift, then, a wide interpretation; and +are always to remember that in the bleak, florid age these tales +commemorate this Chivalry was much the rarelier significant of any +personal trait than of a world-wide code in consonance with which all +estimable people lived and died. Its root was the assumption +(uncontested then) that a gentleman will always serve his God, his honor +and his lady without any reservation; nor did the many emanating by-laws +ever deal with special cases as concerns this triple, fixed, and +fundamental homage. + + + +Such is the trinity served hereinafter. Now about lady-service, or +_domnei_, I have written elsewhere. Elsewhere also I find it recorded +that "the cornerstone of Chivalry is the idea of vicarship: for the +chivalrous person is, in his own eyes at least, the child of God, and +goes about this world as his Father's representative in an alien +country." + +I believe the definition holds: it certainly tends to explain the +otherwise puzzling pertinacity with which the characters in these tales +talk about God and act upon an assured knowledge as to Heaven's private +intentions and preferences. These people are the members of one family +engrossed, as all of us are apt to be when in the society of our kin, by +family matters and traditions and by-words. It is not merely that they +are all large children consciously dependent in all things upon a not +foolishly indulgent Father, Who keeps an interested eye upon the least +of their doings, and punishes at need,--not merely that they know +themselves to act under surveillance and to speak within ear-shot of a +divine eavesdropper. The point is, rather, that they know this +observation to be as tender, the punishment to be as unwilling, as that +which they themselves extend to their own children's pranks and +misdemeanors. The point is that to them Heaven is a place as actual and +tangible as we consider Alaska or Algiers to be, and that their living +is a conscious journeying toward this actual place. The point is that +the Father is a real father, and not a word spelt with capital letters +in the Church Service; not an abstraction, not a sort of a something +vaguely describable as "the Life Force," but a very famous kinsman, of +whom one is naïvely proud, and whom one is on the way to visit.... The +point, in brief, is that His honor and yours are inextricably blended, +and are both implicated in your behavior on the journey. + +We nowadays can just cloudily imagine this viewing of life as a sort of +boarding-school from which one eventually goes home, with an official +report as to progress and deportment: and in retaliation for being +debarred from the comforts of this view, the psychoanalysts have no +doubt invented for it some opprobrious explanation. At all events, this +Chivalry was a pragmatic hypothesis: it "worked," and served society for +a long while, not faultlessly of course, but by creating, like all the +other codes of human conduct which men have yet tried, a tragi-comic +mêlée wherein contended "courtesy and humanity, friendliness, hardihood, +love and friendship, and murder, hate, and virtue, and sin." + + +3 + +For the rest, since good wine needs no bush, and an inferior beverage is +not likely to be bettered by arboreal adornment, I elect to piece out +my exordium (however lamely) with "The Printer's Preface." And it runs +in this fashion: + +"Here begins the volume called and entitled the Dizain of Queens, +composed and extracted from divers chronicles and other sources of +information, by that extremely venerable person and worshipful man, +Messire Nicolas de Caen, priest and chaplain to the right noble, +glorious and mighty prince in his time, Philippe, Duke of Burgundy, of +Brabant, etc., in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord God a thousand +four hundred and seventy: and imprinted by me, Colard Mansion, at +Bruges, in the year of our said Lord God a thousand four hundred and +seventy-one; at the commandment of the right high, mighty and virtuous +Princess, my redoubted Lady, Isabella of Portugal, by the grace of God +Duchess of Burgundy and Lotharingia, of Brabant and Limbourg, of +Luxembourg and of Gueldres, Countess of Flanders, of Artois, and of +Burgundy, Palatine of Hainault, of Holland, of Zealand and of Namur, +Marquesse of the Holy Empire, and Lady of Frisia, of Salins and of +Mechlin; whom I beseech Almighty God less to increase than to continue +in her virtuous disposition in this world, and after our poor fleet +existence to receive eternally. Amen." + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + + + "_Afin que les entreprises honorables et les nobles aventures et + faicts d'armes soyent noblement enregistrés et conservés, je vais + traiter et raconter et inventer ung galimatias_." + +THE DIZAIN OF QUEENS OF THAT NOBLE MAKER IN THE FRENCH TONGUE, MESSIRE +NICOLAS DE CAEN, DEDICATED TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS ISABELLA OF PORTUGAL, +OF THE HOUSE OF THE INDOMITABLE ALFONSO HENRIQUES, AND DUCHESS DOWAGER +OF BURGUNDY. HERE BEGINS IN AUSPICIOUS WISE THE PROLOGUE. + + + + +The Prologue + +A Sa Dame + + +Inasmuch as it was by your command, illustrious and exalted lady, that I +have gathered together these stories to form the present little book, +you should the less readily suppose I have presumed to dedicate to your +Serenity this trivial offering because of my esteeming it to be not +undeserving of your acceptance. The truth is otherwise: your postulant +approaches not spurred toward you by vainglory, but rather by equity, +and equity's plain need to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of +noble ladies must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who +is the light and mainstay of our age. I humbly bring my book to you as +Phidyle approached another and less sacred shrine, _farre pio et +saliente mica_, and lay before you this my valueless mean tribute not as +appropriate to you but as the best I have to offer. + +It is a little book wherein I treat of divers queens and of their +love-business; and with necessitated candor I concede my chosen field to +have been harvested, and scrupulously gleaned, by many writers of +innumerable conditions. Since Dares Phrygius wrote of Queen Heleine, and +Virgil (that shrewd necromancer) of Queen Dido, a preponderating mass of +clerks, in casting about for high and serious matter, have chosen, as +though it were by common instinct, to dilate upon the amours of royal +women. Even in romance we scribblers must contrive it so that the fair +Nicolete shall be discovered in the end to be no less than the King's +daughter of Carthage, and that Sir Doön of Mayence shall never sink in +his love affairs beneath the degree of a Saracen princess; and we are +backed in this old procedure not only by the authority of Aristotle but, +oddly enough, by that of reason. + +Kings have their policies and wars wherewith to drug each human +appetite. But their consorts are denied these makeshifts; and love may +rationally be defined as the pivot of each normal woman's life, and in +consequence as the arbiter of that ensuing life which is eternal. +Because--as anciently Propertius demanded, though not, to speak the +truth, of any woman-- + + Quo fugis? ah demens! nulla est fuga, tu licet usque + Ad Tanaim fugias, usque sequetur amor. + +And a dairymaid, let us say, may love whom she will, and nobody else be +a penny the worse for her mistaking of the preferable nail whereon to +hang her affections; whereas with a queen this choice is more +portentous. She plays the game of life upon a loftier table, ruthlessly +illuminated, she stakes by her least movement a tall pile of counters, +some of which are, of necessity, the lives and happiness of persons whom +she knows not, unless it be by vague report. Grandeur sells itself at +this hard price, and at no other. A queen must always play, in fine, as +the vicar of destiny, free to choose but very certainly compelled in the +ensuing action to justify that choice: as is strikingly manifested by +the authentic histories of Brunhalt, and of Guenevere, and of swart +Cleopatra, and of many others that were born to the barbaric queenhoods +of extinct and dusty times. + +All royal persons are (I take it) the immediate and the responsible +stewards of Heaven; and since the nature of each man is like a troubled +stream, now muddied and now clear, their prayer must ever be, _Defenda +me, Dios, de me_! Yes, of exalted people, and even of their near +associates, life, because it aims more high than the aforementioned +Aristotle, demands upon occasion a more great catharsis, which would +purge any audience of unmanliness, through pity and through terror, +because, by a quaint paradox, the players have been purged of humanity. +For a moment Destiny has thrust her scepter into the hands of a human +being and Chance has exalted a human being to decide the issue of many +human lives. These two--with what immortal chucklings one may facilely +imagine--have left the weakling thus enthroned, free to direct the heavy +outcome, free to choose, and free to evoke much happiness or age-long +weeping, but with no intermediate course unbarred. _Now prove thyself_! +saith Destiny; and Chance appends: _Now prove thyself to be at bottom a +god or else a beast, and now eternally abide that choice. And now_ (O +crowning irony!) _we may not tell thee clearly by which choice thou +mayst prove either_. + +In this little book about the women who intermarried, not very enviably, +with an unhuman race (a race predestinate to the red ending which I have +chronicled elsewhere, in _The Red Cuckold_), it is of ten such moments +that I treat. + +You alone, I think, of all persons living, have learned, as you have +settled by so many instances, to rise above mortality in such a testing, +and unfailingly to merit by your conduct the plaudits and the adoration +of our otherwise dissentient world. You have often spoken in the stead +of Destiny, with nations to abide your verdict; and in so doing have +both graced and hallowed your high vicarship. If I forbear to speak of +this at greater length, it is because I dare not couple your well-known +perfection with any imperfect encomium. Upon no plea, however, can any +one forbear to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of noble ladies +must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who is the light +and mainstay of our age. + +_Therefore to you, madame--most excellent and noble lady, to whom I love +to owe both loyalty and love--I dedicate this little book._ + + + + +I + +_THE STORY OF THE SESTINA_ + + + "Armatz de fust e de fer e d'acier, Mos ostal seran bosc, fregz, + e semdier, E mas cansos sestinas e descortz, E mantenrai los frevols + contra 'ls fortz." + +THE FIRST NOVEL.--ALIANORA OF PROVENCE, COMING IN DISGUISE AND IN +ADVERSITY TO A CERTAIN CLERK, IS BY HIM CONDUCTED ACROSS A HOSTILE +COUNTRY; AND IN THAT TROUBLED JOURNEY ARE MADE MANIFEST TO EACH THE +SNARES WHICH HAD BEGUILED THEM AFORETIME. + + + + +The Story of the Sestina + + +In this place we have to do with the opening tale of the Dizain of +Queens. I abridge, as afterward, at discretion; and an initial account +of the Barons' War, among other superfluities, I amputate as more +remarkable for veracity than interest. The result, we will agree at +outset, is that to the Norman cleric appertains whatever these tales may +have of merit, whereas what you find distasteful in them you must impute +to my delinquencies in skill rather than in volition. + +Within the half hour after de Giars' death (here one overtakes Nicolas +mid-course in narrative) Dame Alianora thus stood alone in the corridor +of a strange house. Beyond the arras the steward and his lord were at +irritable converse. + +First, "If the woman be hungry," spoke a high and peevish voice, "feed +her. If she need money, give it to her. But do not annoy me." + +"This woman demands to see the master of the house," the steward then +retorted. + +"O incredible Boeotian, inform her that the master of the house has no +time to waste upon vagabonds who select the middle of the night as an +eligible time to pop out of nowhere. Why did you not do so in the +beginning, you dolt?" The speaker got for answer only a deferential +cough, and very shortly continued: "This is remarkably vexatious. _Vox +et praeterea nihil_--which signifies, Yeck, that to converse with women +is always delightful. Admit her." This was done, and Dame Alianora came +into an apartment littered with papers, where a neat and shriveled +gentleman of fifty-odd sat at a desk and scowled. + +He presently said, "You may go, Yeck." He had risen, the magisterial +attitude with which he had awaited her entrance cast aside. "Oh, God!" +he said; "you, madame!" His thin hands, scholarly hands, were plucking +at the air. + +Dame Alianora had paused, greatly astonished, and there was an interval +before she said, "I do not recognize you, messire." + +"And yet, madame, I recall very clearly that some thirty years ago the +King-Count Raymond Bérenger, then reigning in Provence, had about his +court four daughters, each one of whom was afterward wedded to a king. +First, Meregrett, the eldest, now regnant in France; then Alianora, the +second and most beautiful of these daughters, whom troubadours hymned as +the Unattainable Princess. She was married a long while ago, madame, to +the King of England, Lord Henry, third of that name to reign in these +islands." + +Dame Alianora's eyes were narrowing. "There is something in your voice," +she said, "which I recall." + +He answered: "Madame and Queen, that is very likely, for it is a voice +which sang a deal in Provence when both of us were younger. I concede +with the Roman that I have somewhat deteriorated since the reign of +Cynara. Yet have you quite forgotten the Englishman who made so many +songs of you? They called him Osmund Heleigh." + +"He made the Sestina of Spring which won the violet crown at my +betrothal," the Queen said; and then, with eagerness: "Messire, can it +be that you are Osmund Heleigh?" He shrugged assent. She looked at him +for a long time, rather sadly, and demanded if he were the King's man or +of the barons' party. + +The nervous hands were raised in deprecation. "I have no politics," +Messire Heleigh began, and altered it, gallantly enough, to, "I am the +Queen's man, madame." + +"Then aid me, Osmund," she said. + +He answered with a gravity which singularly became him, "You have reason +to understand that to my fullest power I will aid you." + +"You know that at Lewes these swine overcame us." He nodded assent. "Now +they hold the King, my husband, captive at Kenilworth. I am content +that he remain there, for he is of all the King's enemies the most +dangerous. But, at Wallingford, Leicester has imprisoned my son, Prince +Edward. The Prince must be freed, my Osmund. Warren de Basingbourne +commands what is left of the royal army, now entrenched at Bristol, and +it is he who must liberate my son. Get me to Bristol, then. Afterward we +will take Wallingford." The Queen issued these orders in cheery, +practical fashion, and did not admit opposition into the account, for +she was a capable woman. + +"But you, madame?" he stammered. "You came alone?" + +"I come from France, where I have been entreating--and vainly +entreating--succor from yet another monkish king, the holy Lewis of that +realm. Eh, what is God about when He enthrones these whining pieties! +Were I a king, were I even a man, I would drive these smug English out +of their foggy isle in three days' space! I would leave alive not one of +these curs that dare yelp at me! I would--" She paused, anger veering +into amusement. "See how I enrage myself when I think of what your +people have made me suffer," the Queen said, and shrugged her shoulders. +"In effect, I skulked back in disguise to this detestable island, +accompanied by Avenel de Giars and Hubert Fitz-Herveis. To-night some +half-dozen fellows--robbers, thorough knaves, like all you +English,--attacked us on the common yonder and slew the men of our +party. While they were cutting de Giars' throat I slipped away in the +dark and tumbled through many ditches till I spied your light. There you +have my story. Now get me an escort to Bristol." + +It was a long while before Messire Heleigh spoke. Then, "These men," he +said--"this de Giars and this Fitz-Herveis--they gave their lives for +yours, as I understand it,--_pro caris amicis_. And yet you do not +grieve for them." + +"I shall regret de Giars," the Queen acknowledged, "for he made +excellent songs. But Fitz-Herveis?--foh! the man had a face like a +horse." Again her mood changed. "Many persons have died for me, my +friend. At first I wept for them, but now I am dry of tears." + +He shook his head. "Cato very wisely says, 'If thou hast need of help, +ask it of thy friends.' But the sweet friend that I remember was a clean +eyed girl, joyous and exceedingly beautiful. Now you appear to me one of +those ladies of remoter times--Faustina, or Jael, or Artemis, the King's +wife of Tauris,--they that slew men, laughing. I am somewhat afraid of +you, madame." + +She was angry at first; then her face softened. "You English!" she said, +only half mirthful. "Eh, my God! you remember me when I was a high +hearted young sorceress. Now the powers of the Apsarasas have departed +from me, and time has thrust that Alianora, who was once the +Unattainable Princess, chin deep in misery. Yet even now I am your +Queen, messire, and it is not yours to pass judgment upon me." "I do +not judge you," he returned. "Rather I cry with him of old, _Omnia +incerta ratione!_ and I cry with Salomon that he who meddles with the +strife of another man is like to him that takes a hound by the ears. Yet +listen, madame and Queen. I cannot afford you an escort to Bristol. This +house, of which I am in temporary charge, is Longaville, my brother's +manor. Lord Brudenel, as you doubtless know, is of the barons' party +and--scant cause for grief!--is with Leicester at this moment. I can +trust none of my brother's people, for I believe them to be of much the +same opinion as those Londoners who not long ago stoned you and would +have sunk your barge in Thames River. Oh, let us not blink the fact that +you are not overbeloved in England. So an escort is out of the question. +Yet I, madame, if you so elect, will see you safe to Bristol." + +"You? Singly?" the Queen demanded. + +"My plan is this: Singing folk alone travel whither they will. We will +go as jongleurs, then. I can yet manage a song to the viol, I dare +affirm. And you must pass as my wife." + +He said this with simplicity. The plan seemed unreasonable, and at first +Dame Alianora waved it aside. Out of the question! But reflection +suggested nothing better; it was impossible to remain at Longaville, and +the man spoke sober truth when he declared any escort other than himself +to be unprocurable. Besides, the lunar madness of the scheme was its +strength; that the Queen would venture to cross half England +unprotected--and Messire Heleigh on the face of him was a paste-board +buckler--was an event which Leicester would neither anticipate nor on +report credit. There you were! these English had no imagination. The +Queen snapped her fingers and said: "Very willingly will I be your wife, +my Osmund. But how do I know that I can trust you? Leicester would give +a deal for me; he would pay any price for the pious joy of burning the +Sorceress of Provence. And you are not wealthy, I suspect." + +"You may trust me, mon bel esper,"--his eyes here were those of a beaten +child--"because my memory is better than yours." Messire Osmund Heleigh +gathered his papers into a neat pile. "This room is mine. To-night I +keep guard in the corridor, madame. We will start at dawn." + +When he had gone, Dame Alianora laughed contentedly. "Mon bel esper! my +fairest hope! The man called me that in his verses--thirty years ago! +Yes, I may trust you, my poor Osmund." + +So they set out at cockcrow. He had procured for himself a viol and a +long falchion, and had somewhere got suitable clothes for the Queen; and +in their aging but decent garb the two approached near enough to the +appearance of what they desired to be thought. In the courtyard a knot +of servants gaped, nudged one another, but openly said nothing. Messire +Heleigh, as they interpreted it, was brazening out an affair of +gallantry before the countryside; and they esteemed his casual +observation that they would find a couple of dead men on the common +exceedingly diverting. + +When the Queen asked him the same morning, "And what will you sing, my +Osmund? Shall we begin the practise of our new profession with the +Sestina of Spring?"--old Osmund Heleigh grunted out: "I have forgotten +that rubbish long ago. _Omnis amans, amens_, saith the satirist of Rome +town, and with reason." + +Followed silence. + +One sees them thus trudging the brown, naked plains under a sky of +steel. In a pageant the woman, full-veined and comely, her russet gown +girded up like a harvester's might not inaptly have prefigured October; +and for less comfortable November you could nowhere have found a symbol +more precise than her lank companion, humorously peevish under his white +thatch of hair, and constantly fretted by the sword tapping at his +ankles. + +They made Hurlburt prosperously and found it vacant, for the news of +Falmouth's advance had driven the villagers hillward. There was in this +place a child, a naked boy of some two years, lying on a doorstep, +overlooked in his elders' gross terror. As the Queen with a sob lifted +this boy the child died. + +"Starved!" said Osmund Heleigh; "and within a stone's throw of my snug +home!" + +The Queen laid down the tiny corpse, and, stooping, lightly caressed +its sparse flaxen hair. She answered nothing, though her lips moved. + +Past Vachel, scene of a recent skirmish, with many dead in the gutters, +they were overtaken by Falmouth himself, and stood at the roadside to +afford his troop passage. The Marquess, as he went by, flung the Queen a +coin, with a jest sufficiently high flavored. She knew the man her +inveterate enemy, knew that on recognition he would have killed her as +he would a wolf; she smiled at him and dropped a curtsey. + +"This is remarkable," Messire Heleigh observed. "I was hideously afraid, +and am yet shaking. But you, madame, laughed." + +The Queen replied: "I laughed because I know that some day I shall have +Lord Falmouth's head. It will be very sweet to see it roll in the dust, +my Osmund." + +Messire Heleigh somewhat dryly observed that tastes differed. + +At Jessop Minor befell a more threatening adventure. Seeking food at the +_Cat and Hautbois_ in that village, they blundered upon the same troop +at dinner in the square about the inn. Falmouth and his lieutenants were +somewhere inside the house. The men greeted the supposed purveyors of +amusement with a shout; and one of these soldiers--a swarthy rascal with +his head tied in a napkin--demanded that the jongleurs grace their meal +with a song. + +Osmund tried to put him off with a tale of a broken viol. + +But, "Haro!" the fellow blustered; "by blood and by nails! you will sing +more sweetly with a broken viol than with a broken head. I would have +you understand, you hedge thief, that we gentlemen of the sword are not +partial to wordy argument." Messire Heleigh fluttered inefficient hands +as the men-at-arms gathered about them, scenting some genial piece of +cruelty. "Oh, you rabbit!" the trooper jeered, and caught at Osmund's +throat, shaking him. In the act this rascal tore open Messire Heleigh's +tunic, disclosing a thin chain about his neck and a handsome locket, +which the fellow wrested from its fastening. "Ahoi!" he continued. +"Ahoi, my comrades, what sort of minstrel is this, who goes about +England all hung with gold like a Cathedral Virgin! He and his +sweetheart"--the actual word was grosser--"will be none the worse for an +interview with the Marquess." + +The situation smacked of awkwardness, because Lord Falmouth was familiar +with the Queen, and to be brought specifically to his attention meant +death for two detected masqueraders. Hastily Osmund Heleigh said: + +"Messire, the locket contains the portrait of a lady whom in my youth I +loved very greatly. Save to me, it is valueless. I pray you, do not rob +me of it." + +But the trooper shook his head with drunken solemnity. "I do not like +the looks of this. Yet I will sell it to you, as the saying is, for a +song." + +"It shall be the king of songs," said Osmund,--"the song that Arnaut +Daniel first made. I will sing for you a Sestina, messieurs,--a Sestina +in salutation of Spring." + +The men disposed themselves about the dying grass, and presently he +sang. + +Sang Messire Heleigh: + + "Awaken! for the servitors of Spring + Proclaim his triumph! ah, make haste to see + With what tempestuous pageantry they bring + The victor homeward! haste, for this is he + That cast out Winter and all woes that cling + To Winter's garments, and bade April be! + + "And now that Spring is master, let us be + Content, and laugh, as anciently in spring + The battle-wearied Tristan laughed, when he + Was come again Tintagel-ward, to bring + Glad news of Arthur's victory--and see + Ysoude, with parted lips, that waver and cling. + + "Not yet in Brittany must Tristan cling + To this or that sad memory, and be + Alone, as she in Cornwall; for in spring + Love sows against far harvestings,--and he + Is blind, and scatters baleful seed that bring + Such fruitage as blind Love lacks eyes to see!" + +Osmund paused here for an appreciable interval, staring at the Queen. +You saw his flabby throat a-quiver, his eyes melting, saw his cheeks +kindle, and youth seeping into the lean man like water over a crumbling +dam. His voice was now big and desirous. + +Sang Messire Heleigh: + + "Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see + The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling, + Never again when in the grave ye be + Incurious of your happiness in spring, + And get no grace of Love there, whither he + That bartered life for love no love may bring. + + "No braggart Heracles avails to bring + Alcestis hence; nor here may Roland see + The eyes of Aude; nor here the wakening spring + Vex any man with memories: for there be + No memories that cling as cerements cling, + No force that baffles Death, more strong than he. + + "Us hath he noted, and for us hath he + An hour appointed; and that hour will bring + Oblivion.--Then, laugh! Laugh, dear, and see + The tyrant mocked, while yet our bosoms cling, + While yet our lips obey us, and we be + Untrammeled in our little hour of spring! + + "Thus in the spring we jeer at Death, though he + Will see our children perish and will briny + Asunder all that cling while love may be." + +Then Osmund put the viol aside and sat quite silent. The soldiery +judged, and with cordial frankness stated, that the difficulty of his +rhyming scheme did not atone for his lack of indecency, but when the +Queen of England went among them with Messire Heleigh's faded green hat +she found them liberal. Even the fellow with the broken head admitted +that a bargain was proverbially a bargain, and returned the locket with +the addition of a coin. So for the present these two went safe, and +quitted the _Cat and Hautbois_ fed and unmolested. + +"My Osmund," Dame Alianora said, presently, "your memory is better than +I had thought." + +"I remembered a boy and a girl," he returned. "And I grieved that they +were dead." + +Afterward they plodded on toward Bowater, and the ensuing night rested +in Chantrell Wood. They had the good fortune there to encounter dry and +windless weather and a sufficiency of brushwood, with which Osmund +constructed an agreeable fire. In its glow these two sat, eating bread +and cheese. + +But talk languished at the outset. The Queen had complained of an ague, +and Messire Heleigh was sedately suggesting three spiders hung about the +neck as an infallible corrective for this ailment, when Dame Alianora +rose to her feet. "Eh, my God!" she said; "I am wearied of such +ungracious aid! Not an inch of the way but you have been thinking of +your filthy books and longing to be back at them! No; I except the +moments when you were frightened into forgetfulness--first by Falmouth, +then by the trooper. O Eternal Father! afraid of a single dirty +soldier!" + +"Indeed, I was very much afraid," said Messire Heleigh, with perfect +simplicity; "_timidus perire, madame._" + +"You have not even the grace to be ashamed! Yet I am shamed, messire, +that Osmund Heleigh should have become the book-muddled pedant you are. +For I loved young Osmund Heleigh." + +He also had risen in the firelight, and now its convulsive shadows +marred two dogged faces. "I think it best not to recall that boy and +girl who are so long dead. And, frankly, madame and Queen, the merit of +the business I have in hand is questionable. It is you who have set all +England by the ears, and I am guiding you toward opportunities for +further mischief. I must serve you. Understand, madame, that ancient +folly in Provence yonder has nothing to do with the affair. Count Manuel +left you: and between his evasion and your marriage you were pleased to +amuse yourself with me--" + +"You were more civil then, my Osmund--" + +"I am not uncivil, I merely point out that this old folly constitutes +no overwhelming obligation, either way. I cry _nihil ad Andromachen!_ +For the rest, I must serve you because you are a woman and helpless; yet +I cannot forget that he who spares the wolf is the sheep's murderer. It +would be better for all England if you were dead. Hey, your gorgeous +follies, madame! Silver peacocks set with sapphires! Cloth of fine +gold--" + +"Would you have me go unclothed?" Dame Alianora demanded, pettishly. + +"Not so," Osmund retorted; "again I say to you with Tertullian, 'Let +women paint their eyes with the tints of chastity, insert into their +ears the Word of God, tie the yoke of Christ about their necks, and +adorn their whole person with the silk of sanctity and the damask of +devotion.' I say to you that the boy you wish to rescue from +Wallingford, and make King of England, is freely rumored to be not +verily the son of Sire Henry but the child of tall Manuel of Poictesme. +I say to you that from the first you have made mischief in England. And +I say to you--" + +But Dame Alianora was yawning quite frankly. "You will say to me that I +brought foreigners into England, that I misguided the King, that I +stirred up strife between the King and his barons. Eh, my God! I am +sufficiently familiar with the harangue. Yet listen, my Osmund: They +sold me like a bullock to a man I had never seen. I found him a man of +wax, and I remoulded him. They asked of me an heir for England: I +provided that heir. They gave me England as a toy; I played with it. I +was the Queen, the source of honor, the source of wealth--the trough, in +effect, about which swine gathered. Never since I came into England, +Osmund, has any man or woman loved me; never in all my English life have +I loved man or woman. Do you understand, my Osmund?--the Queen has many +flatterers, but no friends. Not a friend in the world, my Osmund! And so +the Queen made the best of it and amused herself." + +Somewhat he seemed to understand, for he answered without asperity: + +"Mon bel esper, I do not find it anywhere in Holy Writ that God requires +it of us to amuse ourselves; but upon many occasions we have been +commanded to live righteously. We are tempted in divers and insidious +ways. And we cry with the Psalmist, 'My strength is dried up like a +potsherd.' But God intends this, since, until we have here demonstrated +our valor upon Satan, we are manifestly unworthy to be enregistered in +God's army. The great Captain must be served by proven soldiers. We may +be tempted, but we may not yield. O daughter of the South! we must not +yield!" + +"Again you preach," Dame Alianora said. "That is a venerable truism." + +"Ho, madame," he returned, "is it on that account the less true?" + +Pensively the Queen considered this. "You are a good man, my Osmund," +she said, at last, "though you are very droll. Ohimé! it is a pity that +I was born a princess! Had it been possible for me to be your wife, I +would have been a better woman. I shall sleep now and dream of that good +and stupid and contented woman I might have been." So presently these +two slept in Chantrell Wood. + +Followed four days of journeying. As Messer Dante had not yet surveyed +Malebolge, Osmund Heleigh and Dame Alianora lacked a parallel for that +which they encountered; their traverse discovered England razed, +charred, and depopulate--picked bones of an island, a vast and absolute +ruin about which passion-wasted men skulked like rats. Messire Heleigh +and the Queen traveled without molestation; malice and death had +journeyed before them on this road, and had swept it clear. + +At every trace of these hideous precessors Osmund Heleigh would say, "By +a day's ride I might have prevented this." Or, "By a day's ride I might +have saved this woman." Or, "By two days' riding I might have fed this +child." + +The Queen kept Spartan silence, but daily you saw the fine woman age. In +their slow advance every inch of misery was thrust before her for +inspection; meticulously she observed and evaluated her handiwork. +Enthroned, she had appraised from a distance the righteous wars she set +afoot; trudging thus among the débris of these wars, she found they had +unsuspected aspects. Bastling the royal army had recently sacked. +There remained of this village the skeletons of two houses, and for the +rest a jumble of bricks, rafters half-burned, many calcined fragments of +humanity, and ashes. At Bastling, Messire Heleigh turned to the Queen +toiling behind. + +"Oh, madame!" he said, in a dry whisper, "this was the home of so many +men!" + +"I burned it," Dame Alianora replied. "That man we passed just now I +killed. Those other men and women--my folly slew them all. And little +children, my Osmund! The hair like flax, blood-dabbled!" + +"Oh, madame!" he wailed, in the extremity of his pity. + +For she stood with eyes shut, all gray. The Queen demanded: "Why have +they not slain me? Was there no man in England to strangle the proud +wanton? Are you all cowards here?" + +He said: "I detect only one coward in the affair. Your men and +Leicester's men also ride about the world, and draw sword and slay and +die for the right as they see it. And you and Leicester contend for the +right as ye see it. But I, madame! I! I, who sat snug at home spilling +ink and trimming rose-bushes! God's world, madame, and I in it afraid to +speak a word for Him! God's world, and a curmudgeon in it grudging God +the life He gave!" The man flung out his soft hands and snarled: _"We +are tempted in divers and insidious ways._ But I, who rebuked you! +behold, now, with how gross a snare was I entrapped!" "I do not +understand, my Osmund." + +"I was afraid, madame," he returned, dully. "Everywhere men fight, and I +am afraid to die." + +So they stood silent in the ruins of Bastling. + +"Of a piece with our lives," Dame Alianora said at last. "All ruin, my +Osmund." + +But Messire Heleigh threw back his head and laughed, new color in his +face. "Presently men will build here, my Queen. Presently, as in legend +was re-born the Arabian bird, arises from these ashes a lordlier and +more spacious town." + +They went forward. The next day chance loosed upon them Gui Camoys, lord +of Bozon, Foliot, and Thwenge, who, riding alone through Poges Copse, +found there a man and a woman over their limited supper. The woman had +thrown back her hood, and Camoys drew rein to stare at her. Lispingly he +spoke the true court dialect. + +"Ma belle," said this Camoys, in friendly condescension, "n'estez vous +pas jongleurs?" + +Dame Alianora smiled up at him. "Ouais, messire; mon mary faict les +chançons--" She paused, with dilatory caution, for Camoys had leaped +from his horse, giving a great laugh. + +"A prize! ho, an imperial prize!" Camoys shouted. "A peasant woman with +the Queen's face, who speaks French! And who, madame, is this? Have you +by any chance brought pious Lewis from oversea? Have I bagged a brace +of monarchs?" + +Here was imminent danger, for Camoys had known the Queen some fifteen +years. Messire Heleigh rose, his five days' beard glinting like +hoar-frost as his mouth twitched. + +"I am Osmund Heleigh, messire, younger brother to the Earl of Brudenel." + +"I have heard of you, I believe--the fellow who spoils parchment. This +is odd company, however, Messire Osmund, for Brudenel's brother." + +"A gentleman must serve his Queen, messire. As Cicero very justly +observes--" + +"I am inclined to think that his political opinions are scarcely to our +immediate purpose. This is a high matter, Messire Heleigh. To let the +sorceress pass is, of course, out of the question; upon the other hand, +I observe that you lack weapons of defence. Yet if you will have the +kindness to assist me in unarming, your courtesy will place our commerce +on more equal footing." + +Osmund had turned very white. "I am no swordsman, messire--" + +"Now, this is not handsome of you," Camoys began. "I warn you that +people will speak harshly of us if we lose this opportunity of gaining +honor. And besides, the woman will be burned at the stake. Plainly, you +owe it to all three of us to fight." + +"--But I refer my cause to God. I am quite at your service." "No, my +Osmund!" Dame Alianora then cried. "It means your death." + +He spread out his hands. "That is God's affair, madame." + +"Are you not afraid?" she breathed. + +"Of course I am afraid," said Messire Heleigh, irritably. + +After that he unarmed Camoys, and presently they faced each other in +their tunics. So for the first time in the journey Osmund's long +falchion saw daylight. He had thrown away his dagger, as Camoys had +none. + +The combat was sufficiently curious. Camoys raised his left hand. "So +help me God and His saints, I have upon me neither bone, stone, nor +witchcraft wherethrough the power and the word of God might be +diminished or the devil's power increased." + +Osmund made similar oath. "Judge Thou this woman's cause!" he cried, +likewise. + +Then Gui Camoys shouted, as a herald might have done, "Laissez les +aller, laissez les aller, laissez les aller, les bons combatants!" and +warily each moved toward the other. + +On a sudden Osmund attacked, desperately apprehensive of his own +cowardice. Camoys lightly eluded him and slashed at Osmund's undefended +thigh, drawing much blood. Osmund gasped. He flung away his sword, and +in the instant catching Camoys under the arms, threw him to the ground. +Messire Heleigh fell with his opponent, who in stumbling had lost his +sword, and thus the two struggled unarmed, Osmund atop. But Camoys was +the younger man, and Osmund's strength was ebbing rapidly by reason of +his wound. Now Camoys' tethered horse, rearing with nervousness, tumbled +his master's flat-topped helmet into the road. Osmund caught up this +helmet and with it battered Camoys in the face, dealing severe blows. + +"God!" Camoys cried, his face all blood. + +"Do you acknowledge my quarrel just?" said Osmund, between horrid sobs. + +"What choice have I?" said Gui Camoys, very sensibly. + +So Osmund rose, blind with tears and shivering. The Queen bound up their +wounds as best she might, but Camoys was much dissatisfied. + +"For private purposes of His own, madame," he observed, "and doubtless +for sufficient reasons, God has singularly favored your cause. I am +neither a fool nor a pagan to question His decision, and you two may go +your way unhampered. But I have had my head broken with my own helmet, +and this I consider to be a proceeding very little conducive toward +enhancing my reputation. Of your courtesy, messire, I must entreat +another meeting." + +Osmund shrank as if from a blow. Then, with a short laugh, he conceded +that this was Camoys' right, and they fixed upon the following Saturday, +with Poges Copse as the rendezvous. + +"I would suggest that the combat be to the death," Gui Camoys said, "in +consideration of the fact it was my own helmet. You must undoubtedly be +aware, Messire Osmund, that such an affront is practically without any +parallel." + +This, too, was agreed upon. + +Then, after asking if they needed money, which was courteously declined, +Gui Camoys rode away, and sang as he went. Osmund Heleigh remained +motionless. He raised quivering hands to the sky. + +"Thou hast judged!" he cried. "Thou hast judged, O puissant Emperor of +Heaven! Now pardon! Pardon us twain! Pardon for unjust stewards of Thy +gifts! Thou hast loaned this woman dominion over England, with all +instruments to aid Thy cause, and this trust she has abused. Thou hast +loaned me life and manhood, agility and wit and strength, all +instruments to aid Thy cause. Talents in a napkin, O God! Repentant we +cry to Thee. Pardon for unjust stewards! Pardon for the ungirt loin, for +the service shirked, for all good deeds undone! Pardon and grace, O King +of kings!" + +Thus he prayed, while Gui Camoys sang, riding deeper into the tattered, +yellowing forest. By an odd chance Camoys had lighted on that song made +by Thibaut of Champagne, beginning _Signor, saciez, ki or ne s'en ira_, +which denounces all half-hearted servitors of Heaven; and this he sang +with a lilt gayer than his matter countenanced. Faintly there now came +to Osmund and the Queen the sound of Camoys' singing, and they found it, +in the circumstances, ominously apt. + +Sang Camoys: + + "Et vos, par qui je n'ci onques aïe, + Descendez luit en infer le parfont." + +Dame Alianora shivered. But she was a capable woman, and so she said: "I +may have made mistakes. But I am sure I never meant any harm, and I am +sure, too, that God will be more sensible about it than are you poets." + +They slept that night in Ousley Meadow, and the next afternoon came +safely to Bristol. You may learn elsewhere with what rejoicing the royal +army welcomed the Queen's arrival, how courage quickened at sight of the +generous virago. In the ebullition Messire Heleigh was submerged, and +Dame Alianora saw nothing more of him that day. Friday there were +counsels, requisitions, orders signed, a memorial despatched to Pope +Urban, chief of all a letter (this in the Queen's hand throughout) +privily conveyed to the Lady Maude de Mortemer, who shortly afterward +contrived Prince Edward's escape from her husband's gaolership. There +was much sowing of a seed, in fine, that eventually flowered victory. +There was, however, no sign of Osmund Heleigh, though by Dame Alianora's +order he was sought. + +On Saturday at seven in the morning he came to her lodging, in complete +armor. From the open helmet his wrinkled face, showing like a wizened +nut in a shell, smiled upon her questionings. + +"I go to fight Gui Camoys, madame and Queen." + +Dame Alianora wrung her hands. "You go to your death." + +He answered: "That is true. Therefore I am come to bid you farewell." + +The Queen stared at him for a while; on a sudden she broke into a +curious fit of deep but tearless sobbing, which bordered upon laughter, +too. + +"Mon bel esper," said Osmund Heleigh, gently, "what is there in all this +worthy of your sorrow? The man will kill me; granted, for he is my +junior by some fifteen years, and is in addition a skilled swordsman. I +fail to see that this is lamentable. Back to Longaville I cannot go +after recent happenings; there a rope's end awaits me. Here I must in +any event shortly take to the sword, since a beleaguered army has very +little need of ink-pots; and shortly I must be slain in some skirmish, +dug under the ribs perhaps by a greasy fellow I have never seen. I +prefer a clean death at a gentleman's hands." + +"It is I who bring about your death!" she said. "You gave me gallant +service, and I have requited you with death, and it is a great pity." + +"Indeed the debt is on the other side. The trivial services I rendered +you were such as any gentleman must render a woman in distress. Naught +else have I afforded you, madame, save very anciently a Sestina. Ho, a +Sestina! And in return you have given me a Sestina of fairer make,--a +Sestina of days, six days of manly common living." His eyes were +fervent. + +She kissed him on either cheek. "Farewell, my champion!" + +"Ay, your champion. In the twilight of life old Osmund Heleigh rides +forth to defend the quarrel of Alianora of Provence. Reign wisely, my +Queen, so that hereafter men may not say I was slain in an evil cause. +Do not, I pray you, shame my maiden venture at a man's work." + +"I will not shame you," the Queen proudly said; and then, with a change +of voice: "O my Osmund! My Osmund, you have a folly that is divine, and +I lack it." + +He caught her by each wrist, and stood crushing both her hands to his +lips, with fierce staring. "Wife of my King! wife of my King!" he +babbled; and then put her from him, crying, "I have not failed you! +Praise God, I have not failed you!" + +From her window she saw him ride away, a rich flush of glitter and +color. In new armor with a smart emblazoned surcoat the lean pedant sat +conspicuously erect; and as he went he sang defiantly, taunting the +weakness of his flesh. + +Sang Osmund Heleigh: + + "Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see + The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling + Never again when in the grave ye be + Incurious of your happiness in spring, + And get no grace of Love, there, whither he + That bartered life for love no love may bring." + +So he rode away and thus out of our history. But in the evening Gui +Camoys came into Bristol under a flag of truce, and behind him heaved a +litter wherein lay Osmund Heleigh's body. + +"For this man was frank and courteous," Camoys said to the Queen, "and +in the matter of the reparation he owed me acted very handsomely. It is +fitting that he should have honorable interment." + +"That he shall not lack," the Queen said, and gently unclasped from +Osmund's wrinkled neck the thin gold chain, now locketless. "There was a +portrait here," she said; "the portrait of a woman whom he loved in his +youth, Messire Camoys. And all his life it lay above his heart." + +Camoys answered stiffly: "I imagine this same locket to have been the +object which Messire Heleigh flung into the river, shortly before we +began our combat. I do not rob the dead, madame." + +"Well," the Queen said, "he always did queer things, and so, I shall +always wonder what sort of lady he picked out to love, but it is none of +my affair." + +Afterward she set to work on requisitions in the King's name. But Osmund +Heleigh she had interred at Ambresbury, commanding it to be written on +his tomb that he died in the Queen's cause. + +How the same cause prospered (Nicolas concludes), how presently Dame +Alianora reigned again in England and with what wisdom, and how in the +end this great Queen died a nun at Ambresbury and all England wept +therefor--this you may learn elsewhere. I have chosen to record six days +of a long and eventful life; and (as Messire Heleigh might have done) I +say modestly with him of old, _Majores majora sonent._ Nevertheless, I +assert that many a forest was once a pocketful of acorns. + +THE END OF THE FIRST NOVEL + + + + +II + +THE STORY OF THE TENSON + + + "Plagues à Dieu ja la nueitz non falhis, + Ni'l mieus amicx lone de mi nos partis, + Ni la gayta jorn ni alba ne vis. + Oy Dieus! oy Dieus! de l'alba tan tost we!" + +THE SECOND NOVEL.--ELLINOR OF CASTILE, BEING ENAMORED OF A HANDSOME +PERSON, IS IN HER FLIGHT FROM MARITAL OBLIGATIONS ASSISTED BY HER +HUSBAND, AND IS IN THE END BY HIM CONVINCED OF THE RATIONALITY OF ALL +ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES. + + + + +_The Story of the Tenson_ + + +In the year of grace 1265 (Nicolas begins), about the festival of Saint +Peter _ad Vincula_, the Prince de Gâtinais came to Burgos. Before this +he had lodged for three months in the district of Ponthieu; and the +object of his southern journey was to assure the tenth Alphonso, then +ruling in Castile, that the latter's sister Ellinor, now resident at +Entréchat, was beyond any reasonable doubt the transcendent lady whose +existence old romancers had anticipated, however cloudily, when they +fabled in remote time concerning Queen Heleine of Sparta. + +There was a postscript to this news. The world knew that the King of +Leon and Castile desired to be King of Germany as well, and that at +present a single vote in the Diet would decide between his claims and +those of his competitor, Earl Richard of Cornwall. De Gâtinais chaffered +fairly; he had a vote, Alphonso had a sister. So that, in effect--ohé, +in effect, he made no question that his Majesty understood! + +The Astronomer twitched his beard and demanded if the fact that Ellinor +had been a married woman these ten years past was not an obstacle to the +plan which his fair cousin had proposed? + +Here the Prince was accoutred cap-à-pie, and hauled out a paper. Dating +from Viterbo, Clement, Bishop of Rome, servant to the servants of God, +desirous of all health and apostolical blessing for his well-beloved son +in Christ, stated that a compact between a boy of fifteen and a girl of +ten was an affair of no particular moment; and that in consideration of +the covenantors never having clapped eyes upon each other since the +wedding-day,--even had not the precontract of marriage between the +groom's father and the bride's mother rendered a consummation of the +childish oath an obvious and a most heinous enormity,--why, that, in a +sentence, and for all his coy verbosity, the new pontiff was perfectly +amenable to reason. + +So in a month it was settled. Alphonso would give his sister to de +Gâtinais, and in exchange get the latter's vote to make Alphonso King of +Germany; and Gui Foulques of Sabionetta--now Clement, fourth Pope to +assume that name--would annul the previous marriage, and in exchange get +an armament to serve him against Manfred, the late and troublesome +tyrant of Sicily and Apulia. The scheme promised to each one of them +that which he in particular desired, and messengers were presently sent +into Ponthieu. + +It is now time we put aside these Castilian matters and speak of other +things. In England, Prince Edward had fought, and won, a shrewd battle +at Evesham. People said, of course, that such behavior was less in the +manner of his nominal father, King Henry, than reminiscent of Count +Manuel of Poictesme, whose portraits certainly the Prince resembled to +an embarrassing extent. Either way, the barons' power was demolished, +there would be no more internecine war; and spurred by the unaccustomed +idleness, Prince Edward began to think of the foreign girl he had not +seen since the day he wedded her. She would be a woman by this, and it +was befitting that he claim his wife. He rode with Hawise Bulmer and her +baby to Ambresbury, and at the gate of the nunnery they parted, with +what agonies are immaterial to this history's progression; the tale +merely tells that, having thus decorously rid himself of his mistress, +the Prince went into Lower Picardy alone, riding at adventure as he +loved to do, and thus came to Entréchat, where his wife resided with her +mother, the Countess Johane. + +In a wood near the castle he approached a company of Spaniards, four in +number, their horses tethered while these men (Oviedans, as they told +him) drank about a great stone which served them for a table. Being +thirsty, he asked and was readily accorded hospitality, and these five +fell into amicable discourse. One fellow asked his name and business in +those parts, and the Prince gave each without hesitancy as he reached +for the bottle, and afterward dropped it just in time to catch, cannily, +with his naked left hand, the knife-blade with which the rascal had dug +at the unguarded ribs. The Prince was astounded, but he was never a +subtle man: here were four knaves who, for reasons unexplained--but to +them of undoubted cogency--desired his death: manifestly there was here +an actionable difference of opinion; so he had his sword out and killed +the four of them. + +Presently came to him an apple-cheeked boy, habited as a page, who, +riding jauntily through the forest, lighted upon the Prince, now in +bottomless vexation. The lad drew rein, and his lips outlined a whistle. +At his feet were several dead men in various conditions of +dismemberment. And seated among them, as if throned upon this boulder, +was a gigantic and florid person, so tall that the heads of few men +reached to his shoulder; a person of handsome exterior, high-featured +and blond, having a narrow, small head, and vivid light blue eyes, and +the chest of a stallion; a person whose left eyebrow had an odd oblique +droop, so that the stupendous man appeared to be winking the information +that he was in jest. + +"Fair friend," said the page. "God give you joy! and why have you +converted this forest into a shambles?" + +The Prince told him as much of the half-hour's action as has been +narrated. "I have perhaps been rather hasty," he considered, by way of +peroration, "and it vexes me that I did not spare, say, one of these +lank Spaniards, if only long enough to ascertain why, in the name of +Termagaunt, they should have desired my destruction." + +But midway in his tale the boy had dismounted with a gasp, and he was +now inspecting the features of one carcass. "Felons, my Prince! You have +slain some eight yards of felony which might have cheated the gallows +had they got the Princess Ellinor safe to Burgos. Only two days ago this +chalk-eyed fellow conveyed to her a letter." + +Prince Edward said, "You appear, lad, to be somewhat overheels in the +confidence of my wife." + +Now the boy arose and defiantly flung back his head in shrill laughter. +"Your wife! Oh, God have mercy! Your wife, and for ten years left to her +own devices! Why, look you, to-day you and your wife would not know each +other were you two brought face to face." + +Prince Edward said, "That is very near the truth." But, indeed, it was +the absolute truth, and as it concerned him was already attested. + +"Sire Edward," the boy then said, "your wife has wearied of this long +waiting till you chose to whistle for her. Last summer the young Prince +de Gâtinais came a-wooing--and he is a handsome man." The page made +known all which de Gâtinais and King Alphonso planned, the words +jostling as they came in torrents, but so that one might understand. "I +am her page, my lord. I was to follow her. These fellows were to be my +escort, were to ward off possible pursuit. Cry haro, beau sire! Cry +haro, and shout it lustily, for your wife in company with six other +knaves is at large between here and Burgos,--that unreasonable wife who +grew dissatisfied after a mere ten years of neglect." + +"I have been remiss," the Prince said, and one huge hand strained at his +chin; "yes, perhaps I have been remiss. Yet it had appeared to me--But +as it is, I bid you mount, my lad!" + +The boy demanded, "And to what end?" + +"Oy Dieus, messire! have I not slain your escort? Why, in common reason, +equity demands that I afford you my protection so far as Burgos, +messire, just as plainly as equity demands I slay de Gâtinais and fetch +back my wife to England." + +The page wrung exquisite hands with a gesture which was but partially +tinged with anguish, and presently began to laugh. Afterward these two +rode southerly, in the direction of Castile. + +For it appeared to the intriguing little woman a diverting jest that in +this fashion her husband should be the promoter of her evasion. It +appeared to her more diverting when in two days' space she had become +fond of him. She found him rather slow of comprehension, and she was +humiliated by the discovery that not an eyelash of the man was irritated +by his wife's decampment; he considered, to all appearances, that some +property of his had been stolen, and he intended, quite without passion, +to repossess himself of it, after, of course, punishing the thief. + +This troubled the Princess somewhat; and often, riding by her stolid +husband's side, the girl's heart raged at memory of the decade so newly +overpast which had kept her always dependent on the charity of this or +that ungracious patron--on any one who would take charge of her while +the truant husband fought out his endless squabbles in England. Slights +enough she had borne during the period, and squalor, and physical hunger +also she had known, who was the child of a king and a saint.[2] But now +she rode toward the dear southland; and presently she would be rid of +this big man, when he had served her purpose; and afterward she meant to +wheedle Alphonso, just as she had always wheedled him, and later still, +she and Etienne would be very happy: in fine, to-morrow was to be a new +day. + +So these two rode southward, and always Prince Edward found this new +page of his--this Miguel de Rueda,--a jolly lad, who whistled and sang +inapposite snatches of balladry, without any formal ending or beginning, +descanting always with the delicate irrelevancy of a bird-trill. + +Sang Miguel de Rueda: + + "Man's Love, that leads me day by day + Through many a screened and scented way, + Finds to assuage my thirst. + + "No love that may the old love slay, + None sweeter than the first. + + "Fond heart of mine, that beats so fast + As this or that fair maid trips past, + Once, and with lesser stir + We viewed the grace of love, at last, + And turned idolater. + + "Lad's Love it was, that in the spring + When all things woke to blossoming + Was as a child that came + Laughing, and filled with wondering, + Nor knowing his own name--" + +"And still I would prefer to think," the big man interrupted, heavily, +"that Sicily is not the only allure. I would prefer to think my wife so +beautiful.--And yet, as I remember her, she was nothing extraordinary." + +The page a little tartly said that people might forget a deal within a +decade. + +The Prince continued his unriddling of the scheme hatched in Castile. +"When Manfred is driven out of Sicily they will give the throne to de +Gâtinais. He intends to get both a kingdom and a handsome wife by this +neat affair. And in reason, England must support my Uncle Richard's +claim to the German crown, against El Sabio--Why, my lad, I ride +southward to prevent a war that would devastate half Europe." + +"You ride southward in the attempt to rob a miserable woman of her sole +chance of happiness," Miguel de Rueda estimated. + +"That is undeniable, if she loves this thrifty Prince, as indeed I do +not question my wife does. Yet our happiness here is a trivial matter, +whereas war is a great disaster. You have not seen--as I, my little +Miguel, have often seen--a man viewing his death-wound with a face of +stupid wonder, a bewildered wretch in point to die in his lord's quarrel +and understanding never a word of it. Or a woman, say--a woman's twisted +and naked body, the breasts yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes of +some village, or the already dripping hoofs which will presently crush +this body. Well, it is to prevent many such ugly spectacles hereabout +that I ride southward." + +Miguel de Rueda shuddered. But, "She has her right to happiness," the +page stubbornly said. + +"She has only one right," the Prince retorted; "because it has pleased +the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us twain to lofty stations, to entrust +to us the five talents of the parable; whence is our debt to Him, being +fivefold, so much the greater than that of common persons. Therefore +the more is it our sole right, being fivefold, to serve God without +faltering, and therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more +an inconsiderable matter. For, as I have read in the Annals of the +Romans--" He launched upon the story of King Pompey and his daughter, +whom a certain duke regarded with impure and improper emotions. "My +little Miguel, that ancient king is our Heavenly Father, that only +daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here delivered for +protection to five soldiers--that is, to the five senses,--to preserve +it from the devil, the world, and the flesh. But, alas! the +too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon the gaudy vapors of this +world--" + +"You whine like a canting friar," the page complained; "and I can assure +you that the Lady Ellinor was prompted rather than hindered by her +God-given faculties of sight and hearing and so on when she fell in love +with de Gâtinais. Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer +and the more intelligent man, and it was God who bestowed on her +sufficient wit to perceive the superiority of de Gâtinais. And what am I +to deduce from this?" + +The Prince reflected. At last he said: "I have also read in these same +Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on account of the +malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm will engender; but if +the body be smitten by lightning, in a few days the carcass will abound +with vermin. My little Miguel, both men and women are at birth +empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no worm--that is, no virtue. +But once they are struck with lightning--that is, by the grace of +God,--they are astonishingly fruitful in good works." + +The page began to laugh. "You are hopelessly absurd, my Prince, though +you will never know it,--and I hate you a little,--and I envy you a +great deal." + +"Ah, but," Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, for the man was never +quick-witted,--"but it is not for my own happiness that I ride +southward." + +The page then said, "What is her name?" + +Prince Edward answered, very fondly, "Hawise." + +"I hate her, too," said Miguel de Rueda; "and I think that the holy +angels alone know how profoundly I envy her." + +In the afternoon of the same day they neared Ruffec, and at the ford +found three brigands ready, two of whom the Prince slew, and the other +fled. + +Next night they supped at Manneville, and sat afterward in the little +square, tree-chequered, that lay before their inn. Miguel had procured a +lute from the innkeeper, and he strummed idly as these two debated +together of great matters; about them was an immeasurable twilight, +moonless, but tempered by many stars, and everywhere they could hear an +agreeable whispering of leaves. + +"Listen, my Prince," the boy said: "here is one view of the affair." +And he began to chant, without rhyming, without raising his voice above +the pitch of talk, while the lute monotonously accompanied his chanting. + +Sang Miguel: + + "Passeth a little while, and Irus the beggar and + Menephtah the high king are at sorry unison, and + Guenevere is a skull. Multitudinously we tread + toward oblivion, as ants hasten toward sugar, and + presently Time cometh with his broom. Multitudinously + we tread a dusty road toward oblivion; but + yonder the sun shines upon a grass-plot, converting it + into an emerald; and I am aweary of the trodden path. + + "Vine-crowned is the fair peril that guards the + grasses yonder, and her breasts are naked. 'Vanity + of Vanities!' saith the beloved. But she whom I love + seems very far away to-night, though I might be with + her if I would. And she may not aid me now, for not + even love is all-powerful. She is most dear of created + women, and very wise, but she may never understand + that at any time one grows aweary of the trodden path. + + "At sight of my beloved, love closes over my heart + like a flood. For the sake of my beloved I have striven, + with a good endeavor, to my tiny uttermost. Pardie, I + am not Priam at the head of his army! A little while + and I will repent; to-night I cannot but remember that + there are women whose lips are of a livelier tint, that + life is short at best, that wine evokes in me some admiration + for myself, and that I am aweary of the trodden + path. + + "She is very far from me to-night. Yonder in the + Hörselberg they exult and make sweet songs, songs + which are sweeter, immeasurably sweeter, than this + song of mine, but in the trodden path I falter, for I am + tired, tired in every fibre of me, and I am aweary of + the trodden path" + +Followed a silence. "Ignorance spoke there," the Prince said. "It is the +song of a woman, or else of a boy who is very young. Give me the lute, +my little Miguel." And presently the Prince, too, sang. + +Sang the Prince: + + "I was in a path, and I trod toward the citadel of the + land's Seigneur, and on either side were pleasant and + forbidden meadows, having various names. And one + trod with me who babbled of the brooding mountains + and of the low-lying and adjacent clouds; of the west + wind and of the budding fruit-trees. He debated the + significance of these things, and he went astray to + gather violets, while I walked in the trodden path." + + "He babbled of genial wine and of the alert lips of + women, of swinging censers and of the serene countenances + of priests, and of the clear, lovely colors of + bread and butter, and his heart was troubled by a + world profuse in beauty. And he leaped a stile to share + his allotted provision with a dying dog, and afterward, + being hungry, a wall to pilfer apples, while I walked + in the trodden path. + + "He babbled of Autumn's bankruptcy and of the age-long + lying promises of Spring; and of his own desire + to be at rest; and of running waters and of decaying + leaves. He babbled of the far-off stars; and he debated + whether they were the eyes of God or gases which + burned, and he demonstrated, with logic, that neither + existed. At times he stumbled as he stared about him + and munched his apples, so that he was all bemired, but + I walked in the trodden path. + + "And the path led to the gateway of a citadel, and + through the gateway. 'Let us not enter,' he said, 'for + the citadel is vacant, and, moreover, I am in profound + terror, and, besides, I have not as yet eaten all my + apples.' And he wept aloud, but I was not afraid, for + I had walked in the trodden path." + +Again there was a silence. "You paint a dreary world, my Prince." + +"My little Miguel, I paint the world as the Eternal Father made it. The +laws of the place are written large, so that all may read them; and we +know that every road, whether it be my trodden path or some byway through +your gayer meadows, yet leads in the end to God. We have our choice,--or +to come to Him as a laborer comes at evening for the day's wages fairly +earned, or to come as a roisterer haled before the magistrate." + +"I consider you to be in the right," the boy said, after a lengthy +interval, "although I decline--and decline emphatically--to believe you." + +The Prince laughed. "There spoke Youth," he said, and he sighed as +though he were a patriarch. "But we have sung, we two, the Eternal +Tenson of God's will and of man's desires. And I claim the prize, my +Little Miguel." + +Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. "You have conquered, my very +dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that Hawise--" But Miguel de +Rueda choked. "Oh, I do not understand! and yet in part I understand!" +the boy wailed in the darkness. + +And the Prince laid one hand upon his page's hair, and smiled in the +darkness to note how soft was this hair, since the man was less a fool +than at first view you might have taken him to be; and he said: + +"One must play the game out fairly, my lad. We are no little people, +she and I, the children of many kings, of God's regents here on earth; +and it was never reasonable, my Miguel, that gentlefolk should cheat at +their dicing." + +The same night Miguel de Rueda repeated the prayer which Saint Theophilus +made long ago to the Mother of God: + + "Dame, je n'ose, + Flors d'aiglentier et lis et rose, + En qui li filz Diex se repose," + +and so on. Or, in other wording: "Hearken, O gracious Lady! thou that +art more fair than any flower of the eglantine, more comely than the +blossoming of the rose or of the lily! thou to whom was confided the +very Son of God! Harken, for I am afraid! afford counsel to me that am +ensnared by Satan and know not what to do! Never will I make an end of +praying. O Virgin débonnaire! O honored Lady! Thou that wast once a +woman--!" + +So he prayed, and upon the next day as these two rode southward, he sang +half as if in defiance. + +Sang Miguel: + + "And still,--whatever years impend + To witness Time a fickle friend, + And Youth a dwindling fire,-- + I must adore till all years end + My first love, Heart's Desire. + + "I may not hear men speak of her + Unmoved, and vagrant pulses stir + To greet her passing-by, + And I, in all her worshipper + Must serve her till I die. + + "For I remember: this is she + That reigns in one man's memory + Immune to age and fret, + And stays the maid I may not see + Nor win to, nor forget." + +It was on the following day, near Bazas, that these two encountered Adam +de Gourdon, a Provençal knight, with whom the Prince fought for a long +while, without either contestant giving way; in consequence a rendezvous +was fixed for the November of that year, and afterward the Prince and de +Gourdon parted, highly pleased with each other. + +Thus the Prince and his attendant came, in late September, to Mauléon, +on the Castilian frontier, and dined there at the _Fir Cone._ Three or +four lackeys were about--some exalted person's retinue? Prince Edward +hazarded to the swart little landlord, as the Prince and Miguel lingered +over the remnants of their meal. + +Yes, the fellow informed them: the Prince de Gâtinais had lodged there +for a whole week, watching the north road, as circumspect of all passage +as a cat over a mouse-hole. Eh, monseigneur expected some one, +doubtless--a lady, it might be,--the gentlefolk had their escapades like +every one else. The innkeeper babbled vaguely, for on a sudden he was +very much afraid of his gigantic patron. + +"You will show me to his room," Prince Edward said, with a politeness +that was ingratiating. + +The host shuddered and obeyed. + +Miguel de Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips drumming +upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his shoulders, all +resolution. On the stairway he passed the black little landlord, who was +now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. But Miguel de Rueda went on +to the room above. The door was ajar. He paused there. + +De Gâtinais had risen from his dinner and stood facing the door. He, +too, was a blond man and the comeliest of his day. And at sight of him +awoke in the woman's heart all the old tenderness; handsome and brave +and witty she knew him to be, as indeed the whole world knew him to be +distinguished by every namable grace; and the innate weakness of de +Gâtinais, which she alone suspected, made him now seem doubly dear. +Fiercely she wanted to shield him, less from bodily hurt than from that +self-degradation which she cloudily apprehended to be at hand; the test +was come, and Etienne would fail. Thus much she knew with a sick, +illimitable surety, and she loved de Gâtinais with a passion which +dwarfed comprehension. + +"O Madame the Virgin!" prayed Miguel de Rueda, "thou that wast once a +woman, even as I am now a woman! grant that the man may slay him +quickly! grant that he may slay Etienne very quickly, honored Lady, so +that my Etienne may die unshamed!" + +"I must question, messire," de Gâtinais was saying, "whether you have +been well inspired. Yes, quite frankly, I do await the arrival of her +who is your nominal wife; and your intervention at this late stage, I +take it, can have no outcome save to render you absurd. So, come now! +be advised by me, messire--" + +Prince Edward said, "I am not here to talk." + +"--For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary disputation the cutting of +one gentleman's throat by another gentleman is well enough, since the +argument is unanswerable. Yet in this case we have each of us too much +to live for; you to govern your reconquered England, and I--you perceive +that I am candid--to achieve in turn the kingship of another realm. Now +to secure this realm, possession of the Lady Ellinor is to me essential; +to you she is nothing." + +"She is a woman whom I have deeply wronged," Prince Edward said, "and to +whom, God willing, I mean to make atonement. Ten years ago they wedded +us, willy-nilly, to avert the impending war between Spain and England; +to-day El Sabio intends to purchase Germany with her body as the price; +you to get Sicily as her husband. Mort de Dieu! is a woman thus to be +bought and sold like hog's flesh! We have other and cleaner customs, we +of England." + +"Eh, and who purchased the woman first?" de Gâtinais spat at him, +viciously, for the Frenchman now saw his air-castle shaken to the +corner-stone. + +"They wedded me to the child in order that a great war might be averted. +I acquiesced, since it appeared preferable that two people suffer +inconvenience rather than many thousands be slain. And still this is my +view of the matter. Yet afterward I failed her. Love had no clause in +our agreement; but I owed her more protection than I have afforded. +England has long been no place for women. I thought she would comprehend +that much. But I know very little of women. Battle and death are more +wholesome companions, I now perceive, than such folk as you and +Alphonso. Woman is the weaker vessel--the negligence was mine--I may not +blame her." The big and simple man was in an agony of repentance. + +On a sudden he strode forward, his sword now shifted to his left hand +and his right hand outstretched. "One and all, we are weaklings in the +net of circumstance. Shall one herring, then, blame his fellow if his +fellow jostle him? We walk as in a mist of error, and Belial is fertile +in allurements; yet always it is granted us to behold that sin is sin. I +have perhaps sinned through anger, Messire de Gâtinais, more deeply than +you have planned to sin through luxury and through ambition. Let us then +cry quits, Messire de Gâtinais, and afterward part in peace, and in +common repentance." + +"And yield you Ellinor?" de Gâtinais said. "Oh no, messire, I reply to +you with Arnaud de Marveil, that marvellous singer of eld, 'They may +bear her from my presence, but they can never untie the knot which +unites my heart to her; for that heart, so tender and so constant, God +alone divides with my lady, and the portion which God possesses He holds +but as a part of her domain, and as her vassal.'" "This is blasphemy," +Prince Edward now retorted, "and for such observations alone you merit +death. Will you always talk and talk and talk? I perceive that the devil +is far more subtle than you, messire, and leads you, like a pig with a +ring in his nose, toward gross iniquity. Messire, I tell you that for +your soul's health I doubly mean to kill you now. So let us make an end +of this." + +De Gâtinais turned and took up his sword. "Since you will have it," he +rather regretfully said; "yet I reiterate that you play an absurd part. +Your wife has deserted you, has fled in abhorrence of you. For three +weeks she has been tramping God knows whither or in what company--" + +He was here interrupted. "What the Lady Ellinor has done," Prince Edward +crisply said, "was at my request. We were wedded at Burgos; it was +natural that we should desire our reunion to take place at Burgos; and +she came to Burgos with an escort which I provided." + +De Gâtinais sneered. "So that is the tale you will deliver to the +world?" + +"After I have slain you," the Prince said, "yes." + +"The reservation is wise. For if I were dead, Messire Edward, there +would be none to know that you risk all for a drained goblet, for an +orange already squeezed--quite dry, messire." + +"Face of God!" the Prince said. + +But de Gâtinais flung back both arms in a great gesture, so that he +knocked a flask of claret from the table at his rear. "I am candid, my +Prince. I would not see any brave gentleman slain in a cause so foolish. +In consequence I kiss and tell. In effect, I was eloquent, I was +magnificent, so that in the end her reserve was shattered like the +wooden flask yonder at our feet. Is it worth while, think you, that our +blood flow like this flagon's contents?" + +"Liar!" Prince Edward said, very softly. "O hideous liar! Already your +eyes shift!" He drew near and struck the Frenchman. "Talk and talk and +talk! and lying talk! I am ashamed while I share the world with a thing +as base as you." + +De Gâtinais hurled upon him, cursing, sobbing in an abandoned fury. In +an instant the place resounded like a smithy, for there were no better +swordsmen living than these two. The eavesdropper could see nothing +clearly. Round and round they veered in a whirl of turmoil. Presently +Prince Edward trod upon the broken flask, smashing it. His foot slipped +in the spilth of wine, and the huge body went down like an oak, his head +striking one leg of the table. + +"A candle!" de Gâtinais cried, and he panted now--"a hundred candles to +the Virgin of Beaujolais!" He shortened his sword to stab the Prince of +England. + +The eavesdropper came through the doorway, and flung herself between +Prince Edward and the descending sword. The sword dug deep into her +shoulder, so that she shrieked once with the cold pain of this wound. +Then she rose, ashen. "Liar!" she said. "Oh, I am shamed while I share +the world with a thing as base as you!" + +In silence de Gâtinais regarded her. There was a long interval before he +said, "Ellinor!" and then again, "Ellinor!" like a man bewildered. + +"_I was eloquent, I was magnificent_" she said, "_so that in the end her +reserve was shattered!_ Certainly, messire, it is not your death which I +desire, since a man dies so very, very quickly. I desire for you--I know +not what I desire for you!" the girl wailed. + +"You desire that I should endure this present moment," de Gâtinais +replied; "for as God reigns, I love you, of whom I have spoken infamy, +and my shame is very bitter." + +She said: "And I, too, loved you. It is strange to think of that." + +"I was afraid. Never in my life have I been afraid before to-day. But I +was afraid of this terrible and fair and righteous man. I saw all hope +of you vanish, all hope of Sicily--in effect, I lied as a cornered beast +spits out his venom." + +"I know," she answered. "Give me water, Etienne." She washed and bound +the Prince's head with a vinegar-soaked napkin. Ellinor sat upon the +floor, the big man's head upon her knee. "He will not die of this, for +he is of strong person. Look you, Messire de Gâtinais, you and I are not +strong. We are so fashioned that we can enjoy only the pleasant things +of life. But this man can enjoy--enjoy, mark you--the commission of any +act, however distasteful, if he think it to be his duty. There is the +difference. I cannot fathom him. But it is now necessary that I become +all which he loves--since he loves it,--and that I be in thought and +deed all which he desires. For I have heard the Tenson through." + +"You love him!" said de Gâtinais. + +She glanced upward with a pitiable smile. "No, it is you whom I love, my +Etienne. You cannot understand how at this very moment every fibre of +me--heart, soul, and body--may be longing just to comfort you, and to +give you all which you desire, my Etienne, and to make you happy, my +handsome Etienne, at however dear a cost. No; you will never understand +that. And since you may not understand, I merely bid you go and leave me +with my husband." + +And then there fell between these two an infinite silence. + +"Listen," de Gâtinais said; "grant me some little credit for what I do. +You are alone; the man is powerless. My fellows are within call. A word +secures the Prince's death; a word gets me you and Sicily. And I do not +speak that word, for you are my lady as well as his, and your will is my +one law." + +But there was no mercy in the girl, no more for him than for herself. +The big head lay upon her breast; she caressed the gross hair of it ever +so lightly. "These are tinsel oaths," she crooned, as if rapt with +incurious content; "these are the old empty protestations of all you +strutting poets. A word gets you what you desire! Then why do you not +speak that word? Why do you not speak many words, and become again as +eloquent and as magnificent as you were when you contrived that adultery +about which you were just now telling my husband?" + +De Gâtinais raised clenched hands. "I am shamed," he said; and then he +said, "It is just." + +He left the room and presently rode away with his men. I say that, here +at last, he had done a knightly deed, but she thought little of it, +never raised her head as the troop clattered from Mauléon, with a +lessening beat which lapsed now into the blunders of an aging fly who +doddered about the window yonder. + +She stayed thus, motionless, her meditations adrift in the future; and +that which she foreread left her not all sorry nor profoundly glad, for +living seemed by this, though scarcely the merry and colorful business +which she had esteemed it, yet immeasurably the more worth while. + +THE END OF THE SECOND NOVEL + + + + +III + +THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP + + + "Leixant a part le stil dels trobados, + Dos grans dezigs ban combatut ma pensa, + Mas lo voler vers un seguir dispensa: + Yo l'vos publich, amar dretament vos." + +THE THIRD NOVEL.--MEREGRETT OF FRANCE, THINKING TO PRESERVE A HOODWINKED +GENTLEMAN, ANNOYS A SPIDER; AND BY THE GRACE OF DESTINY THE WEB OF THAT +CUNNING INSECT ENTRAPS A BUTTERFLY, A WASP, AND THEN A GOD; WHO SHATTERS +IT. + + + + +_The Story of the Rat-Trap_ + + +In the year of grace 1298, a little before Candlemas (thus Nicolas +begins), came letters to the first King Edward of England from his +kinsman and ambassador to France, Earl Edmund of Lancaster. It was +perfectly apparent, the Earl wrote, that the French King meant to +surrender to the Earl's lord and brother neither the duchy of Guienne +nor the Lady Blanch. This lady, I must tell you, was now affianced to +King Edward, whose first wife, Dame Ellinor, had died eight years before +this time. + +The courier found Sire Edward at Ipswich, midway in celebration of his +daughter's marriage to the Count of Holland. The King read the letters +through and began to laugh; and presently broke into a rage such as was +possible (men whispered) only to the demon-tainted blood of Oriander's +descendants. Next day the keeper of the privy purse entered upon the +house-hold-books a considerable sum "to make good a large ruby and an +emerald lost out of his coronet when the King's Grace was pleased to +throw it into the fire"; and upon the same day the King recalled +Lancaster. The King then despatched yet another embassy into France to +treat about Sire Edward's marriage. This last embassy was headed by the +Earl of Aquitaine: his lieutenant was Lord Pevensey, the King's natural +son by Hawise Bulmer. + +The Earl got audience of the French King at Mezelais. Walking alone came +this Earl of Aquitaine, with a large retinue, into the hall where the +barons of France stood according to their rank; in unadorned russet were +the big Earl and his attendants, but upon the scarlets and purples of +the French lords many jewels shone: it was as though through a corridor +of gayly painted sunlit glass that the grave Earl came to the dais where +sat King Philippe. + +The King had risen at close sight of the new envoy, and had gulped once +or twice, and without speaking, had hurriedly waved his lords out of +ear-shot. The King's perturbation was very extraordinary. + +"Fair cousin," the Earl now said, without any prelude, "four years ago I +was affianced to your sister, Dame Blanch. You stipulated that Gascony +be given up to you in guaranty, as a settlement on any children I might +have by that incomparable lady. I assented, and yielded you the +province, upon the understanding, sworn to according to the faith of +loyal kings, that within forty days you assign to me its seignory as +your vassal. And I have had of you since then neither my province nor +my betrothed wife, but only excuses, Sire Philippe." + +With eloquence the Frenchman touched upon the emergencies to which the +public weal so often drives men of high station, and upon his private +grief over the necessity--unavoidable, alas!--of returning a hard answer +before the council; and became so voluble that Sire Edward merely +laughed in that big-lunged and disconcerting way of his, and afterward +lodged for a week at Mezelais, nominally passing by his minor title of +Earl of Aquitaine, and as his own ambassador. + +Negotiations became more swift of foot, since a man serves himself with +zeal. In addition, the French lords could make nothing of a politician +so thick-witted that he replied to every consideration of expediency +with a parrot-like reiteration of the circumstance that already the +bargain was signed and sworn to: in consequence, while daily they fumed +over his stupidity, daily he gained his point. During this period he +was, upon one pretext or another, very often in the company of his +affianced wife, Dame Blanch. + +This lady, I must tell you, was the handsomest of her day; there could +nowhere be found a creature more agreeable to every sense; and she +compelled the adoring regard of men, it is recorded, not gently but in +an imperious fashion. Sire Edward, who, till this, had loved her merely +by report, and, in accordance with the high custom of old, through many +perusals of her portrait, now appeared besotted. He was an aging man, +near sixty, huge and fair, with a crisp beard, and the bright unequal +eyes of Manuel of Poictesme. The better-read at Mezelais began to liken +this so candidly enamored monarch and his Princess to Sieur Hercules at +the feet of Queen Omphale. + +The court hunted and slew a stag of ten in the woods of Ermenoueïl, +which stand thick about the château; and at the hunt's end, these two +had dined at Rigon the forester's hut, in company with Dame Meregrett, +the French King's younger sister. She sat a little apart from the +betrothed, and stared through the hut's one window. We know, nowadays, +it was not merely the trees she was considering. + +Dame Blanch seemed undisposed to mirth. "We have slain the stag, beau +sire," she said, "and have made of his death a brave diversion. To-day +we have had our sport of death,--and presently the gay years wind past +us, as our cavalcade came toward the stag, and God's incurious angel +slays us, much as we slew the stag. And we shall not understand, and we +shall wonder, as the stag did, in helpless wonder. And Death will have +his sport of us, as if in atonement." Her big eyes shone, as when the +sun glints upon a sand-bottomed pool. "Ohé, I have known such happiness +of late, beau sire, that I am hideously afraid to die." + +The King answered, "I too have been very happy of late." + +"But it is profitless to talk about death thus drearily. Let us flout +him, instead, with some gay song." And thereupon she handed Sire Edward +a lute. + +The King accepted it. "Death is not reasonably mocked by any person," +Sire Edward said, "since in the end he conquers, and of the lips that +gibed at him remains but a little dust. Rather should I, who already +stand beneath a lifted sword, make for my destined and inescapable +conqueror a Sirvente, which is the Song of Service." + +Sang Sire Edward:[3] + + "I sing of Death, that comes unto the king, + And lightly plucks him from the cushioned throne; + And drowns his glory and his warfaring + In unrecorded dim oblivion; + And girds another with the sword thereof; + And sets another in his stead to reign; + And ousts the remnant, nakedly to gain + Styx' formless shore and nakedly complain + Midst twittering ghosts lamenting life and love. + + "For Death is merciless: a crack-brained king + He raises in the place of Prester John, + Smites Priam, and mid-course in conquering + Bids Caesar pause; the wit of Salomon, + The wealth of Nero and the pride thereof, + And battle-prowess--or of Tamburlaine + Darius, Jeshua, or Charlemaigne,-- + Wheedle and bribe and surfeit Death in vain, + And get no grace of him nor any love. + + "Incuriously he smites the armored king + And tricks his counsellors--" + +"True, O God!" murmured the tiny woman, who sat beside the window +yonder. With that, Dame Meregrett rose, and passed from the room. + +The two lovers started, and laughed, and afterward paid little heed to +her outgoing. Sire Edward had put aside the lute and sat now regarding +the Princess. His big left hand propped the bearded chin; his grave +countenance was flushed, and his intent eyes shone under their shaggy +brows, very steadily, although the left eye was now so nearly shut as to +reveal the merest spark. + +Irresolutely, Dame Blanch plucked at her gown; then rearranged a fold of +it, and with composure awaited the ensuing action, afraid at bottom, but +not at all ill-pleased; and she looked downward. + +The King said: "Never before were we two alone, madame. Fate is very +gracious to me this morning." + +"Fate," the lady considered, "has never denied much to the Hammer of the +Scots." + +"She has denied me nothing," he sadly said, "save the one thing that +makes this business of living seem a rational proceeding. Fame and power +and wealth fate has accorded me, no doubt, but never the common joys of +life. And, look you, my Princess, I am of aging person now. During some +thirty years I have ruled England according to my interpretation of +God's will as it was anciently made manifest by the holy Evangelists; +and during that period I have ruled England not without odd by-ends of +commendation: yet behold, to-day I forget the world-applauded, excellent +King Edward, and remember only Edward Plantagenet--hot-blooded and +desirous man!--of whom that much-commended king has made a prisoner all +these years." + +"It is the duty of exalted persons," Blanch unsteadily said, "to put +aside such private inclinations as their breasts may harbor--" + +He said, "I have done what I might for the happiness of every Englishman +within my realm saving only Edward Plantagenet; and now I think his turn +to be at hand." Then the man kept silence; and his hot appraisal daunted +her. + +"Lord," she presently faltered, "lord, you know that we are already +betrothed, and, in sober verity, Love cannot extend his laws between +husband and wife, since the gifts of love are voluntary, and husband and +wife are but the slaves of duty--" + +"Troubadourish nonsense!" Sire Edward said; "yet it is true that the +gifts of love are voluntary. And therefore--Ha, most beautiful, what +have you and I to do with all this chaffering over Guienne?" The two +stood very close to each other now. Blanch said, "It is a high +matter--" Then on a sudden the full-veined girl was aglow. "It is a +trivial matter." He took her in his arms, since already her cheeks +flared in scarlet anticipation of the event. + +Thus holding her, he wooed the girl tempestuously. Here, indeed, was +Sieur Hercules enslaved, burned by a fiercer fire than that of Nessus, +and the huge bulk of the unconquerable visibly shaken by his adoration. +In a disordered tapestry of verbiage, aflap in winds of passion, she +presently beheld herself prefigured by Balkis, the Judean's lure, and by +that Princess of Cyprus who reigned in Aristotle's time, and by +Nicolete, the King's daughter of Carthage,--since the first flush of +morning was as a rush-light before her resplendency, the man swore; and +in conclusion, he likened her to a modern Countess of Tripolis, for love +of whom he, like Rudel, had cleft the seas, and losing whom he must +inevitably die as did Rudel. Sire Edward snapped his fingers now over +any consideration of Guienne. He would conquer for her all Muscovy and +all Cataia, too, if she desired mere acreage. Meanwhile he wanted her, +and his hard and savage passion beat down opposition as if with a +bludgeon. + +"Heart's emperor," the trembling girl replied, "I think that you were +cast in some larger mould than we of France. Oh, none of us may dare +resist you! and I know that nothing matters, nothing in all the world, +save that you love me. Then take me, since you will it,--and take me +not as King, since you will otherwise, but as Edward Plantagenet. For +listen! by good luck you have this afternoon despatched Rigon for +Chevrieul, where to-morrow we were to hunt the great boar. So to-night +this hut will be unoccupied." + +The man was silent. He had a gift that way when occasion served. + +"Here, then, beau sire! here, then, at nine, you are to meet me with my +chaplain. Behold, he marries us, as glibly as though we two were +peasants. Poor king and princess!" cried Dame Blanch, and in a voice +which thrilled him, "shall ye not, then, dare to be but man and woman?" + +"Ha!" the King said. "So the chaplain makes a third! Well, the King is +pleased to loose his prisoner, that long-imprisoned Edward Plantagenet: +and I will do it." + +So he came that night, without any retinue, and habited as a forester, +with a horn swung about his neck, into the unlighted hut of Rigon the +forester, and he found a woman there, though not the woman whom he had +expected. + +"Treachery, beau sire! Horrible treachery!" she wailed. + +"I have encountered it before this," the big man said. + +"Presently will come to you not Blanch but Philippe, with many men to +back him. And presently they will slay you. You have been trapped, beau +sire. Ah, for the love of God, go! Go, while there is yet time!" Sire +Edward reflected. Undoubtedly, to light on Edward Longshanks alone in a +forest would appear to King Philippe, if properly attended, a tempting +chance to settle divers difficulties, once for all; and Sire Edward knew +the conscience of his old opponent to be invulnerable. The act would +violate the core of hospitality and knighthood, no doubt, but its +outcome would be a very definite gain to France, and for the rest, +merely a dead body in a ditch. Not a monarch in Christendom, Sire Edward +reflected, but feared and in consequence hated the Hammer of the Scots, +and in further consequence would not lift a finger to avenge him; and +not a being in the universe would rejoice more heartily at the success +of Philippe's treachery than would Sire Edward's son and immediate +successor, the young Prince Edward of Caernarvon. Taking matters by and +large, Philippe had all the powers of common-sense to back him in +contriving an assassination. + +What Sire Edward said was, "Dame Blanch, then, knew of this?" But +Meregrett's pitiful eyes had already answered him, and he laughed a +little. + +"In that event, I have to-night enregistered my name among the goodly +company of Love's Lunatics,--as yokefellow with Dan Merlin in his +thornbush, and with wise Salomon when he capered upon the high places of +Chemosh, and with Duke Ares sheepishly agrin in the net of Mulciber. +Rogues all, madame! fools all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and +allures the soul to such sensual delights as bar its passage toward the +eternal life wherein alone lies the empire and the heritage of the soul. +And why does this carnal prison so impede the soul? Because Satan once +ranked among the sons of God, and the Eternal Father, as I take it, has +not yet forgotten the antique relationship,--and hence it is permitted +even in our late time that always the flesh rebel against the spirit, +and that always these so tiny and so thin-voiced tricksters, these +highly tinted miracles of iniquity, so gracious in demeanor and so +starry-eyed--" + +Then he turned and pointed, no longer the orotund zealot but the +expectant captain now. "Look, my Princess!" In the pathway from which he +had recently emerged stood a man in full armor like a sentinel. "Mort de +Dieu, we can but try to get out of this," Sire Edward said. + +"You should have tried without talking so much," replied Meregrett. She +followed him. And presently, in a big splash of moonlight, the armed +man's falchion glittered across their way. "Back," he bade them, "for by +the King's orders, I can let no man pass." + +"It would be very easy now to strangle this herring," Sire Edward +reflected. + +"But it is not easy to strangle a whole school of herring," the fellow +retorted. "Hoh, Messire d'Aquitaine, the bushes of Ermenoueîl are alive +with my associates. The hut yonder, in effect, is girdled by them,--and +we have our orders to let no man pass." + +"Have you any orders concerning women?" the King said. + +The man deliberated. Sire Edward handed him three gold pieces. "There +was assuredly no specific mention of petticoats," the soldier now +recollected, "and in consequence I dare to pass the Princess, against +whom certainly nothing can be planned." + +"Why, in that event," Sire Edward said, "we two had as well bid each +other adieu." + +But Meregrett only said, "You bid me go?" + +He waved his hand. "Since there is no choice. For that which you have +done--however tardily--I thank you. Meantime I return to Rigon's hut to +rearrange my toga as King Caesar did when the assassins fell upon him, +and to encounter with due decorum whatever Dame Luck may prefer." + +She said, "You go to your death." + +He shrugged his broad shoulders. "In the end we necessarily die." + +Dame Meregrett turned, and without faltering passed back into the hut. + +When he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, Sire +Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation. "Presently come your +brother and his tattling lords. To be discovered here with me at night, +alone, means trouble for you. If Philippe chances to fall into one of +his Capetian rages it means death." + +She answered, as though she were thinking about other matters, "Yes." + +Now, for the first time, Sire Edward regarded her with profound +consideration. To the finger-tips this so-little lady showed a +descendant of the holy Lewis whom he had known and loved in old years. +Small and thinnish she was, with soft and profuse hair that, for all its +blackness, gleamed in the lamplight with stray ripples of brilliancy, as +you may see sparks shudder to extinction over burning charcoal. She had +the Valois nose, long and delicate in form, and overhanging a short +upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious in tint, and the whiteness of her +skin would have matched the Hyperborean snows tidily enough. As for her +eyes, the customary similes of the court poets were gigantic onyxes or +ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. These eyes were too big for +her little face: they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which +nervously endured each incident of life, like a foreigner uneasily +acquiescent to the custom of the country. + +Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. "Madame, I +do not understand." + +Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. "It means that I +love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for presently you die. +Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may hearten me to live." + +The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming to +Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful haze of +forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes a god and +transmutes whatever in corporeal man would have been a defect into some +divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must tell you in this +place, since no other occasion offers, that even until the end of her +life it was so. For to her what in other persons would have seemed +flagrant dulness showed somehow, in Sire Edward, as the majestic +deliberation of one that knows his verdict to be decisive, and therefore +appraises cautiously; and if sometimes his big, irregular calm eyes +betrayed no apprehension of the jest at which her lips were laughing, +and of which her brain approved, always within the instant her heart +convinced her that a god is not lightly moved to mirth. + +And now it was a god--_O deus certè!_--who had taken a woman's paltry +face between his hands, half roughly. "And the maid is a Capet!" Sire +Edward mused. + +"Blanch has never desired you any ill, beau sire. But she loves the +Archduke of Austria. And once you were dead, she might marry him. One +cannot blame her," Meregrett considered, "since he wishes to marry her, +and she, of course, wishes to make him happy." + +"And not herself, save in some secondary way!" the big King said. "In +part I comprehend, madame. Now I too hanker after this same happiness, +and my admiration for the cantankerous despoiler whom I praised this +morning is somewhat abated. There was a Tenson once--Lord, Lord, how +long ago! I learn too late that truth may possibly have been upon the +losing side--" Thus talking incoherencies, he took up Rigon's lute. + +Sang Sire Edward: + + "Incuriously he smites the armored king + And tricks his counsellors-- + +"yes, the jingle ran thus. Now listen, madame--listen, the while that I +have my singing out, whatever any little cut-throats may be planning in +corners." + +Sang Sire Edward: + + "As, later on, + Death will, half-idly, still our pleasuring, + And change for fevered laughter in the sun + Sleep such as Merlin's,--and excess thereof,-- + Whence we, divorceless Death our Viviaine + Implacable, may never more regain + The unforgotten rapture, and the pain + And grief and ecstasy of life and love. + + "For, presently, as quiet as the king + Sleeps now that planned the keeps of Ilion, + We, too, will sleep, whilst overhead the spring + Rules, and young lovers laugh--as we have done,-- + And kiss--as we, that take no heed thereof, + But slumber very soundly, and disdain + The world-wide heralding of winter's wane + And swift sweet ripple of the April rain + Running about the world to waken love. + + "We shall have done with Love, and Death be king + And turn our nimble bodies carrion, + Our red lips dusty;--yet our live lips cling + Despite that age-long severance and are one + Despite the grave and the vain grief thereof,-- + Which we will baffle, if in Death's domain + Fond memories may enter, and we twain + May dream a little, and rehearse again + In that unending sleep our present love. + + "Speed forth to her in halting unison, + My rhymes: and say no hindrance may restrain + Love from his aim when Love is bent thereon; + And that were love at my disposal lain-- + All mine to take!--and Death had said, 'Refrain, + Lest I, even I, exact the cost thereof,' + I know that even as the weather-vane + Follows the wind so would I follow Love." + +Sire Edward put aside the lute. "Thus ends the Song of Service," he +said, "which was made not by the King of England but by Edward +Plantagenet--hot-blooded and desirous man!--in honor of the one woman +who within more years than I care to think of has at all considered +Edward Plantagenet." + +"I do not comprehend," she said. And, indeed, she dared not. + +But now he held both tiny hands in his. "At best, your poet is an +egotist. I must die presently. Meantime I crave largesse, madame, and a +great almsgiving, so that in his unending sleep your poet may rehearse +our present love." And even in Rigon's dim light he found her kindling +eyes not niggardly. + +Sire Edward strode to the window and raised big hands toward the +spear-points of the aloof stars. "Master of us all!" he cried; "O Father +of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the Scourge of France, the +conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and the flail of the accursed +race that slew Thine only Son! the King of England am I, who have made +of England an imperial nation, and have given to Thy Englishmen new +laws! And to-night I crave my hire. Never, O my Father, have I had of +any person aught save reverence or hatred! never in my life has any +person loved me! And I am old, my Father--I am old, and presently I die. +As I have served Thee--as Jacob wrestled with Thee at the ford of +Jabbok--at the place of Peniel--" Against the tremulous blue and silver +of the forest the Princess saw how horribly the big man was shaken. "My +hire! my hire!" he hoarsely said. "Forty long years, my Father! And now +I will not let Thee go except Thou hear me, and grant me life and this +woman's love." + +He turned, stark and black in the rearward splendor of the moon. _"As a +prince hast thou power with God,"_ he calmly said, _"and thou hast +prevailed._ For the King of kings was never obdurate, my dear, to them +that have deserved well of Him. So He will attend to my request, and +will get us out of this pickle somehow." + +Even as he said this, Philippe the Handsome came into the room, and at +the heels of the French King were seven lords, armed cap-à-pie. + +The French King was an odd man. Subtly smiling, he came forward through +the twilight, with soft, long strides, and he made no outcry at +recognition of his sister. "Take the woman away, Victor," he said, +disinterestedly, to de Montespan. Afterward he sat down beside the table +and remained silent for a while, intently regarding Sire Edward and the +tiny woman who clung to Sire Edward's arm; and in the flickering gloom +of the hut Philippe smiled as an artist may smile who gazes on the +perfected work and knows it to be adroit. + +"You prefer to remain, my sister?" he said presently. "Hé bien! it +happens that to-night I am in a mood for granting almost any favor. A +little later and I will attend to your merits." The fleet disorder of +his visage had lapsed again into the meditative smile which was that of +Lucifer watching a toasted soul. "And so it ends," he said, "and England +loses to-night the heir that Manuel the Redeemer provided. Conqueror of +Scotland, Scourge of France! O unconquerable king! and will the worms of +Ermenoueïl, then, pause to-morrow to consider through what a glorious +turmoil their dinner came to them?" + +"Do you design to murder me?" Sire Edward said. + +The French King shrugged. "I design that within this moment my lords +shall slay you while I sit here and do not move a finger. Is it not good +to be a king, my cousin, and to sit quite still, and to see your +bitterest enemy hacked and slain,--and all the while to sit quite still, +quite unruffled, as a king should always be? Eh, eh! I never lived until +to-night!" + +"Now, by Heaven," said Sire Edward, "I am your kinsman and your guest, I +am unarmed--" + +Philippe bowed his head. "Undoubtedly," he assented, "the deed is foul. +But I desire Gascony very earnestly, and so long as you live you will +never permit me to retain Gascony. Hence it is quite necessary, you +conceive, that I murder you. What!" he presently said, "will you not beg +for mercy? I had hoped," the French King added, somewhat wistfully, +"that you might be afraid to die, O huge and righteous man! and would +entreat me to spare you. To spurn the weeping conqueror of Llewellyn, +say ... But these sins which damn one's soul are in actual performance +very tedious affairs; and I begin to grow aweary of the game. Hé bien! +now kill this man for me, messieurs." + +The English King strode forward. "Shallow trickster!" Sire Edward +thundered. _"Am I not afraid?_ You grimacing baby, do you think to +ensnare a lion with such a flimsy rat-trap? Wise persons do not hunt +lions with these contraptions: for it is the nature of a rat-trap, fair +cousin, to ensnare not the beast which imperiously desires and takes in +daylight, but the tinier and the filthier beast that covets meanly and +attacks under the cover of darkness--as do you and your seven skulkers!" +The man was rather terrible; not a Frenchman within the hut but had +drawn back a little. + +"Listen!" Sire Edward said, and he came yet farther toward the King of +France and shook at him one forefinger; "when you were in your cradle I +was leading armies. When you were yet unbreeched I was lord of half +Europe. For thirty years I have driven kings before me as did Fierabras. +Am I, then, a person to be hoodwinked by the first big-bosomed huzzy +that elects to waggle her fat shoulders and to grant an assignation in a +forest expressly designed for stabbings? You baby, is the Hammer of the +Scots the man to trust for one half moment a Capet? Ill-mannered +infant," the King said, with bitter laughter, "it is now necessary that +I summon my attendants and remove you to a nursery which I have prepared +in England." He set the horn to his lips and blew three blasts. There +came many armed warriors into the hut, bearing ropes. Here was the +entire retinue of the Earl of Aquitaine. Cursing, Sire Philippe sprang +upon the English King, and with a dagger smote at the impassive big +man's heart. The blade broke against the mail armor under the tunic. +"Have I not told you," Sire Edward wearily said, "that one may never +trust a Capet? Now, messieurs, bind these carrion and convey them +whither I have directed you. Nay, but, Roger--" He conversed apart with +his son, the Earl of Pevensey, and what Sire Edward commanded was done. +The French King and seven lords of France went from that hut trussed +like chickens ready for the oven. + +And now Sire Edward turned toward Meregrett and chafed his big hands +gleefully. "At every tree-bole a tethered horse awaits us; and a ship +awaits our party at Fécamp. To-morrow we sleep in England--and, Mort de +Dieu! do you not think, madame, that once within my very persuasive +Tower of London, your brother and I may come to some agreement over +Guienne?" + +She had shrunk from him. "Then the trap was yours? It was you that lured +my brother to this infamy!" + +"In effect, I planned it many months ago at Ipswich yonder," Sire Edward +gayly said. "Faith of a gentleman! your brother has cheated me of +Guienne, and was I to waste eternity in begging him to give me back my +province? Oh, no, for I have many spies in France, and have for some two +years known your brother and your sister to the bottom. Granted that I +came hither incognito, to forecast your kinfolk's immediate endeavors +was none too difficult; and I wanted Guienne--and, in consequence, the +person of your brother. Hah, death of my life! does not the seasoned +hunter adapt his snare to the qualities of his prey, and take the +elephant through his curiosity, as the snake through his notorious +treachery?" Now the King of England blustered. + +But the little Princess wrung her hands. "I am this night most hideously +shamed. Beau sire, I came hither to aid a brave man infamously trapped, +and instead I find an alert spider, snug in his cunning web, and +patiently waiting until the gnats of France fly near enough. Eh, the +greater fool was I to waste my labor on the shrewd and evil thing which +has no more need of me than I of it! And now let me go hence, sire, +unmolested, for the sake of chivalry. Could I have come to the brave man +I had dreamed of, I would have come cheerily through the murkiest lane +of hell; as the more artful knave, as the more judicious trickster"--and +here she thrust him from her--"I spit upon you. Now let me go hence." + +He took her in his brawny arms. "Fit mate for me," he said. "Little +vixen, had you done otherwise I would have devoted you to the devil." + +Still grasping her, and victoriously lifting Dame Meregrett, so that +her feet swung clear of the floor, Sire Edward said, again with that +queer touch of fanatic gravity: "My dear, you are perfectly right. I was +tempted, I grant you. But it was never reasonable that gentlefolk should +cheat at their dicing. Therefore I whispered Roger Bulmer my final +decision; and he is now loosing all my captives in the courtyard of +Mezelais, after birching the tails of every one of them as soundly as +these infants' pranks to-night have merited. So you perceive that I do +not profit by my trick; and that I lose Guienne, after all, in order to +come to you with hands--well! not intolerably soiled." + +"Oh, now I love you!" she cried, a-thrill with disappointment to find +him so unthriftily high-minded. "Yet you have done wrong, for Guienne is +a king's ransom." + +He smiled whimsically, and presently one arm swept beneath her knees, so +that presently he held her as one dandles a baby; and presently his +stiff and graying beard caressed her burning cheek. Masterfully he said: +"Then let Guienne serve as such and ransom for a king his glad and +common manhood. Now it appears expedient that I leave France without any +unwholesome delay, because these children may resent being spanked. More +lately--hé, already I have in my pocket the Pope's dispensation +permitting me to marry, in spite of our cousinship, the sister of the +King of France." + +Very shyly Dame Meregrett lifted her little mouth. She said nothing +because talk was not necessary. + +In consequence, after a deal of political tergiversation (Nicolas +concludes), in the year of grace 1299, on the day of our Lady's +nativity, and in the twenty-seventh year of King Edward's reign, came to +the British realm, and landed at Dover, not Dame Blanch, as would have +been in consonance with seasoned expectation, but Dame Meregrett, the +other daughter of King Philippe the Bold; and upon the following day +proceeded to Canterbury, whither on the next Thursday after came Edward, +King of England, into the Church of the Trinity at Canterbury, and +therein espoused the aforesaid Dame Meregrett. + +THE END OF THE THIRD NOVEL + + + + +IV + +THE STORY OF THE CHOICES + + + "Sest fable es en aquest mon + Semblans al homes que i son; + Que el mager sen qu'om pot aver + So es amar Dieu et sa mer, + E gardar sos comendamens." + +THE FOURTH NOVEL.--YSABEAU OF FRANCE, DESIROUS OF DISTRACTION, LOOKS FOR +RECREATION IN THE TORMENT OF A CERTAIN KNIGHT, WHOM SHE PROVES TO BE NO +MORE THAN HUMAN; BUT IN THE OUTCOME OF HER HOLIDAY HE CONFOUNDS THIS +QUEEN BY THE WIT OF HIS REPLY. + + + + +The Story of the Choices + + +In the year of grace 1327 (thus Nicolas begins) you could have found in +all England no couple more ardent in affection or in despair more +affluent than Rosamund Eastney and Sir Gregory Darrell. She was Lord +Berners' only daughter, a brown beauty, of extensive repute, thanks to a +retinue of lovers who were practitioners of the Gay Science, and who had +scattered broadcast innumerable Canzons in her honor; and Lord Berners +was a man to accept the world as he found it. + +"Dompnedex!" the Earl was wont to say; "in sincerity I am fond of +Gregory Darrell, and if he chooses to make love to my daughter that is +none of my affair. The eyes and the brain preserve a proverbial warfare, +which is the source of all amenity, for without lady-service there would +be no songs and tourneys, no measure and no good breeding; and a man +delinquent in domnei is no more to be valued than an ear of corn +without the grain. No, I am so profoundly an admirer of Love that I can +never willingly behold him slain, of a surfeit, by Matrimony; besides, +this rapscallion Gregory could not to advantage exchange purses with +Lazarus in the parable; and, moreover, Rosamund is to marry the Earl of +Sarum a little after All Saints' day." + +"Sarum!" people echoed. "Why, the old goat has had four wives already!" + +And the Earl would spread his hands. "These redundancies are permissible +to one of the wealthiest persons in England," he was used to submit. + +Thus it fell out that Sir Gregory came and went at his own discretion as +concerned Lord Berners' fief of Ordish, all through those choppy times +of warfare between Sire Edward and Queen Ysabeau. Lord Berners, for one, +vexed himself not inordinately over the outcome, since he protested the +King's armament to consist of fools and the Queen's of rascals; and had +with entire serenity declined to back either Dick or the devil. + +But at last the Queen got resistless aid from Count William of Hainault +(in a way to be told about hereafter), and the King was captured by her +forces, and was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle. There they held the +second Edward to reign in England, who was the unworthy son of Dame +Ellinor and of that first squinting King Edward about whom I have told +you in the two tales preceding this tale. It was in the September of +this year, a little before Michaelmas, that they brought Sir Gregory +Darrell to be judged by the Queen; notoriously the knight had been her +husband's adherent. "Death!" croaked Adam Orleton, who sat to the right +hand, and, "Young de Spencer's death!" amended the Earl of March, with +wild laughter; but Ysabeau leaned back in her great chair--a handsome +woman, stoutening now from gluttony and from too much wine,--and +regarded her prisoner with lazy amiability. + +"And what was your errand in Figgis Wood?" she demanded--"or are you +mad, then, Gregory Darrell, that you dare ride past my gates alone?" + +He curtly said, "I rode for Ordish." + +Followed silence. "Roger," the Queen ordered, "give me the paper which I +would not sign." + +The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of London +somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, like a person in shrewd and +epicurean amusement, while the Queen subscribed the parchment, with a +great scrawling flourish. + +"Take, in the devil's name, the hire of your dexterities," said Ysabeau. +She pushed this document with her wet pen-point toward March. "So! get +it over with, that necessary business with my husband at Berkeley. And +do the rest of you withdraw, saving only my prisoner." + +Followed another silence. Queen Ysabeau lolled in her carven chair, +considering the comely gentleman who stood before her, fettered, at the +point of shameful death. There was in the room a little dog which had +come to the Queen, and now licked the palm of her left hand, and the +soft lapping of its tongue was the only sound you heard. "So at peril of +your life you rode for Ordish, then, messire?" + +The tense man had flushed. "You have harried us of the King's party out +of England,--and in reason I might not leave England without seeing the +desire of my heart." + +"My friend," said Ysabeau, as if half in sorrow, "I would have pardoned +anything save that." She rose. Her face was dark and hot. "By God and +all His saints! you shall indeed leave England to-morrow and the world +also! but not without a final glimpse of this same Rosamund. Yet listen: +I, too, must ride with you to Ordish--as your sister, say--Gregory, did +I not hang, last April, the husband of your sister? Yes, Ralph de +Belomys, a thin man with eager eyes, the Earl of Farrington he was. As +his widow I will ride with you to Ordish, upon condition you disclose to +none at Ordish, saving only, if you will, this quite immaculate +Rosamund, any hint of our merry carnival. And to-morrow (you will swear +according to the nicest obligations of honor) you must ride back with me +to encounter--that which I may devise. For I dare to trust your naked +word in this, and, moreover, I shall take with me a sufficiency of +retainers to leave you no choice." + +Darrell knelt before her. "I can do no homage to Queen Ysabeau; yet the +prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die to-morrow and cunningly +contrives, for old time's sake, to hearten me with a sight of Rosamund, +I cannot but kiss." This much he did. "And I swear in all things to obey +your will." + +"O comely fool!" the Queen said, not ungently, "I contrive, it may be, +but to demonstrate that many tyrants of antiquity were only bunglers. +And, besides, I must have other thoughts than those which I have known +too long: I must this night take holiday from thinking them, lest I go +mad." + +Thus did the Queen arrange her holiday. + +"Either I mean to torture you to-morrow," Dame Ysabeau said, presently, +to Darrell, as these two rode side by side, "or else I mean to free you. +In sober verity I do not know. I am in a holiday humor, and it is as the +whim may take me. But do you indeed love this Rosamund Eastney? And of +course she worships you?" + +"It is my belief, madame, that when I see her I tremble visibly, and my +weakness is such that a child has more intelligence than I,--and toward +such misery any lady must in common reason be a little compassionate." + +Her hands had twitched so that the astonished palfrey reared. "I design +torture," the Queen said; "ah, I perfect exquisite torture, for you have +proven recreant, you have forgotten the maid Ysabeau,--Le Desir du +Cuer, was it not, my Gregory, that you were wont to call her, as +nowadays this Rosamund is the desire of your heart. You lack +inventiveness." + +His palms clutched at heaven. "That Ysabeau is dead! and all true joy is +destroyed, and the world lies under a blight from which God has averted +an unfriendly face in displeasure! yet of all wretched persons existent +I am he who endures the most grievous anguish, for daily I partake of +life without any relish, and I would in truth deem him austerely kind +who slew me now that the maiden Ysabeau is dead." + +She shrugged wearily. "I scent the raw stuff of a Planh," the Queen +observed; "_benedicite!_ it was ever your way, my friend, to love a +woman chiefly for the verses she inspired." And she began to sing, as +they rode through Baverstock Thicket. + +Sang Ysabeau: + + "Man's love hath many prompters, + But a woman's love hath none; + And he may woo a nimble wit + Or hair that shames the sun, + Whilst she must pick of all one man + And ever brood thereon-- + And for no reason, + And not rightly,-- + + "Save that the plan was foreordained + (More old than Chalcedon, + Or any tower of Tarshish + Or of gleaming Babylon), + That she must love unwillingly + And love till life be done,--. + He for a season, + And more lightly." + +So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a +retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell. Lord +Berners received the party with boisterous hospitality. + +"Age has not blinded Father to the fact that your sister is a very +handsome woman," was Rosamund Eastney's comment. The period appears to +have been after supper, and the girl sat with Gregory Darrell in not the +most brilliant corner of the main hall. + +The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then with a +tumbling rush of speech told of the sorry masquerade. "The she-devil +designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she plans I know not what." + +"Yet I--" said Rosamund. The girl had risen, and she continued with an +odd inconsequence: "You have told me you were Pembroke's squire when +long ago he sailed for France to fetch this woman into England--" + +"--Which you never heard!" Lord Berners shouted at this point. "Jasper, +a lute!" And then he halloaed, "Gregory, Madame de Farrington demands +that racy song you made against Queen Ysabeau during your last visit." +Thus did the Queen begin her holiday. + +It was a handsome couple which came forward, with hand quitting hand +tardily, and with blinking eyes yet rapt: these two were not overpleased +at being disturbed, and the man was troubled, as in reason he well might +be, by the task assigned him. + +"Is it, indeed, your will, my sister," he said, "that I should +sing--this song?" + +"It is my will," the Countess said. + +And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. "A truth, once +spoken, may not be disowned in any company. It is not, look you, of my +own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if Queen Ysabeau herself were to +bid me sing this song, I could not refuse, for, Christ aid me! the song +is true." + +Sang Sir Gregory: + + "Dame Ysabeau, la prophécie + Que li sage dit ne ment mie, + Que la royne sut ceus grever + Qui tantost laquais sot aymer--"[4] + +and so on. It was a lengthy ditty, and in its wording not oversqueamish; +the Queen's career in England was detailed without any stuttering, and +you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory delivered +it with an incisive gusto, desperately countersigning his own death +warrant. Her treacheries, her adulteries and her assassinations were +rendered in glowing terms whose vigor seemed, even now, to please their +contriver. Yet the minstrel added a new peroration. + +Sang Sir Gregory: + + "Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gémit-- + Peu pense à ce que la voix dit, + Car me membre du temps jadis + Et d'ung garson, d'amour surpris, + Et d'une fille--et la vois si-- + Et grandement suis esbahi." + +And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without +speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance caught +between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had annoyed her. +She drew the little dagger from her girdle and meditatively cut the +buzzing thing in two. She cast the fragments from her, and resting the +dagger's point upon the arm of her chair, one forefinger upon the summit +of the hilt, considerately twirled the brilliant weapon. + +"This song does not err upon the side of clemency," she said at last, +"nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau." + +"That she-wolf!" said Lord Berners, comfortably. "Hoo, Madame Gertrude! +since the Prophet Moses wrung healing waters from a rock there has been +no such miracle recorded." + +"We read, Messire de Berners, that when the she-wolf once acknowledges a +master she will follow him as faithfully as any dog. My brother, I do +not question your sincerity, yet everybody knows you sing with the voice +of an unhonored courtier. Suppose Queen Ysabeau had heard your song all +through as I have heard it, and then had said--for she is not as the run +of women--'Messire, I had thought until this that there was no thorough +man in England save tall Roger Mortimer. I find him tawdry now, and--I +remember. Come you, then, and rule the England that you love as you may +love no woman, and rule me, messire, since I find even in your +cruelty--For we are no pygmies, you and I! Yonder is squabbling Europe +and all the ancient gold of Africa, ready for our taking! and past that +lies Asia, too, and its painted houses hung with bells, and cloud-wrapt +Tartary, where we two may yet erect our equal thrones, upon which to +receive the tributary emperors! For we are no pygmies, you and I." She +paused. She shrugged. "Suppose Queen Ysabeau, who is not as the run of +women, had said this much, my brother?" + +Darrell was more pallid (as the phrase is) than a sheet, and the lute +had dropped unheeded, and his hands were clenched. + +"I would answer, my sister, that as she has found in England but one +man, I have found in England but one woman--the rose of all the world." +His eyes were turned at this toward Rosamund Eastney. "And yet," the man +stammered, "because I, too, remember--" + +"Hah, in God's name! I am answered," the Countess said. She rose, in +dignity almost a queen. "We have ridden far to-day, and to-morrow we +must travel a deal farther--eh, my brother? I am going to bed, Messire +de Berners." + +So the men and women parted. Madame de Farrington kissed her brother at +leaving him, as was natural; and under her caress his stalwart person +shuddered, but not in repugnance; and the Queen went away singing +hushedly. + +Sang Ysabeau: + + "Were the All-Mother wise, life (shaped anotherwise) + Would be all high and true; + Could I be otherwise I had been otherwise + Simply because of you, ... + With whom I have naught to do, + And who are no longer you! + + "Life with its pay to be bade us essay to be + What we became,--I believe + Were there a way to be what it was play to be + I would not greatly grieve ... + Hearts are not worn on the sleeve. + Let us neither laugh nor grieve!" + +Ysabeau would have slept that night within the chamber of Rosamund +Eastney had either slept. As concerns the older I say nothing. The girl, +though soon aware of frequent rustlings near at hand, lay quiet, +half-forgetful of the poisonous woman yonder. The girl was now fulfilled +with a great blaze of exultation: to-morrow Gregory must die, and then +perhaps she might find time for tears; meanwhile, before her eyes, the +man had flung away a kingdom and life itself for love of her, and the +least nook of her heart ached to be a shade more worthy of the +sacrifice. + +After it might have been an hour of this excruciate ecstasy the Countess +came to Rosamund's bed. "Ay," the woman began, "it is indisputable that +his hair is like spun gold and that his eyes resemble sun-drenched +waters in June. It is certain that when this Gregory laughs God is more +happy. Girl, I was familiar with the routine of your meditations before +you were born." + +Rosamund said, quite simply: "You have known him always. I envy the +circumstance, Madame Gertrude--you alone of all women in the world I +envy, since you, his sister, being so much older, must have known him +always." + +"I know him to the core, my girl," the Countess answered. For a while +she sat silent, one bare foot jogging restlessly. "Yet I am two years +his junior--Did you hear nothing, Rosamund?" "No, Madame Gertrude, I +heard nothing." + +"Strange!" the Countess said; "let us have lights, since I can no longer +endure this overpopulous twilight." She kindled, with twitching fingers, +three lamps. "It is as yet dark yonder, where the shadows quiver very +oddly, as though they would rise from the floor--do they not, my +girl?--and protest vain things. But, Rosamund, it has been done; in the +moment of death men's souls have travelled farther and have been +visible; it has been done, I tell you. And he would stand before me, +with pleading eyes, and would reproach me in a voice too faint to reach +my ears--but I would see him--and his groping hands would clutch at my +hands as though a dropped veil had touched me, and with the contact I +would go mad!" + +"Madame Gertrude!" the girl stammered, in communicated terror. + +"Poor innocent fool!" the woman said, "I am Ysabeau of France." And when +Rosamund made as though to rise, in alarm, Queen Ysabeau caught her by +the shoulder. "Bear witness when he comes that I never hated him. Yet +for my quiet it was necessary that it suffer so cruelly, the scented, +pampered body, and no mark be left upon it! Eia! even now he suffers! +No, I have lied. I hate the man, and in such fashion as you will +comprehend when you are Sarum's wife." + +"Madame and Queen!" the girl said, "you will not murder me!" "I am +tempted!" the Queen answered. "O little slip of girlhood, I am tempted, +for it is not reasonable you should possess everything that I have lost. +Innocence you have, and youth, and untroubled eyes, and quiet dreams, +and the fond graveness of a child, and Gregory Darrell's love--" Now +Ysabeau sat down upon the bed and caught up the girl's face between two +fevered hands. "Rosamund, this Darrell perceives within the moment, as I +do, that the love he bears for you is but what he remembers of the love +he bore a certain maid long dead. Eh, you might have been her sister, +Rosamund, for you are very like her. And she, poor wench--why, I could +see her now, I think, were my eyes not blurred, somehow, almost as +though Queen Ysabeau might weep! But she was handsomer than you, since +your complexion is not overclear, praise God!" + +Woman against woman they were. "He has told me of his intercourse with +you," the girl said, and this was a lie flatfooted. "Nay, kill me if you +will, madame, since you are the stronger, yet, with my dying breath, I +protest that Gregory has loved no woman truly in all his life except +me." + +The Queen laughed bitterly. "Do I not know men? He told you nothing. And +to-night he hesitated, and to-morrow, at the lifting of my finger, he +will supplicate. Since boyhood Gregory Darrell has loved me, O white, +palsied innocence! and he is mine at a whistle. And in that time to +come he will desert you, Rosamund--bidding farewell with a pleasing +Canzon,--and they will give you to the gross Earl of Sarum, as they gave +me to the painted man who was of late our King! and in that time to come +you will know your body to be your husband's makeshift when he lacks +leisure to seek out other recreation! and in that time to come you will +long for death, and presently your heart will be a flame within you, my +Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your God because He +made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you, +and hate all men because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whims! +and chiefly you will hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and +devastation only will you love in that strange time which is to come. It +is adjacent, my Rosamund." + +The girl kept silence. She sat erect in the tumbled bed, her hands +clasping her knees, and she appeared to deliberate what Dame Ysabeau had +said. Plentiful brown hair fell about this Rosamund's face, which was +white and shrewd. "A part of what you say, madame, I understand. I know +that Gregory Darrell loves me, yet I have long ago acknowledged he loves +me as one pets a child, or, let us say, a spaniel which reveres and +amuses one. I lack his wit, you comprehend, and so he never speaks to me +all that he thinks. Yet a part of it he tells me, and he loves me, and +with this I am content. Assuredly, if they give me to Sarum I shall hate +Sarum even more than I detest him now. And then, I think, Heaven help +me! that I would not greatly grieve--Oh, you are all evil!" Rosamund +said; "and you thrust into my mind thoughts which I may not understand!" + +"You will comprehend them," the Queen said, "when you know yourself a +chattel, bought and paid for." + +The Queen laughed. She rose, and her hands strained toward heaven. "You +are omnipotent, yet have You let me become that into which I am +transmuted," she said, very low. + +She began to speak as though a statue spoke through lips that seemed +motionless. "Men have long urged me, Rosamund, to a deed which by one +stroke would make me mistress of these islands. To-day I looked on +Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in love--and I had but to +crush a lewd soft worm to come to him. Eh, and I was tempted--!" + +The girl said: "Let us grant that Gregory loves you very greatly, and me +just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a cushioned infamy, a +colorful and brief delirium, and afterward demolishment of soul and +body; I offer him contentment and a level life, made up of small events, +it may be, and lacking both in abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love +a flame wherein the lover's soul must be purified; it is a flame which +assays high queens just as it does their servants: and thus, madame, to +judge between us I dare summon you." "Child, child!" the Queen said, +tenderly, and with a smile, "you are brave; and in your fashion you are +wise; yet you will never comprehend. But once I was in heart and soul +and body all that you are to-day; and now I am Queen Ysabeau--Did you in +truth hear nothing, Rosamund?" + +"Why, nothing save the wind." + +"Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with +you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and imprecations! But I, +too, grow cowardly, it may be--Nay, I know," she said, and in a resonant +voice, "that by this I am mistress of broad England, until my son--my +own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund--knows me for +what I am. For I have heard--Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!" the +Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I was but your +plaything!" + +"Madame Ysabeau--!" the girl answered vaguely, for she was puzzled and +was almost frightened by the other's strange talk. + +"To bed!" said Ysabeau; "and put out the lights lest he come presently. +Or perhaps he fears me now too much to come to-night. Yet the night +approaches, none the less, when I must lift some arras and find him +there, chalk-white, with painted cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very +terribly, or look into some mirror and behold there not myself but +him,--and in that instant I shall die. Meantime I rule, until my son +attains his manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and so +helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly, and +save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more fair--But I +must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, God orders matters +very shrewdly, my Rosamund." + +Timidly the girl touched Ysabeau's shoulder. "In part, I understand, +madame and Queen." + +"You understand nothing," said Ysabeau; "how should you understand whose +breasts are yet so tiny? So let us put out the light! though I dread +darkness, Rosamund--For they say that hell is poorly lighted--and they +say--" Then Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Pensively she blew out each lamp. + +"We know this Gregory Darrell," the Queen said in the darkness, "ah, to +the marrow we know him, however steadfastly we blink, and we know the +present turmoil of his soul; and in common-sense what chance have you of +victory?" + +"None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. For man is a +being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy orders, and his +life here is one unending warfare between that which is divine in him +and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of +the tourney. Always a man's judgment misleads him and his faculties +allure him to a truce, however brief, with iniquity. His senses raise a +mist about his goings, and there is not an endowment of the man but in +the end plays traitor to his interest, as of God's wisdom God intends; +so that when the man is overthrown, the Eternal Father may, in reason, +be neither vexed nor grieved if only the man takes heart to rise again. +And when, betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight out the +allotted battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors which +God Himself accorded, I think that the Saints hold festival in heaven." + +"A very pretty sermon," said the Queen. "Yet I do not think that our +Gregory could very long endure a wife given over to such high-minded +talking. He prefers to hear himself do the fine talking." + +Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but I +believe that neither of these two slept with profundity. + +About dawn one of the Queen's attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and +conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, where Ysabeau walked in +tranquil converse with Lord Berners. The old man was in high good-humor. + +"My lad," said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the shoulder, "you have, +I do protest, the very phoenix of sisters. I was never happier." And he +went away chuckling. + +The Queen said in a toneless voice, "We ride for Blackfriars now." + +Darrell responded, "I am content, and ask but leave to speak, briefly, +with Dame Rosamund before I die." + +Then the woman came more near to him. "I am not used to beg, but within +this hour you encounter death, and I have loved no man in all my life +saving only you, Sir Gregory Darrell. Nor have you loved any person as +you loved me once in France. Oh, to-day, I may speak freely, for with +you the doings of that boy and girl are matters overpast. Yet were it +otherwise--eh, weigh the matter carefully! for I am mistress of England +now, and England would I give you, and such love as that slim, white +innocence has never dreamed of would I give you, Gregory Darrell--No, +no! ah, Mother of God, not you!" The Queen clapped one hand upon his +lips. + +"Listen," she quickly said; "I spoke to tempt you. But you saw, and you +saw clearly, that it was the sickly whim of a wanton, and you never +dreamed of yielding, for you love this Rosamund Eastney, and you know me +to be vile. Then have a care of me! The strange woman am I, of whom we +read that her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of +death. Hoh, many strong men have been slain by me, and in the gray time +to come will many others be slain by me, it may be; but never you among +them, my Gregory, who are more wary, and more merciful, and who know +that I have need to lay aside at least one comfortable thought against +eternity." + +"I concede you to have been unwise--" he hoarsely began. + +About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air +of this new day seemed raw and chill. + +Then Rosamund came through the opening in the hedge. "Now, choose," she +said; "the woman offers life and high place and wealth, and it may be, a +greater love than I am capable of giving you. I offer a dishonorable +death within the moment." + +And again, with that peculiar and imperious gesture, the man flung back +his head, and he laughed. Said Gregory Darrell: + +"I am I! and I will so to live that I may face without shame not only +God, but also my own scrutiny." He wheeled upon the Queen and spoke +henceforward very leisurely. "I love you; all my life long I have loved +you, Ysabeau, and even now I love you: and you, too, dear Rosamund, I +love, though with a difference. And every fibre of my being lusts for +the power that you would give me, Ysabeau, and for the good which I +would do with it in the England which I or blustering Roger Mortimer +must rule; as every fibre of my being lusts for the man that I would be +could I choose death without debate. And I think also of the man that +you would make of me, my Rosamund. + +"The man! And what is this man, this Gregory Darrell, that his welfare +should be considered?--an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with +the archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts! This much I know, +at bottom. + +"Yet more clearly do I perceive that this same man, like all his +fellows, is a maimed god who walks the world dependent upon many wise +and evil counsellors. He must measure, to a hair's-breadth, every +content of the world by means of a bloodied sponge, tucked somewhere in +his skull, a sponge which is ungeared by the first cup of wine and +ruined by the touch of his own finger. He must appraise all that he +judges with no better instruments than two bits of colored jelly, with a +bungling makeshift so maladroit that the nearest horologer's apprentice +could have devised a more accurate device. In fine, each man is under +penalty condemned to compute eternity with false weights, to estimate +infinity with a yard-stick: and he very often does it, and chooses his +own death without debate. For though, 'If then I do that which I would +not I consent unto the law,' saith even an Apostle; yet a braver Pagan +answers him, 'Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better +and more divine than the things which cause the various effects and, as +it were, pull thee by the strings.' + +"There lies the choice which every man must face,--whether rationally, +as his reason goes, to accept his own limitations and make the best of +his allotted prison-yard? or stupendously to play the fool and swear +even to himself (while his own judgment shrieks and proves a flat +denial), that he is at will omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my +poor proud Ysabeau; and I choose now, and differently: for poltroon that +I am! being now in a cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am +not very much afraid, and I choose death without any more debate." + +It was toward Rosamund that the Queen looked, and smiled a little +pitifully. "Should Queen Ysabeau be angry or vexed or very cruel now, my +Rosamund? for at bottom she is glad." + +And the Queen said also: "I give you back your plighted word. I ride +homeward to my husks, but you remain. Or rather, the Countess of +Farrington departs for the convent of Ambresbury, disconsolate in her +widowhood and desirous to have done with worldly affairs. It is most +natural she should relinquish to her beloved and only brother all her +dower-lands--or so at least Messire de Berners acknowledges. Here, then, +is the grant, my Gregory, that conveys to you those lands of Ralph de +Belomys which last year I confiscated. And this tedious Messire de +Berners is willing now--he is eager to have you for a son-in-law." + +About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air +of this new day seemed raw and chill, while, very calmly, Dame Ysabeau +took Sir Gregory's hand and laid it upon the hand of Rosamund Eastney. +"Our paladin is, in the outcome, a mortal man, and therefore I do not +altogether envy you. Yet he has his moments, and you are capable. Serve, +then, not only his desires but mine also, dear Rosamund." + +There was a silence. The girl spoke as though it was a sacrament. "I +will, madame and Queen." + +Thus did the Queen end her holiday. + +A little later the Countess of Farrington rode from Ordish with all her +train save one; and riding from that place, where love was, she sang +very softly. + +Sang Ysabeau: + + "As with her dupes dealt Circe + Life deals with hers, for she + Reshapes them without mercy, + And shapes them swinishly, + To wallow swinishly, + And for eternity; + + "Though, harder than the witch was, + Life, changing not the whole, + Transmutes the body, which was + Proud garment of the soul, + And briefly drugs the soul, + Whose ruin is her goal; + + "And means by this thereafter + A subtler mirth to get, + And mock with bitterer laughter + Her helpless dupes' regret, + Their swinish dull regret + For what they half forget." + + +And within the hour came Hubert Frayne to Ordish, on a foam-specked +horse, as he rode to announce to the King's men the King's barbaric +murder overnight, at Berkeley Castle, by Queen Ysabeau's order. + +"Ride southward," said Lord Berners, and panted as they buckled on his +disused armor; "but harkee, Frayne! if you pass the Countess of +Farrington's company, speak no syllable of your news, since it is not +convenient that a lady so thoroughly and so praise-worthily--Lord, Lord, +how I have fattened!--so intent on holy things, in fine, should have her +meditations disturbed by any such unsettling tidings. Hey, son-in-law?" + +Sir Gregory Darrell laughed, very bitterly. "He that is without blemish +among you--" he said. Then they armed completely, and went forth to +battle against the murderous harlot. + +THE END OF THE FOURTH NOVEL + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: For this perplexing matter the curious may consult Paul +Verville's _Notice sur la vie de Nicolas de Caen, p. 93 et seq_. The +indebtedness to Antoine Riczi is, of course, conceded by Nicolas in his +"EPILOGUE."] + +[Footnote 2: She was the daughter of King Ferdinand of Leon and Castile, +whose conversion to sainthood the inquisitive may find recorded +elsewhere.] + +[Footnote 3: Not without indulgence in anachronism. But Nicolas, be it +repeated, was no Gradgrindian.] + +[Footnote 4: Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, for obvious +reasons, his translator would prefer to do otherwise.] + + + + +V + +THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE + + + "Selh que m blasma vostr' amor ni m defen + Non podon far en re mon cor mellor, + Ni'l dous dezir qu'ieu ai de vos major, + Ni l'enveya' ni'l dezir, ni'l talen." + +THE FIFTH NOVEL.--PHILIPPA OF HAINAULT DARES TO LOVE UNTHRIFTILY, AND +WITH THE PRODIGALITY OF HER AFFECTION SHAMES TREACHERY, AND +COMMON-SENSE, AND HIGH ROMANCE, QUITE STOLIDLY; BUT, AS LOVING GOES, +IS OVERTOPPED BY HER MORE STOLID SQUIRE. + + + + +_The Story of the Housewife_ + + +In the year of grace 1326, upon Walburga's Eve, some three hours after +sunset (thus Nicolas begins), had you visited a certain garden on the +outskirts of Valenciennes, you might there have stumbled upon a big, +handsome boy, prone on the turf, where by turns he groaned and vented +himself in sullen curses. His profanity had its palliation. Heir to +England though he was, you must know that this boy's father in the +flesh had hounded him from England, as more recently had the lad's +uncle Charles the Handsome driven him from France. Now had this boy +and his mother (the same Queen Ysabeau about whom I have told you in +the preceding tale) come as suppliants to the court of that stalwart +nobleman Sire William (Count of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand, and +Lord of Friesland), where their arrival had evoked the suggestion that +they depart at their earliest convenience. To-morrow, then, these +footsore royalties, the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales, +would be thrust out-of-doors to resume the weary beggarship, to knock +again upon the obdurate gates of this unsympathizing king or that deaf +emperor. + +Accordingly the boy aspersed his destiny. At hand a nightingale +carolled as though an exiled prince were the blithest spectacle the +moon knew. + +There came through the garden a tall girl, running, stumbling in her +haste. "Hail, King of England!" she said. + +"Do not mock me, Philippa!" the boy half-sobbed. Sulkily he rose to +his feet. + +"No mockery here, my fair sweet friend. No, I have told my father all +which happened yesterday. I pleaded for you. He questioned me very +closely. And when I had ended, he stroked his beard, and presently +struck one hand upon the table. 'Out of the mouth of babes!' he said. +Then he said: 'My dear, I believe for certain that this lady and her +son have been driven from their kingdom wrongfully. If it be for the +good of God to comfort the afflicted, how much more is it commendable +to help and succor one who is the daughter of a king, descended from +royal lineage, and to whose blood we ourselves are related!' And +accordingly he and your mother have their heads together yonder, +planning an invasion of England, no less, and the dethronement of your +wicked father, my Edward. And accordingly--hail, King of England!" The +girl clapped her hands gleefully. The nightingale sang. + +But the boy kept momentary silence. Not even in youth were the men of +his race handicapped by excessively tender hearts; yesterday in the +shrubbery the boy had kissed this daughter of Count William, in part +because she was a healthy and handsome person, and partly because +great benefit might come of an alliance with her father. Well! the +Prince had found chance-taking not unfortunate. With the episode as +foundation, Count William had already builded up the future queenship +of England. The strong Count could do--and, as it seemed, was now in +train to do--indomitable deeds to serve his son-in-law; and now the +beggar of five minutes since foresaw himself, with this girl's love as +ladder, mounting to the high habitations of the King of England, the +Lord of Ireland, and the Duke of Aquitaine. Thus they would herald +him. + +So he embraced the girl. "Hail, Queen of England!" said the Prince; +and then, "If I forget--" His voice broke awkwardly. "My dear, if ever +I forget--!" Their lips met now. The nightingale discoursed as if on a +wager. + +Presently was mingled with the bird's descant another kind of singing. +Beyond the yew-hedge as these two stood silent, breast to breast, +passed young Jehan Kuypelant, one of the pages, fitting to the +accompaniment of a lute his paraphrase of the song which Archilochus +of Sicyon very anciently made in honor of Venus Melaenis, the tender +Venus of the Dark. + +At a gap in the hedge the young Brabanter paused. His singing ended, +gulped. These two, who stood heart hammering against heart, saw for an +instant Jehan Kuypelant's lean face silvered by the moonlight, his +mouth a tiny abyss. Followed the beat of lessening footfalls, while +the nightingale improvised an envoi. + +But earlier Jehan Kuypelant also had sung, as though in rivalry with +the bird. + +Sang Jehan Kuypelant: + + "Hearken and heed, Melaenis! + For all that the litany ceased + When Time had pilfered the victim, + And flouted thy pale-lipped priest, + And set astir in the temple + Where burned the fires of thy shrine + The owls and wolves of the desert-- + Yet hearken, (the issue is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine! + + "For I have followed, nor faltered-- + Adrift in a land of dreams + Where laughter and pity and terror + Commingle as confluent streams, + I have seen and adored the Sidonian, + Implacable, fair and divine-- + And bending low, have implored thee + To hearken, (the issue is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine!" + +It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of other +matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the year of +grace 1346, Master John Copeland--as men now called Jehan Kuypelant, +now secretary to the Queen of England,--brought his mistress the +unhandsome tidings that David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty +thousand Scots to back him. The Brabanter found plump Queen Philippa +with the kingdom's arbitress--Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom King +Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring in +France, very notoriously adored and obeyed. + +This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they +narrate, to release the Countess' husband, William de Montacute, from +the French prison of the Châtelet. You may appraise her dominion by +this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had denied all to King Edward, and +in consequence he could deny her nothing; so she sent him to fetch +back her husband, whom she almost loved. That armament had sailed from +Southampton on Saint George's day. + +These two women, then, shared the Brabanter's execrable news. Already +Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the broken meats of King +David. + +The Countess presently exclaimed: "Let them weep for this that must! +My place is not here." + +Philippa said, half hopefully, "Do you forsake Sire Edward, +Catherine?" + +"Madame and Queen," the Countess answered, "in this world every man +must scratch his own back. My lord has entrusted to me his castle of +Wark, his fiefs in Northumberland. These, I hear, are being laid +waste. Were there a thousand men-at-arms left in England I would say +fight. As it is, our men are yonder in France and the island is +defenceless. Accordingly I ride for the north to make what terms I may +with the King of Scots." + +Now you might have seen the Queen's eye brighten. "Undoubtedly," said +she, "in her lord's absence it is the wife's part to defend his +belongings. And my lord's fief is England. I bid you God-speed, +Catherine." And when the Countess was gone, Philippa turned, her round +face somewhat dazed and flushed. "She betrays him! she compounds with +the Scot! Mother of Christ, let me not fail!" + +"A ship must be despatched to bid Sire Edward return," said the +secretary. "Otherwise all England is lost." + +"Not so, John Copeland! We must let Sire Edward complete his +overrunning of France, if such be the Trinity's will. You know +perfectly well that he has always had a fancy to conquer France; and +if I bade him return now he would be vexed." + +"The disappointment of the King," John Copeland considered, "is a +smaller evil than allowing all of us to be butchered." + +"Not to me, John Copeland," the Queen said. + +Now came many lords into the chamber, seeking Madame Philippa. "We +must make peace with the Scottish rascal!--England is lost!--A ship +must be sent entreating succor of Sire Edward!" So they shouted. + +"Messieurs," said Queen Philippa, "who commands here? Am I, then, some +woman of the town?" + +Ensued a sudden silence. John Copeland, standing by the seaward +window, had picked up a lute and was fingering the instrument +half-idly. Now the Marquess of Hastings stepped from the throng. +"Pardon, Highness. But the occasion is urgent." + +"The occasion is very urgent, my lord," the Queen assented, deep in +meditation. + +John Copeland flung back his head and without prelude began to carol +lustily. + +Sang John Copeland: + + "There are taller lads than Atys, + And many are wiser than he,-- + How should I heed them?--whose fate is + Ever to serve and to be + Ever the lover of Atys, + And die that Atys may dine, + Live if he need me--Then heed me, + And speed me, (the moment is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine! + + "Fair is the form unbeholden, + And golden the glory of thee + Whose voice is the voice of a vision + Whose face is the foam of the sea, + And the fall of whose feet is the flutter + Of breezes in birches and pine, + When thou drawest near me, to hear me, + And cheer me, (the moment is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine!" + + +I must tell you that the Queen shivered, as if with extreme cold. She +gazed toward John Copeland wonderingly. The secretary was fretting at +his lutestrings, with his head downcast. Then in a while the Queen +turned to Hastings. + +"The occasion is very urgent, my lord," the Queen assented. "Therefore +it is my will that to-morrow one and all your men be mustered at +Blackheath. We will take the field without delay against the King of +Scots." + +The riot began anew. "Madness!" they shouted; "lunar madness! We can +do nothing until our King returns with our army!" + +"In his absence," the Queen said, "I command here." + +"You are not Regent," the Marquess answered. Then he cried, "This is +the Regent's affair!" + +"Let the Regent be fetched," Dame Philippa said, very quietly. They +brought in her son, Messire Lionel, now a boy of eight years, and, in +the King's absence, Regent of England. + +Both the Queen and the Marquess held papers. "Highness," Lord Hastings +began, "for reasons of state which I lack time to explain, this +document requires your signature. It is an order that a ship be +despatched to ask the King's return. Your Highness may remember the +pony you admired yesterday?" The Marquess smiled ingratiatingly. "Just +here, your Highness--a crossmark." + +"The dappled one?" said the Regent; "and all for making a little +mark?" The boy jumped for the pen. + +"Lionel," said the Queen, "you are Regent of England, but you are also +my son. If you sign that paper you will beyond doubt get the pony, but +you will not, I think, care to ride him. You will not care to sit down +at all, Lionel." + +The Regent considered. "Thank you very much, my lord," he said in the +ultimate, "but I do not like ponies any more. Do I sign here, Mother?" + +Philippa handed the Marquess a subscribed order to muster the English +forces at Blackheath; then another, closing the English ports. "My +lords," the Queen said, "this boy is the King's vicar. In defying him, +you defy the King. Yes, Lionel, you have fairly earned a pot of jam +for supper." + +Then Hastings went away without speaking. That night assembled at his +lodgings, by appointment, Viscount Heringaud, Adam Frere, the Marquess +of Orme, Lord Stourton, the Earls of Neville and Gage, and Sir Thomas +Rokeby. These seven found a long table there littered with pens and +parchment; to the rear of it, with a lackey behind him, sat the +Marquess of Hastings, meditative over a cup of Bordeaux. + +Presently Hastings said: "My friends, in creating our womankind the +Maker of us all was beyond doubt actuated by laudable and cogent +reasons; so that I can merely lament my inability to fathom these +reasons. I shall obey the Queen faithfully, since if I did otherwise +Sire Edward would have my head off within a day of his return. In +consequence, I do not consider it convenient to oppose his vicar. +To-morrow I shall assemble the tatters of troops which remain to us, +and to-morrow we march northward to inevitable defeat. To-night I am +sending a courier into Northumberland. He is an obliging person, and +would convey--to cite an instance--eight letters quite as blithely as +one." + +Each man glanced furtively about. England was in a panic by this, and +knew itself to lie before the Bruce defenceless. The all-powerful +Countess of Salisbury had compounded with King David; now Hastings, +too, their generalissimo, compounded. What the devil! loyalty was a +sonorous word, and so was patriotism, but, after all, one had estates +in the north. + +The seven wrote in silence. I must tell you that when they had ended, +Hastings gathered the letters into a heap, and without glancing at the +superscriptures, handed all these letters to the attendant lackey. +"For the courier," he said. + +The fellow left the apartment. Presently you heard a departing clatter +of hoofs, and Hastings rose. He was a gaunt, terrible old man, +gray-bearded, and having high eyebrows that twitched and jerked. + +"We have saved our precious skins," said he. "Hey, you fidgeters, you +ferments of sour offal! I commend your common-sense, messieurs, and I +request you to withdraw. Even a damned rogue such as I has need of a +cleaner atmosphere in order to breathe comfortably." The seven went +away without further speech. + +They narrate that next day the troops marched for Durham, where the +Queen took up her quarters. The Bruce had pillaged and burned his way +to a place called Beaurepair, within three miles of the city. He sent +word to the Queen that if her men were willing to come forth from the +town he would abide and give them battle. + +She replied that she accepted his offer, and that the barons would +gladly risk their lives for the realm of their lord the King. The +Bruce grinned and kept silence, since he had in his pocket letters +from most of them protesting they would do nothing of the sort. + +Here is comedy. On one side you have a horde of half-naked savages, a +shrewd master holding them in leash till the moment be auspicious; on +the other, a housewife at the head of a tiny force lieutenanted by +perjurers, by men already purchased. God knows what dreams she had of +miraculous victories, while her barons trafficked in secret with the +Bruce. It is recorded that, on the Saturday before Michaelmas, when +the opposing armies marshalled in the Bishop's Park, at Auckland, not +a captain on either side believed the day to be pregnant with battle. +There would be a decent counterfeit of resistance; afterward the +little English army would vanish pell-mell, and the Bruce would be +master of the island. The farce was prearranged, the actors therein +were letter-perfect. + +That morning at daybreak John Copeland came to the Queen's tent, and +informed her quite explicitly how matters stood. He had been drinking +overnight with Adam Frere and the Earl of Gage, and after the third +bottle had found them candid. "Madame and Queen, we are betrayed. The +Marquess of Hastings, our commander, is inexplicably smitten with a +fever. He will not fight to-day. Not one of your lords will fight +to-day." Master Copeland laid bare such part of the scheme as +yesterday's conviviality had made familiar. "Therefore I counsel +retreat. Let the King be summoned out of France." + +Queen Philippa shook her head, as she cut up squares of toast and +dipped them in milk for the Regent's breakfast. "Sire Edward would be +vexed. He has always wanted to conquer France. I shall visit the +Marquess as soon as Lionel is fed,--do you know, John Copeland, I am +anxious about Lionel; he is irritable and coughed five times during +the night,--and then I will attend to this affair." + +She found the Marquess in bed, groaning, the coverlet pulled up to his +chin. "Pardon, Highness," said Lord Hastings, "but I am an ill man. I +cannot rise from this couch." + +"I do not question the gravity of your disorder," the Queen retorted, +"since it is well known that the same illness brought about the death +of Iscariot. Nevertheless, I bid you get up and lead our troops +against the Scot." + +Now the hand of the Marquess veiled his countenance. "I am an ill +man," he muttered, doggedly. "I cannot rise from this couch." + +There was a silence. + +"My lord," the Queen presently began, "without is an army +prepared--yes, and quite able--to defend our England. The one +requirement of this army is a leader. Afford them that, my lord--ah, I +know that our peers are sold to the Bruce, yet our yeomen at least are +honest. Give them, then, a leader, and they cannot but conquer, since +God also is honest and incorruptible. Pardieu! a woman might lead +these men, and lead them to victory!" + +Hastings answered: "I am ill. I cannot rise from this couch." + +"There is no man left in England," said the Queen, "since Sire Edward +went into France. Praise God, I am his wife!" She went away without +flurry. + +Through the tent-flap Hastings beheld all that which followed. The +English force was marshalled in four divisions, each commanded by a +bishop and a baron. You could see the men fidgeting, puzzled by the +delay; as a wind goes about a corn-field, vague rumors were going +about those wavering spears. Toward them rode Philippa, upon a white +palfrey, alone and perfectly tranquil. Her eight lieutenants were now +gathered about her in voluble protestation, and she heard them out. +Afterward she spoke, without any particular violence, as one might +order a strange cur from his room. Then the Queen rode on, as though +these eight declaiming persons had ceased to be of interest. She +reined up before her standard-bearer, and took the standard in her +hand. She began again to speak, and immediately the army was in an +uproar; the barons were clustering behind her, in stealthy groups of +two or three whisperers each; all were in the greatest amazement and +knew not what to do; but the army was shouting the Queen's name. + +"Now is England shamed," said Hastings, "since a woman alone dares to +encounter the Scot. She will lead them into battle--and by God! there +is no braver person under heaven than yonder Dutch Frau! Friend David, +I perceive that your venture is lost, for those men would follow her +to storm hell if she desired it." + +He meditated, and shrugged. "And so would I," said Hastings. + +A little afterward a gaunt and haggard old man, bareheaded and very +hastily dressed, reined his horse by the Queen's side. "Madame and +Queen," said Hastings, "I rejoice that my recent illness is departed. +I shall, by God's grace, on this day drive the Bruce from England." + +Philippa was not given to verbiage. Doubtless she had her emotions, +but none was visible upon the honest face. She rested one plump hand +upon the big-veined hand of Hastings. That was all. "I welcome back +the gallant gentleman of yesterday. I was about to lead your army, my +friend, since there was no one else to do it, but I was hideously +afraid. At bottom every woman is a coward." + +"You were afraid to do it," said the Marquess, "but you were going to +do it, because there was no one else to do it! Ho, madame! had I an +army of such cowards I would drive the Scot not past the Border but +beyond the Orkneys." + +The Queen then said, "But you are unarmed." + +"Highness," he replied, "it is surely apparent that I, who have played +the traitor to two monarchs within the same day, cannot with either +decency or comfort survive that day." He turned upon the lords and +bishops twittering about his horse's tail. "You merchandise, get back +to your stations, and if there was ever an honest woman in any of your +families, the which I doubt, contrive to get yourselves killed this +day, as I mean to do, in the cause of the honestest and bravest woman +our time has known." Immediately the English forces marched toward +Merrington. + +Philippa returned to her pavilion and inquired for John Copeland. She +was informed that he had ridden off, armed, in company with five of +her immediate retainers. She considered this strange, but made no +comment. + +You picture her, perhaps, as spending the morning in prayer, in +beatings upon her breast, and in lamentations. Philippa did nothing of +the sort. She considered her cause to be so clamantly just that to +expatiate to the Holy Father upon its merits would be an impertinence; +it was not conceivable that He would fail her; and in any event, she +had in hand a deal of sewing which required immediate attention. +Accordingly she settled down to her needlework, while the Regent of +England leaned his head against her knee, and his mother told him that +ageless tale of Lord Huon, who in a wood near Babylon encountered the +King of Faëry, and subsequently bereaved an atrocious Emir of his +beard and daughter. All this the industrious woman narrated in a low +and pleasant voice, while the wide-eyed Regent attended and at the +proper intervals gulped his cough-mixture. + +You must know that about noon Master John Copeland came into the tent. +"We have conquered," he said. "Now, by the Face!"--thus, scoffingly, +he used her husband's favorite oath,--"now, by the Face! there was +never a victory more complete! The Scottish army is fled, it is as +utterly dispersed from man's seeing as are the sands which dried the +letters King Ahasuerus gave the admirable Esther!" + +"I rejoice," the Queen said, looking up from her sewing, "that we have +conquered, though in nature I expected nothing else--Oh, horrible!" +She sprang to her feet with a cry of anguish. Here in little you have +the entire woman; the victory of her armament was to her a thing of +course, since her cause was just, whereas the loss of two front teeth +by John Copeland was a calamity. + +He drew her toward the tent-flap, which he opened. Without was a +mounted knight, in full panoply, his arms bound behind him, surrounded +by the Queen's five retainers. "In the rout I took him," said John +Copeland; "though, as my mouth witnesses, I did not find this David +Bruce a tractable prisoner." + +"Is that, then, the King of Scots?" Philippa demanded, as she mixed +salt and water for a mouthwash. "Sire Edward should be pleased, I +think. Will he not love me a little now, John Copeland?" + +John Copeland lifted both plump hands toward his lips. "He could not +choose," John Copeland said; "madame, he could no more choose but love +you than I could choose." + +Philippa sighed. Afterward she bade John Copeland rinse his gums and +then take his prisoner to Hastings. He told her the Marquess was dead, +slain by the Knight of Liddesdale. "That is a pity," the Queen said. +She reflected a while, reached her decision. "There is left alive in +England but one man to whom I dare entrust the keeping of the King of +Scots. My barons are sold to him; if I retain Messire David by me, one +or another lord will engineer his escape within the week, and Sire +Edward will be vexed. Yet listen, John--" She unfolded her plan. + +"I have long known," he said, when she had done, "that in all the +world there was no lady more lovable. Twenty years I have loved you, +my Queen, and yet it is only to-day I perceive that in all the world +there is no lady more wise than you." + +Philippa touched his cheek, maternally. "Foolish boy! You tell me the +King of Scots has an arrow-wound in his nose? I think a bread poultice +would be best." She told him how to make this poultice, and gave other +instructions. Then John Copeland left the tent and presently rode away +with his company. + +Philippa saw that the Regent had his dinner, and afterward mounted her +white palfrey and set out for the battle-field. There the Earl of +Neville, as second in command, received her with great courtesy. God +had shown to her Majesty's servants most singular favor: despite the +calculations of reasonable men,--to which, she might remember, he had +that morning taken the liberty to assent,--some fifteen thousand Scots +were slain. True, her gallant general was no longer extant, though +this was scarcely astounding when one considered the fact that he had +voluntarily entered the mêlée quite unarmed. A touch of age, perhaps; +Hastings was always an eccentric man: in any event, as epilogue, this +Neville congratulated the Queen that--by blind luck, he was forced to +concede,--her worthy secretary had made a prisoner of the Scottish +King. Doubtless, Master Copeland was an estimable scribe, and yet--Ah, +yes, Lord Neville quite followed her Majesty--beyond doubt, the +wardage of a king was an honor not lightly to be conferred. Oh, yes, +he understood; her Majesty desired that the office should be given +some person of rank. And pardie! her Majesty was in the right. Eh? +said the Earl of Neville. + +Intently gazing into the man's shallow eyes, Philippa assented. Master +Copeland had acted unwarrantably in riding off with his captive. Let +him be sought at once. She dictated to Neville's secretary a letter, +which informed John Copeland that he had done what was not agreeable +in purloining her prisoner. Let him without delay deliver the King to +her good friend the Earl of Neville. + +To Neville this was satisfactory, since he intended that once in his +possession David Bruce should escape forthwith. The letter, I repeat, +suited this smirking gentleman in its tiniest syllable, and the single +difficulty was to convey it to John Copeland, for as to his +whereabouts neither Neville nor any one else had the least notion. + +This was immaterial, however, for they narrate that next day a letter +signed with John Copeland's name was found pinned to the front of +Neville's tent. I cite a passage therefrom: "I will not give up my +royal prisoner to a woman or a child, but only to my own lord, Sire +Edward, for to him I have sworn allegiance, and not to any woman. Yet +you may tell the Queen she may depend on my taking excellent care of +King David. I have poulticed his nose, as she directed." + +Here was a nonplus, not without its comical side. Two great realms had +met in battle, and the king of one of them had vanished like a +soap-bubble. Philippa was in a rage,--you could see that both by her +demeanor and by the indignant letters she dictated; true, none of +these letters could be delivered, since they were all addressed to +John Copeland. Meanwhile, Scotland was in despair, whereas the traitor +English barons were in a frenzy, because they did not know what had +become of their fatal letters to the Bruce, or of him either. The +circumstances were unique, and they remained unchanged for three +feverish weeks. + +We will now return to affairs in France, where on the day of the +Nativity, as night gathered about Calais, John Copeland came +unheralded to the quarters of King Edward, then besieging that city. +Master Copeland entreated audience, and got it readily enough, since +there was no man alive whom Sire Edward more cordially desired to lay +his fingers upon. + +A page brought Master Copeland to the King, that stupendous, blond and +incredibly big person. With Sire Edward were that careful Italian, +Almerigo di Pavia, who afterward betrayed Sire Edward, and a lean +soldier whom Master Copeland recognized as John Chandos. These three +were drawing up an account of the recent victory at Créçi, to be +forwarded to all mayors and sheriffs in England, with a cogent +postscript as to the King's incidental and immediate need of money. + +Now King Edward sat leaning far back in his chair, a hand on either +hip, and with his eyes narrowing as he regarded Master Copeland. Had +the Brabanter flinched, the King would probably have hanged him within +the next ten minutes; finding his gaze unwavering, the King was +pleased. Here was a novelty; most people blinked quite honestly under +the scrutiny of those fierce big eyes, which were blue and cold and of +an astounding lustre. The lid of the left eye drooped a little: this +was Count Manuel's legacy, they whispered. + +The King rose with a jerk and took John Copeland's hand. "Ha!" he +grunted, "I welcome the squire who by his valor has captured the King +of Scots. And now, my man, what have you done with Davie?" + +John Copeland answered: "Highness, you may find him at your +convenience safely locked in Bamborough Castle. Meanwhile, I entreat +you, sire, do not take it amiss if I did not surrender King David to +the orders of my lady Queen, for I hold my lands of you, and not of +her, and my oath is to you, and not to her, unless indeed by choice." + +"John," the King sternly replied, "the loyal service you have done us +is considerable, whereas your excuse for kidnapping Davie is a farce. +Hey, Almerigo, do you and Chandos avoid the chamber! I have something +in private with this fellow." When they had gone, the King sat down +and composedly said, "Now tell me the truth, John Copeland." + +"Sire," Copeland began, "it is necessary you first understand I bear a +letter from Madame Philippa--" + +"Then read it," said the King. "Heart of God! have I an eternity to +waste on you slow-dealing Brabanters!" + +John Copeland read aloud, while the King trifled with a pen, half +negligent, and in part attendant. + +Read John Copeland: + +"My DEAR LORD,--_recommend me to your lordship with soul and body and +all my poor might, and with all this I thank you, as my dear lord, +dearest and best beloved of all earthly lords I protest to me, and +thank you, my dear lord, with all this as I say before. Your +comfortable letter came to me on Saint Gregory's day, and I was never +so glad as when I heard by your letter that ye were strong enough in +Ponthieu by the grace of God for to keep you from your enemies. Among +them I estimate Madame Catherine de Salisbury, who would have betrayed +you to the Scot. And, dear lord, if it be pleasing to your high +lordship that as soon as ye may that I might hear of your gracious +speed, which may God Almighty continue and increase, I shall be glad, +and also if ye do continue each night to chafe your feet with a rag of +woollen stuff, as your physician directed. And, my dear lord, if it +like you for to know of my fare, John Copeland will acquaint you +concerning the Bruce his capture, and the syrup he brings for our son +Lord Edward's cough, and the great malice-workers in these shires +which would have so despitefully wrought to you, and of the manner of +taking it after each meal. I am lately informed that Madame Catherine +is now at Stirling with Robert Stewart and has lost all her good looks +through a fever. God is invariably gracious to His servants. Farewell, +my dear lord, and may the Holy Trinity keep you from your adversaries +and ever send me comfortable tidings of you. Written at York, in the +Castle, on Saint Gregory's day last past, by your own poor_ + +"PHILIPPA. + +_"To my true lord."_ + +"H'm!" said the King; "and now give me the entire story." + +John Copeland obeyed. I must tell you that early in the narrative King +Edward arose and strode toward a window. "Catherine!" he said. He +remained motionless while Master Copeland went on without any manifest +emotion. When he had ended, King Edward said, "And where is Madame de +Salisbury now?" + +At this the Brabanter went mad. As a leopard springs he leaped upon +the King, and grasping him by each shoulder, shook that monarch as one +punishing a child. + +"Now by the splendor of God--!" King Edward began, very terrible in +his wrath. He saw that John Copeland held a dagger to his breast, and +he shrugged. "Well, my man, you perceive I am defenceless." + +"First you will hear me out," John Copeland said. + +"It would appear," the King retorted, "that I have little choice." + +At this time John Copeland began: "Sire, you are the mightiest monarch +your race has known. England is yours, France is yours, conquered +Scotland lies prostrate at your feet. To-day there is no other man in +all the world who possesses a tithe of your glory; yet twenty years +ago Madame Philippa first beheld you and loved you, an outcast, an +exiled, empty-pocketed prince. Twenty years ago the love of Madame +Philippa, great Count William's daughter, got for you the armament +with which England was regained. Twenty years ago but for Madame +Philippa you had died naked in some ditch." + +"Go on," the King said presently. + +"Afterward you took a fancy to reign in France. You learned then that +we Brabanters are a frugal people: Madame Philippa was wealthy when +she married you, and twenty years had quadrupled her private fortune. +She gave you every penny of it that you might fit out this expedition; +now her very crown is in pawn at Ghent. In fine, the love of Madame +Philippa gave you France as lightly as one might bestow a toy upon a +child who whined for it." + +The King fiercely said, "Go on." + +"Eh, sire, I intend to. You left England undefended that you might +posture a little in the eyes of Europe. And meanwhile a woman +preserves England, a woman gives you Scotland as a gift, and in return +asks nothing--God have mercy on us!--save that you nightly chafe your +feet with a bit of woollen. You hear of it--and inquire, '_Where is +Madame de Salisbury?_' Here beyond doubt is the cock of Aesop's +fable," snarled John Copeland, "who unearthed a gem and grumbled that +his diamond was not a grain of corn." + +"You shall be hanged at dawn," the King replied. "Meanwhile spit out +your venom." + +"I say to you, then," John Copeland continued, "that to-day you are +master of Europe. I say to you that, but for this woman whom for +twenty years you have neglected, you would to-day be mouldering in some +pauper's grave. Eh, without question, you most magnanimously loved +that shrew of Salisbury! because you fancied the color of her eyes, +Sire Edward, and admired the angle between her nose and her forehead. +Minstrels unborn will sing of this great love of yours. Meantime I say +to you"--now the man's rage was monstrous--"I say to you, go home to +your too-tedious wife, the source of all your glory! sit at her feet! +and let her teach you what love is!" He flung away the dagger. "There +you have the truth. Now summon your attendants, my très beau sire, and +have me hanged." + +The King made no movement. "You have been bold--" he said at last. + +"But you have been far bolder, sire. For twenty years you have dared +to flout that love which is God's noblest heritage to His children." + +King Edward sat in meditation for a long while. The squinting of his +left eye was now very noticeable. "I consider my wife's clerk," he +drily said, "to discourse of love in somewhat too much the tone of a +lover." And a flush was his reward. + +But when this Copeland spoke he was like one transfigured. His voice +was grave and very tender, and he said: + +"As the fish have their life in the waters, so I have and always shall +have mine in love. Love made me choose and dare to emulate a lady, +long ago, through whom I live contented, without expecting any other +good. Her purity is so inestimable that I cannot say whether I derive +more pride or sorrow from its preeminence. She does not love me, and +she will never love me. She would condemn me to be hewed in fragments +sooner than permit her husband's finger to be injured. Yet she +surpasses all others so utterly that I would rather hunger in her +presence than enjoy from another all which a lover can devise." + +Sire Edward stroked the table through this while, with an inverted +pen. He cleared his throat. He said, half-fretfully: + +"Now, by the Face! it is not given every man to love precisely in this +troubadourish fashion. Even the most generous person cannot render to +love any more than that person happens to possess. I have read in an +old tale how the devil sat upon a cathedral spire and white doves flew +about him. Monks came and told him to begone. 'Do not the spires show +you, O son of darkness' they clamored, 'that the place is holy?' And +Satan (in this old tale) replied that these spires were capable of +various interpretations. I speak of symbols, John. Yet I also have +loved, in my own fashion,--and, it would seem, I win the same reward +as you." + +The King said more lately: "And so she is at Stirling now? hobnob with +my armed enemies, and cajoling that red lecher Robert Stewart?" He +laughed, not overpleasantly. "Eh, yes, it needed a bold person to +bring all your tidings! But you Brabanters are a very thorough-going +people." + +The King rose and flung back his high head. "John, the loyal service +you have done us and our esteem for your valor are so great that they +may well serve you as an excuse. May shame fall on those who bear you +any ill-will! You will now return home, and take your prisoner, the +King of Scotland, and deliver him to my wife, to do with as she may +elect. You will convey to her my entreaty--not my orders, John,--that +she come to me here at Calais. As remuneration for this evening's +insolence, I assign lands as near your house as you can choose them to +the value of £500 a year for you and for your heirs." + +You must know that John Copeland fell upon his knees before King +Edward. "Sire--" he stammered. + +But the King raised him. "No, no," he said, "you are the better man. +Were there any equity in fate, John Copeland, your lady had loved you, +not me. As it is, I must strive to prove not altogether unworthy of my +fortune. But I make no large promises," he added, squinting horribly, +"because the most generous person cannot render to love any more than +that person happens to possess. So be off with you, John +Copeland,--go, my squire, and bring me back my Queen!" + +Presently he heard John Copeland singing without. And through that +instant, they say, his youth returned to Edward Plantagenet, and all +the scents and shadows and faint sounds of Valenciennes on that +ancient night when a tall girl came to him, running, stumbling in her +haste to bring him kingship. "She waddles now," he thought forlornly. +"Still, I am blessed." But Copeland sang, and the Brabanter's heart +was big with joy. + +Sang John Copeland: + + "Long I besought thee, nor vainly, + Daughter of Water and Air-- + Charis! Idalia! Hortensis! + Hast thou not heard the prayer, + When the blood stood still with loving, + And the blood in me leapt like wine, + And I cried on thy name, Melaenis?-- + That heard me, (the glory is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine! + + "Falsely they tell of thy dying, + Thou that art older than Death, + And never the Hörselberg hid thee, + Whatever the slanderer saith, + For the stars are as heralds forerunning, + When laughter and love combine + At twilight, in thy light, Melaenis-- + That heard me, (the glory is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine!" + + +THE END OF THE FIFTH NOVEL + + + + +VI + +THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS + + + "Je suis voix au désert criant + Que chascun soyt rectifiant + La voye de Sauveur; non suis, + Et accomplir je ne le puis." + +THE SIXTH NOVEL.--ANNE OF BOHEMIA HAS ONE SOLE FRIEND, AND BY HIM +PLAYS THE FRIEND'S PART; AND IN DOING SO ACHIEVES THEIR COMMON +ANGUISH, AS WELL AS THE CONFUSION OF STATECRAFT AND THE POULTICING OF +A GREAT DISEASE. + + + + +_The Story of the Satraps_ + + +In the year of grace 1381 (Nicolas begins) was Dame Anne magnificently +fetched from remote Bohemia, and at Westminster married to Sire +Richard, the second monarch of that name to reign in England. This +king, I must tell you, had succeeded while he was yet an infant, to +the throne of his grandfather, the third King Edward, about whom I +have told you in the story preceding this. + +Queen Anne had presently noted a certain priest who went forbiddingly +about her court, where he was accorded a provisional courtesy, and who +went also into many hovels, where pitiable wrecks of humankind +received his alms and ministrations. + +Queen Anne made inquiries. This young cleric was amanuensis to the +Duke of Gloucester, she learned, and was notoriously a by-blow of the +Duke's brother, dead Lionel of Clarence. She sent for this Edward +Maudelain. When he came her first perception was, "How wonderful is +his likeness to the King!" while the thought's commentary ran, +unacknowledged, "Yes, as an eagle resembles a falcon!" For here, to +the observant eye, was a more zealous person, already passion-wasted, +and a far more dictatorial and stiff-necked person than the lazy and +amiable King; also, this Maudelain's face and nose were somewhat too +long and high: the priest was, in a word, the less comely of the pair +by a very little, and to an immeasurable extent the more kinglike. + +"You are my cousin now, messire," the Queen told him, and innocently +offered to his lips her own. + +He never moved; but their glances crossed, and for that instant she +saw the face of a man who has just stepped into a quicksand. She grew +red, without knowing why. Then he spoke, composedly, of trivial +matters. + +Thus began the Queen's acquaintance with Edward Maudelain. She was by +this time the loneliest woman in the island. Her husband granted her a +bright and fresh perfection of form and color, but desiderated any +appetizing tang, and lamented, in his phrase, a certain kinship to the +impeccable loveliness of some female saint in a jaunty tapestry; +bright as ice in sunshine, just so her beauty chilled you, he +complained: moreover, this daughter of the Caesars had been fetched +into England, chiefly, to breed him children, and this she had never +done. Undoubtedly he had made a bad bargain,--he was too easy-going, +people presumed upon it. His barons snatched their cue and esteemed +Dame Anne to be negligible; whereas the clergy, finding that she +obstinately read the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, under the +irrelevant plea of not comprehending Latin, began to denounce her from +their pulpits as a heretic and as the evil woman prophesied by +Ezekiel. + +It was the nature of this desolate child to crave affection, as a +necessary, and pitifully she tried to purchase it through almsgiving. +In the attempt she could have found no coadjutor more ready than +Edward Maudelain. Giving was with these two a sort of obsession, +though always he gave in a half scorn of his fellow creatures which +was not more than half concealed. This bastard was charitable and +pious because he knew his soul, conceived in double sin, to be doubly +evil, and therefore doubly in need of redemption through good works. + +Now in and about the Queen's lonely rooms the woman and the priest met +daily to discuss now this or that point of theology, or now (to cite a +single instance) Gammer Tudway's obstinate sciatica. Considerate +persons found something of the pathetic in their preoccupation by +these matters while, so clamantly, the dissension between the young +King and his uncles gathered to a head. The King's uncles meant to +continue governing England, with the King as their ward, as long as +they could; he meant to relieve himself of this guardianship, and them +of their heads, as soon as he was able. War seemed inevitable, the air +was thick with portents; and was this, then, an appropriate time, the +judicious demanded of high Heaven, for the Queen of imperilled England +to concern herself about a peasant's toothache? + +Long afterward was Edward Maudelain to remember this quiet and amiable +period of his life, and to wonder over the man that he had been +through this queer while. Embittered and suspicious she had found him, +noted for the carping tongue he lacked both power and inclination to +bridle; and she had, against his nature, made Maudelain see that every +person is at bottom lovable, and that human vices are but the stains +of a traveller midway in a dusty journey; and had incited the priest +no longer to do good for his soul's health, but simply for his +fellow's benefit. + +In place of that monstrous passion which had at first view of her +possessed the priest, now, like a sheltered taper, glowed an adoration +which made him yearn, in defiance of common-sense, to suffer somehow +for this beautiful and gracious comrade; though very often pity for +her loneliness and knowledge that she dared trust no one save him +would throttle Maudelain like two assassins, and would move the +hot-blooded young man to a rapture of self-contempt and exultation. + +Now Maudelain made excellent songs, it was a matter of common report. +Yet but once in their close friendship did the Queen command him to +make a song for her. This had been at Dover, about vespers, in the +starved and tiny garden overlooking the English Channel, upon which +her apartments faced; and the priest had fingered his lute for an +appreciable while before he sang, more harshly than was his custom. + +Sang Maudelain: + + "Ave Maria! now cry we so + That see night wake and daylight go. + + "Mother and Maid, in nothing incomplete, + This night that gathers is more light and fleet + Than twilight trod alway with stumbling feet, + Agentes semper uno animo. + + "Ever we touch the prize we dare not take! + Ever we know that thirst we dare not slake! + Yet ever to a dreamed-of goal we make-- + Est tui coeli in palatio! + + "Long, long the road, and set with many a snare; + And to how small sure knowledge are we heir + That blindly tread, with twilight everywhere! + Volo in toto; sed non valeo! + + "Long, long the road, and very frail are we + That may not lightly curb mortality, + Nor lightly tread together steadfastly, + Et parvum carmen unum facio: + + "Mater, ora filium, + Ut post hoc exilium + Nobis donet gaudium + Beatorum omnium!" + +Dame Anne had risen. She said nothing. She stayed in this posture for +a lengthy while, one hand yet clasping each breast. Then she laughed, +and began to speak of Long Simon's recent fever. Was there no method +of establishing him in another cottage? No, the priest said, the +peasants, like the cattle, were always deeded with the land, and Simon +could not lawfully be taken away from his owner. + +One day, about the hour of prime, in that season of the year when +fields smell of young grass, the Duke of Gloucester sent for Edward +Maudelain. The court was then at Windsor. The priest came quickly to +his patron. He found the Duke in company with the King's other uncle +Edmund of York and bland Harry of Derby, who was John of Gaunt's +oldest son, and in consequence the King's cousin. Each was a proud and +handsome man: Derby alone (who was afterward King of England) had +inherited the squint that distinguished this family. To-day Gloucester +was gnawing at his finger nails, big York seemed half-asleep, and the +Earl of Derby appeared patiently to await something as yet ineffably +remote. + +"Sit down!" snarled Gloucester. His lean and evil countenance was that +of a tired devil. The priest obeyed, wondering that so high an honor +should be accorded him in the view of three great noblemen. Then +Gloucester said, in his sharp way: "Edward, you know, as England +knows, the King's intention toward us three and our adherents. It has +come to our demolishment or his. I confess a preference in the matter. +I have consulted with the Pope concerning the advisability of taking +the crown into my own hands. Edmund here does not want it, and my +brother John is already achieving one in Spain. Eh, in imagination I +was already King of England, and I had dreamed--Well! to-day the +prosaic courier arrived. Urban--the Neapolitan swine!--dares give me +no assistance. It is decreed I shall never reign in these islands. And +I had dreamed--Meanwhile, de Vere and de la Pole are at the King day +and night, urging revolt. As matters go, within a week or two, the +three heads before you will be embellishing Temple Bar. You, of +course, they will only hang." + +"We must avoid England, then, my noble patron," the priest considered. + +Angrily the Duke struck a clenched fist upon the table. "By the Cross! +we remain in England, you and I and all of us. Others avoid. The Pope +and the Emperor will have none of me. They plead for the Black +Prince's heir, for the legitimate heir. Dompnedex! they shall have +him!" + +Maudelain recoiled, for he thought this twitching man insane. + +"Besides, the King intends to take from me my fief at Sudbury," said +the Duke of York, "in order to give it to de Vere. That is both absurd +and monstrous and abominable." + +Openly Gloucester sneered. "Listen!" he rapped out toward Maudelain; +"when they were drawing up the Great Peace at Brétigny, it happened, +as is notorious, that the Black Prince, my brother, wooed in this town +the Demoiselle Alixe Riczi, whom in the outcome he abducted. It is not +so generally known, however, that, finding this sister of the Vicomte +de Montbrison a girl of obdurate virtue, my brother had prefaced the +action by marriage." + +"And what have I to do with all this?" said Edward Maudelain. + +Gloucester retorted: "More than you think. For this Alixe was conveyed +to Chertsey, here in England, where at the year's end she died in +childbirth. A little before this time had Sir Thomas Holland seen his +last day,--the husband of that Joane of Kent whom throughout life my +brother loved most marvellously. The disposition of the late +Queen-Mother is tolerably well known. I make no comment save that to +her moulding my brother was as so much wax. In fine, the two lovers +were presently married, and their son reigns to-day in England. The +abandoned son of Alixe Riczi was reared by the Cistercians at +Chertsey, where some years ago I found you." + +He spoke with a stifled voice, wrenching forth each sentence; and now +with a stiff forefinger flipped a paper across the table. "_In +extremis_ my brother did more than confess. He signed,--your Majesty," +said Gloucester. The Duke on a sudden flung out his hands, like a +wizard whose necromancy fails, and the palms were bloodied where his +nails had cut the flesh. + +"Moreover, my daughter was born at Sudbury," said the Duke of York. + +And of Maudelain's face I cannot tell you. He made pretence to read +the paper carefully, but his eyes roved, and he knew that he stood +among wolves. The room was oddly shaped, with eight equal sides: the +ceiling was of a light and brilliant blue, powdered with many golden +stars, and the walls were hung with smart tapestries which +commemorated the exploits of Theseus. "Then I am King," this Maudelain +said aloud, "of France and England, and Lord of Ireland, and Duke of +Aquitaine! I perceive that Heaven loves a jest." He wheeled upon +Gloucester and spoke with singular irrelevance, "And what is to be +done with the present Queen?" + +Again the Duke shrugged. "I had not thought of the dumb wench. We have +many convents." + +Now Maudelain twisted the paper between his long, wet fingers and +appeared to meditate. + +"It would be advisable, your Grace," observed the Earl of Derby, +suavely, and breaking his silence for the first time, "that you +yourself should wed Dame Anne, once the Apostolic See has granted the +necessary dispensation. Treading too close upon the fighting requisite +to bring about the dethronement and death of our nominal lord the +so-called King, a war with Bohemia, which would be only too apt to +follow this noble lady's assassination, would be highly inconvenient, +and, lacking that, we would have to pay back her dowry." + +Then these three princes rose and knelt before the priest; they were +clad in long bright garments, and they glittered with gold and many +jewels. He standing among them shuddered in his sombre robe. "Hail, +King of England!" cried these three. + +"Hail, ye that are my kinsmen!" he answered; "hail, ye that spring of +an accursed race, as I! And woe to England for that hour wherein +Manuel of Poictesme held traffic with the Sorceress of Provence, and +the devil's son begot an heir for England! Of ice and of lust and of +hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and fickle and +cold and ravenous and without shame are all our race until the end. Of +your brother's dishonor ye make merchandise to-day, and to-day +fratricide whispers me, and leers, and, Heaven help me! I attend. O +God of Gods! wilt Thou dare bid a man live stainless, having aforetime +filled his veins with such a venom? Then haro, will I cry from Thy +deepest hell.... Oh, now let the adulterous Redeemer of Poictesme +rejoice in his tall fires, to note that his descendants know of what +wood to make a crutch! You are very wise, my kinsmen. Take your +measures, messieurs who are my kinsmen! Though were I of any other +race, with what expedition would I now kill you, I that recognize +within me the strength to do it! Then would I slay you! without any +animosity, would I slay you then, just as I would kill as many +splendid snakes!" + +He went away, laughing horribly. Gloucester drummed upon the table, +his brows contracted. But the lean Duke said nothing; big York seemed +to drowse; and Henry of Derby smiled as he sounded a gong for that +scribe who would draw up the necessary letters. The Earl's time was +not yet come, but it was nearing. + +In the antechamber the priest encountered two men-at-arms dragging a +dead body from the castle. The Duke of Kent, Maudelain was informed, +had taken a fancy to a peasant girl, and in remonstrance her misguided +father had actually tugged at his Grace's sleeve. + +Maudelain went into the park of Windsor, where he walked for a long +while alone. It was a fine day in the middle spring; and now he seemed +to understand for the first time how fair was his England. For all +England was his fief, held in vassalage to God and to no man alive, +his heart now sang; allwhither his empire spread, opulent in grain and +metal and every revenue of the earth, and in stalwart men (his +chattels), and in strong orderly cities, where the windows would be +adorned with scarlet hangings, and women (with golden hair and red lax +lips) would presently admire as King Edward rode slowly by at the head +of a resplendent retinue. And always the King would bow, graciously +and without haste, to his shouting people.... He laughed to find +himself already at rehearsal of the gesture. + +It was strange, though, that in this glorious fief of his so many +persons should, as yet, live day by day as cattle live, suspicious of +all other moving things (with reason), and roused from their incurious +and filthy apathy only when some glittering baron, like a resistless +eagle, swept uncomfortably near as he passed on some by-errand of the +more bright and windy upper-world. East and north they had gone +yearly, for so many centuries, these dumb peasants, to fight out their +master's uncomprehended quarrel, and to manure with their carcasses +the soil of France and of Scotland. Give these serfs a king, now, who +(being absolute), might dare to deal in perfect equity with rich and +poor, who with his advent would bring Peace into England as his bride, +as Trygaeus did very anciently in Athens--"And then," the priest +paraphrased, "may England recover all the blessings she has lost, and +everywhere the glitter of active steel will cease." For everywhere men +would crack a rustic jest or two, unhurriedly. Virid fields would +heave brownly under their ploughs; they would find that with practice +it was almost as easy to chuckle as it was to cringe. + +Meanwhile on every side the nobles tyrannized in their degree, well +clothed and nourished, but at bottom equally comfortless in condition. +As illuminate by lightning Maudelain saw the many factions of his +barons squabbling for gross pleasures, like wolves over a corpse, and +blindly dealing death to one another to secure at least one more +delicious gulp before that inevitable mangling by the teeth of some +burlier colleague. The complete misery of England showed before +Maudelain like a winter landscape. The thing was questionless. He must +tread henceforward without fear among frenzied beasts, and to their +ultimate welfare. On a sudden Maudelain knew himself to be invincible +and fine, and hesitancy ebbed. + +True, Richard, poor fool, must die. Squarely the priest faced that +stark and hideous circumstance; to spare Richard was beyond his power, +and the boy was his brother; yes, this oncoming King Edward would be a +fratricide, and after death would be irrevocably damned. To burn, and +eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the torment was +eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of Richard's ignoble +life and of Edward's inconsiderable soul, to win so many men to +manhood was not a bargain to be refused. + +The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden which +adjoined Dame Anne's apartments. He found the Queen there, alone, as +nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused to wonder at her +bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd was this beauty, he +reflected, too; how alien in its effect to that of any other woman in +sturdy England, and how associable it was, somehow, with every wild +and gracious denizen of the woods which blossomed yonder. + +In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but undiluted. +They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short to ripple, +which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and left, birds +sang as if in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint and radiant +blue throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the zenith, so +that the Queen's brows cast honey-colored shadows upon either cheek. +The priest was greatly troubled by the proud and heatless +brilliancies, the shrill joys, of every object within the radius of +his senses. + +She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, tinted +like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and wore over all a gown +of white, cut open on each side as far as the hips. This garment was +embroidered with golden leopards and was trimmed with ermine. About +her yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein emeralds glowed. Her +blue eyes were as large and shining and changeable (he thought) as two +oceans in midsummer; and Maudelain stood motionless and seemed to +himself but to revere, as the Earl Ixion did, some bright unstable +wisp of cloud, while somehow all elation departed from him as water +does from a wetted sponge compressed. He laughed discordantly. + +"Wait--! O my only friend--!" said Maudelain. Then in a level voice he +told her all, unhurriedly and without any apparent emotion. + +She had breathed once, with a deep inhalation. She had screened her +countenance from his gaze the while you might have counted fifty. +Presently she said: "This means more war, for de Vere and Tressilian +and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons know that the +King's fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands die to-morrow." + +He answered, "It means a war which will make me King of England, and +will make you my wife." + +"In that war the nobles will ride abroad with banners and gay +surcoats, and will kill and ravish in the pauses of their songs; while +daily in that war the naked peasants will kill the one the other, +without knowing why." + +His thought had forerun hers. "Yes, some must die, so that in the end +I may be King, and the general happiness may rest at my disposal. The +adventure of this world is wonderful, and it goes otherwise than under +the strict tutelage of reason." + +"It would not be yours, but Gloucester's and his barons'. Friend, they +would set you on the throne to be their puppet and to move only as +they pulled the strings. Thwart them in their maraudings and they will +fling you aside, as the barons have pulled down every king that dared +oppose them. No, they desire to live pleasantly, to have fish on +Fridays, and white bread and the finest wine the whole year through, +and there is not enough for all, say they. Can you alone contend +against them? and conquer them? for not unless you can do this may I +dare bid you reign." + +The sun had grown too bright, too merciless, but as always she drew +the truth from him. "I could not venture to oppose in anything the +barons who supported my cause: for if I did, I would not endure a +fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor I nor any one may transform +through any personal force this bitter world, this piercing, cruel +place of frost and sun. Charity and Truth are excommunicate, and a +king is only an adorned and fearful person who leads wolves toward +their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and devour him. Everywhere +the powerful labor to put one another out of worship, and each to +stand the higher with the other's corpse as his pedestal; and Lechery +and Greed and Hatred sway these proud and inconsiderate fools as winds +blow at will the gay leaves of autumn. We walk among shining vapors, +we aspire to overpass a mountain of unstable sparkling sand! We two +alone in all the scuffling world! Oh, it is horrible, and I think that +Satan plans the jest! We dream for a while of refashioning this bright +desolation, and know that we alone can do it! we are as demigods, you +and I, in those gallant dreams! and at the end we can but poultice +some dirty rascal!" + +The Queen answered sadly: "Once and only once did God tread this +tangible world, for a very little while, and, look you, to what +trivial matters He devoted that brief space! Only to chat with +fishermen, and to talk with light women, and to consort with rascals, +and at last to die between two cutpurses, ignominiously! If Christ +Himself achieved so little that seemed great and admirable, how should +we two hope to do any more?" + +He answered: "It is true. Of anise and of cumin the Master gets His +tithe--" Maudelain broke off with a yapping laugh. "Puf! Heaven is +wiser than we. I am King of England. It is my heritage." + +"It means war. Many will die, thousands will die, and to no betterment +of affairs." + +"I am King of England. I am Heaven's satrap here, and answerable to +Heaven alone. It is my heritage." And now his large and cruel eyes +were aflame as he regarded her. + +And visibly beneath their glare the woman changed. "My friend, must I +not love you any longer? You would be content with happiness? Then I +am jealous of that happiness! for you are the one friend that I have +had, and so dear to me--Look you!" she said, with a light, wistful +laugh, "there have been times when I was afraid of everything you +touched, and I hated everything you looked at. I would not have you +stained; I desired to pass my whole life between the four walls of +some dingy and eternal gaol, forever alone with you, lest you become +like other men. I would in that period have been the very bread you +eat, the least perfume which delights you, the clod you touch in +crushing it, and I have often loathed some pleasure I derived from +life because I might not transfer it to you undiminished. For I wanted +somehow to make you happy to my own anguish.... It was wicked, I +suppose, for the imagining of it made me happy, too." + +Now while he listened to this dear and tranquil speaking, Edward +Maudelain's raised hands had fallen like so much lead, and remembering +his own nature, he longed for annihilation, before she had appraised +his vileness. He said: + +"With reason Augustine crieth out against the lust of the eyes. 'For +pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, and +soft; but this disease those contrary as well, not for the sake of +suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of making trial of them!' Ah! +ah! too curiously I planned my own damnation, too presumptuously I had +esteemed my soul a worthy scapegoat, and I had gilded my enormity with +many lies. Yet indeed, indeed, I had believed brave things, I had +planned a not ignoble bargain--! Ey, say, is it not laughable, +madame?--as my birth-right Heaven accords me a penny, and with that +only penny I must presently be seeking to bribe Heaven." + +Then he said: "Yet are we indeed God's satraps, as but now I cried in +my vainglory, and we hold within our palms the destiny of many +peoples. Depardieux! God is wiser than we are. Still, Satan offers no +unhandsome bribes--bribes that are tangible and sure. For Satan, too, +is wiser than we are." + +They stood like effigies, lit by the broad, unsparing splendor of the +morning, but again their kindling eyes had met, and again the man +shuddered. "Decide! oh, decide very quickly, my only friend!" he said, +"for throughout I am all filth!" + +Closer she drew to him, and laid one hand upon each shoulder. "O my +only friend!" she breathed, with red lax lips which were very near to +his, "through these six years I have ranked your friendship as the +chief of all my honors! and I pray God with an entire heart that I may +die so soon as I have done what I must do to-day!" + +Now Maudelain was trying to smile, but he could not quite manage it. +"God save King Richard!" said the priest. "For by the cowardice and +greed and ignorance of little men is Salomon himself confounded, and +by them is Hercules lightly unhorsed. Were I Leviathan, whose bones +were long ago picked clean by pismires, I could perform nothing +against the will of many human pismires. Therefore do you pronounce my +doom." + +"O King," then said Dame Anne, "I bid you go forever from the court +and live forever a landless man, friendless, and without even any +name. Otherwise, you can in no way escape being made an instrument to +bring about the misery and death of many thousands. This doom I dare +adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's satraps, you +and I." + +Twice or thrice his dry lips moved before he spoke. He was aware of +innumerable birds that carolled with a piercing and intolerable +sweetness. "O Queen!" he hoarsely said, "O fellow satrap! Heaven has +many fiefs. A fair province is wasted and accords to Heaven no +revenue. So wastes beauty, and a shrewd wit, and an illimitable +charity, which of their pride go in fetters and achieve no increase. +To-day the young King junkets with his flatterers, and but rarely +thinks of England. You have that beauty by which men are lightly +conquered, and the mere sight of which may well cause a man's voice to +tremble as my voice trembles now, and through desire of which--But I +tread afield! Of that beauty you have made no profit. O daughter of +the Caesars, I bid you now gird either loin for an unlovely traffic. +Old Legion must be fought with fire. True that the age is sick, true +that we may not cure, we can but salve the hurt--" His hand had torn +open his sombre gown, and the man's bared breast shone in the +sunlight, and on his breast heaved sleek and glittering beads of +sweat. Twice he cried the Queen's name. In a while he said: "I bid you +weave incessantly such snares of brain and body as may lure King +Richard to be swayed by you, until against his will you daily guide +this shallow-hearted fool to some commendable action. I bid you live +as other folk do hereabouts. Coax! beg! cheat! wheedle! lie!" he +barked like a teased dog, "and play the prostitute for him that wears +my crown, till you achieve in part the task which is denied me. This +doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's +satraps, you and I." + +She answered with a tiny, wordless sound. But presently, "I take my +doom," the Queen proudly said. "I shall be lonely now, my only friend, +and yet--it does not matter," the Queen said, with a little shiver. +"No, nothing will ever greatly matter now, I think, now that I may not +ever see you any more, my dearest." + +Her eyes had filled with tears; she was unhappy, and, as always, this +knowledge roused in Maudelain a sort of frenzied pity and a hatred, +quite illogical, of all other things existent. She was unhappy, that +only he comprehended: and for her to be made unhappy was unjust. + +So he stood thus for an appreciable silence, staying motionless save +that behind his back his fingers were bruising one another. Everywhere +was this or that bright color and an incessant melody. It was +unbearable. Then it was over; the ordered progress of all happenings +was apparent, simple, and natural; and contentment came into his heart +like a flight of linnets over level fields at dawn. He left her, and +as he went he sang. + +Sang Maudelain: + + "Christ save us all, as well He can, + A solis ortus cardine! + For He is both God and man, + Qui natus est de virgine, + And we but part of His wide plan + That sing, and heartily sing we, + 'Gloria Tibi, Domine!' + + "Between a heifer and an ass + Enixa est puerpera; + In ragged woollen clad He was + Qui régnât super aethera, + And patiently may we then pass + That sing, and heartily sing we, + 'Gloria Tibi, Domine!'" + +The Queen shivered in the glad sunlight. "I am, it must be, pitiably +weak," she said at last, "because I cannot sing as he does. And, since +I am not very wise, were he to return even now--But he will not +return. He will never return," the Queen repeated, carefully. "It is +strange I cannot comprehend that he will never return! Ah, Mother of +God!" she cried, with a steadier voice, "grant that I may weep! nay, +of thy infinite mercy let me presently find the heart to weep!" And +about the Queen of England many birds sang joyously. + +She sent for the King that evening, after supper, and they may well +have talked of many matters, for he did not return to his own +apartments that night. Next day the English barons held a council, and +in the midst of it King Richard demanded to be told his age. + +"Your Grace is in your twenty-second year," said the uneasy +Gloucester, who was now with reason troubled, since he had been vainly +seeking everywhere for the evanished Maudelain. + +"Then I have been under tutors and governors longer than any other +ward in my dominion. My lords, I thank you for your past services, but +I need them no more." They had no check handy, and Gloucester in +particular foreread his death-warrant, but of necessity he shouted +with the others, "Hail, King of England!" + +That afternoon the King's assumption of all royal responsibility was +commemorated by a tournament, over which Dame Anne presided. Sixty of +her ladies led as many knights by silver chains into the +tilting-grounds at Smithfield, and it was remarked that the Queen +appeared unusually mirthful. The King was in high good humor, a +pattern of conjugal devotion; and the royal pair retired at dusk to +the Bishop of London's palace at Saint Paul's, where was held a merry +banquet, with dancing both before and after supper. + +THE END OF THE SIXTH NOVEL + + + + +VII + +THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE + + + "Pour vous je suis en prison mise, + En ceste chambre à voulte grise, + Et traineray ma triste vie + Sans que jamais mon cueur varie, + Car toujours seray vostre amye." + +THE SEVENTH NOVEL.--ISABEL OF VALOIS, BEING FORSAKEN BY ALL OTHERS, IS +BEFRIENDED BY A PRIEST, WHO IN CHIEF THROUGH A CHILD'S INNOCENCE, +CONTRIVES AND EXECUTES A LAUDABLE IMPOSTURE, AND WINS THEREBY TO +DEATH. + + + + +_The Story of the Heritage_ + + +In the year of grace 1399 (Nicolas begins) dwelt in a hut near Caer +Dathyl in Arvon, as he had dwelt for some five years, a gaunt hermit, +notoriously consecrate, whom neighboring Welshmen revered as the +Blessed Evrawc. There had been a time when people called him Edward +Maudelain, but this period he dared not often remember. + +For though in macerations of the flesh, in fasting, and in hour-long +prayers he spent his days, this holy man was much troubled by devils. +He got little rest because of them. Sometimes would come into his hut +Belphegor in the likeness of a butler, and whisper, "Sire, had you +been King, as was your right, you had drunk to-day not water but the +wines of Spain and Hungary." Or Asmodeus saying, "Sire, had you been +King, as was your right, you had lain now not upon the bare earth but +on cushions of silk." + +One day in early spring, they say, the spirit called Orvendile sent +the likeness of a fair woman with yellow hair and large blue eyes. She +wore a massive crown which seemed too heavy for her frailness to +sustain. Soft tranquil eyes had lifted from her book. "You are my +cousin now, messire," this phantom had appeared to say. + +That was the worst, and Maudelain began to fear he was a little mad +because even this he had resisted with many aves. + +There came also to his hut, through a sullen snowstorm, upon the +afternoon of All Soul's day, a horseman in a long cloak of black. He +tethered his black horse and he came noiselessly through the doorway +of the hut, and upon his breast and shoulders the snow was white as +the bleached bones of those women that died in Merlin's youth. + +"Greetings in God's name, Messire Edward Maudelain," the stranger +said. + +Since the new-comer spoke intrepidly of holy things a cheerier +Maudelain knew that this at least was no demon. "Greetings!" he +answered. "But I am Evrawc. You name a man long dead." + +"But it is from a certain Bohemian woman I come. What matter, then, if +the dead receive me?" And thus speaking, the stranger dropped his +cloak. + +He was clad, as you now saw, in flame-colored satin, which shimmered +with each movement like a high flame. He had the appearance of a tall, +lean youngster, with crisp, curling, very dark red hair. He now +regarded Maudelain. He displayed peculiarly wide-set brown eyes; and +their gaze was tender, and the tears somehow had come to Maudelain's +eyes because of his great love for this tall stranger. "Eh, from the +dead to the dead I travel, as ever," said the new-comer, "with a +message and a token. My message runs, _Time is, O fellow satrap!_ and +my token is this." + +In this packet, wrapped with white parchment and tied with a golden +cord, was only a lock of hair. It lay like a little yellow serpent in +Maudelain's palm. "And yet five years ago," he mused, "this hair was +turned to dust. God keep us all!" Then he saw the tall lean emissary +puffed out like a candle-flame; and upon the floor he saw the huddled +cloak waver and spread like ink, and he saw the white parchment slowly +dwindle, as snow melts under the open sun. But in his hand remained +the lock of yellow hair. + +"O my only friend," said Maudelain, "I may not comprehend, but I know +that by no unhallowed art have you won back to me." Hair by hair he +scattered upon the floor that which he held. "_Time is!_ and I have +not need of any token to spur my memory." He prized up a corner of the +hearthstone, took out a small leather bag, and that day purchased a +horse and a sword. + +At dawn the Blessed Evrawc rode eastward in secular apparel. Two weeks +later he came to Sunninghill; and it happened that the same morning +the Earl of Salisbury, who had excellent reason to consider ... + +_Follows a lacuna of fourteen pages. Maudelain's successful imposture +of his half-brother, Richard the Second, so strangely favored by their +physical resemblance, and the subsequent fiasco at Circencester, are +now, however, tolerably well known to students of history._ + +_In one way or another, Maudelain contrived to take the place of his +now dethroned brother, and therewith also the punishment designed for +Richard. It would seem evident, from the Argument of the story in +hand, that Nicolas de Caen attributes a large part of this mysterious +business to the co-operancy of Isabel of Valois, King Richard's eleven +year old wife. And (should one have a taste for the deductive) the +foregoing name of Orvendile, when compared with "THE STORY OF THE +SCABBARD," would certainly hint that Owain Glyndwyr had a finger in +the affair._ + +_It is impossible to divine by what method, according to Nicolas, this +Edward Maudelain was substituted for his younger brother. Nicolas, if +you are to believe his "EPILOGUE," had the best of reasons for knowing +that the prisoner locked up in Pontefract Castle in the February of +1400, after Harry of Derby had seized the crown of England, was not +Richard Plantagenet: as is attested, also, by the remaining fragment +of this same_ "STORY OF THE HERITAGE." + +... and eight men-at-arms followed him. + +Quickly Maudelain rose from the table, pushing his tall chair aside, +and as he did this, one of the soldiers closed the door securely. +"Nay, eat your fill, Sire Richard," said Piers Exton, "since you will +not ever eat again." + +"Is it so?" the trapped man answered quietly. "Then indeed you come in +a good hour." Once only he smote upon his breast. "_Mea culpa!_ O +Eternal Father, do Thou shrive me very quickly of all those sins I +have committed, both in thought and deed, for now the time is very +short." + +And Exton spat upon the dusty floor. "Foh, they had told me I would +find a king here. I discover only a cat that whines." + +"Then 'ware his claws!" As a viper leaps Maudelain sprang upon the +nearest fellow and wrested away his halberd. "Then 'ware his claws, my +men! For I come of an accursed race. And now let some of you lament +that hour wherein the devil's son begot an heir for England! For of +ice and of lust and of hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest +it; and fickle and cold and ravenous and without fear are all our race +until the end. Hah, until the end! O God of Gods!" this Maudelain +cried, with a great voice, "wilt Thou dare bid a man die patiently, +having aforetime filled his veins with such a venom? For I lack the +grace to die as all Thy saints have died, without one carnal blow +struck in my own defence. I lack the grace, my Father, for even at the +last the devil's blood You gave me is not quelled. I dare atone for +that old sin done by my father in the flesh, but yet I must atone as +befits the race of Oriander!" + +Then it was he and not they who pressed to the attack. Their meeting +was a bloody business, for in that dark and crowded room Maudelain +raged among his nine antagonists like an angered lion among wolves. + +They struck at random and cursed shrilly, for they were now +half-afraid of this prey they had entrapped; so that presently he was +all hacked and bleeding, though as yet he had no mortal wound. Four of +these men he had killed by this time, and Piers Exton also lay at his +feet. + +Then the other four drew back a little. "Are ye tired so soon?" said +Maudelain, and he laughed terribly. "What, even you! Why, look ye, my +bold veterans, I never killed before to-day, and I am not breathed as +yet." + +Thus he boasted, exultant in his strength. But the other men saw that +behind him Piers Exton had crawled into the chair from which (they +thought) King Richard had just risen, and they saw Exton standing +erect in this chair, with both arms raised. They saw this Exton strike +the King with his pole-axe, from behind, once only, and they knew no +more was needed. + +"By God!" said one of them in the ensuing stillness, and it was he who +bled the most, "that was a felon's blow." + +But the dying man who lay before them made as though to smile. "I +charge you all to witness," he faintly said, "how willingly I render +to Caesar's daughter that which was ever hers." + +Then Exton fretted, as if with a little trace of shame: "Who would +have thought the rascal had remembered that first wife of his so long? +Caesar's daughter, saith he! and dares in extremis to pervert Holy +Scripture like any Wycliffite! Well, he is as dead as that first +Caesar now, and our gracious King, I think, will sleep the better for +it. And yet--God only knows! for they are an odd race, even as he +said--these men that have old Manuel's blood in them." + +THE END OF THE SEVENTH NOVEL + + + + +VIII + +THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD + + + "Ainsi il avait trouvé sa mie + Si belle qu'on put souhaiter. + N'avoit cure d'ailleurs plaider, + Fors qu'avec lui manoir et estre. + Bien est Amour puissant et maistre." + +THE EIGHTH NOVEL.--BRANWEN OF WALES GETS A KING'S LOVE UNWITTINGLY, +AND IN ALL INNOCENCE CONVINCES HIM OF THE LITTLENESS OF HIS KINGDOM; +SO THAT HE BESIEGES AND IN DUE COURSE OCCUPIES ANOTHER REALM AS YET +UNMAPPED. + + + + +_The Story of the Scabbard_ + + +In the year of grace 1400 (Nicolas begins) King Richard, the second +monarch of that name to rule in England, wrenched his own existence, +and nothing more, from the close wiles of his cousin, Harry of Derby, +who was now sometimes called Henry of Lancaster, and sometimes +Bolingbroke. The circumstances of this evasion having been recorded in +the preceding tale, it suffices here to record that this Henry was +presently crowned King of England in Richard's place. All persons, +saving only Owain Glyndwyr and Henry of Lancaster, believed King +Richard dead at that period when Richard attended his own funeral, as +a proceeding taking to the fancy, and, among many others, saw the body +of Edward Maudelain interred with every regal ceremony in the chapel +at Langley Bower. Then alone Sire Richard crossed the seas, and at +thirty-three set out to inspect a transformed and gratefully +untrammelling world wherein not a foot of land belonged to him. + +Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his half-brothers; and +to detail his Asian wanderings would be tedious and unprofitable. But +at the end of each four months would come to him a certain messenger +from Glyndwyr, supposed by Richard to be the imp Orvendile, who +notoriously ran every day around the world upon the Welshman's +business. It was in the Isle of Taprobane, where the pismires are as +great as hounds, and mine and store the gold of which the inhabitants +afterward rob them through a very cunning device, that this emissary +brought the letter which read simply, "Now is England fit pasture for +the White Hart." Presently Richard Holland was in Wales, and then he +rode to Sycharth. + +There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long +stewardship. It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless +machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the +barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their +squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester, +Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open revolt. +"By the God I do not altogether serve," Owain ended, "you have but to +declare yourself, sire, and within the moment England is yours." + +Richard spoke with narrowed eyes. "You forget that while Henry of +Lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign tranquilly in +these islands. Come then! the hour strikes; and we will coax the devil +for once in a way to serve God." + +"Oh, but there is a boundary appointed," Glyndwyr moodily returned. +"You, too, forget that in cold blood this Henry stabbed my best-loved +son. But I do not forget this, and I have tried divers methods which +we need not speak of,--I who can at will corrupt the air, and cause +sickness and storms, raise heavy mists, and create plagues and fires +and shipwrecks; yet the life itself I cannot take. For there is a +boundary appointed, sire, and beyond that frontier the Master of our +Sabbaths cannot serve us even though he would." + +Richard crossed himself. "You horribly mistake my meaning. Your +practices are your own affair, and in them I decline to dabble. I +merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait. For you have +a fief at Caer Idion, I think?--Very well! I intend to herd your sheep +there, for a week or two, after the honorable example of Apollo. It is +your part to see that Henry knows I am living disguised and +defenceless at Caer Idion." + +The gaunt Welshman chuckled. "Yes, squinting Henry of Lancaster would +cross the world, much less the Severn, to make quite sure of Richard's +death. He would come in his own person with at most some twenty +trustworthy followers. I will have a hundred there; and certain aging +scores will then be settled in that place." Glyndwyr meditated +afterward, very evilly. "Sire," he said without prelude, "I do not +recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have garnered much in travelling!" + +"Why, look you," Richard returned, "I have garnered so much that I do +not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. With age I begin +to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing +very seriously. You barons here believe it an affair of importance who +may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you +take sides between Henry and me. I tell you frankly that neither of +us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can +ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything +save discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the +discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking +disaster. No, Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, +depend upon it, to the burden of _Fools All_. For I am as liberally +endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my +performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would +appraise those of another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive +that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself +about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least, +impossible." + +"I have known the thought," said Owain,--"though rarely since I found +the Englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son, +my Gruffyd, was murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than +the others, people said.... You are as yet the empty scabbard, +powerless alike for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword, +sire, that informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we +are as gods." + +"Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms." + +"We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the +second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at +all." + +"--And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the devil." + +"I greatly fear," said Owain with a sigh, "lest it may be your +irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike. +No, you consider things with both eyes open, with an unmanly +rationality: whereas Sire Henry views all matters with that heroic +squint which came into your family from Poictesme." + +"Be off with your dusty scandals!" said Richard, laughing. + +So then Glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of Caerdyf, +while at Caer Idion Richard Holland abode tranquilly for some three +weeks. There was in this place only Caradawc (the former shepherd), +his wife Alundyne, and their sole daughter Branwen. They gladly +perceived Sire Richard was no more a peasant than he was a curmudgeon; +as Caradawc observed: "It is perfectly apparent that the robe of +Padarn Beisrudd, which refuses to adjust itself to any save highborn +persons, would fit him as a glove does the hand; but we will ask no +questions, since it is not wholesome to dispute the orderings of Owain +Glyndwyr." + +Now day by day would Richard Holland drive the flocks to pasture near +the Severn, and loll there in the shade, and make songs to his lute. +He grew to love this leisured life of bright and open spaces; and its +long solitudes, grateful with the warm odors of growing things and +with poignant bird-noises; and the tranquillity of these meadows, that +were always void of hurry, bedrugged the man through many fruitless +and contented hours. + +Each day at noon Branwen would bring his dinner, and she would +sometimes chat with him while he ate. After supper he would discourse +to Branwen of remote kingdoms, through which, as aimlessly as a wind +veers, he had ridden at adventure, among sedate and alien peoples who +adjudged him a madman; and she, in turn, would tell him curious tales +from the _Red Book of Hergest_,--telling of Gwalchmai, and Peredur, +and Geraint, in each one of which fine heroes she had presently +discerned an inadequate forerunnership of Richard's existence. + +This Branwen was a fair wench, slender and hardy. She had the bold +demeanor of a child who is ignorant of evil and in consequence of +suspicion. Happily, though, had she been named for that unhappy lady +of old, the wife of King Matholwch, for this Branwen, too, had a +white, thin, wistful face, like that of an empress on a silver coin +which is a little worn. Her eyes were large and brilliant, colored +like clear emeralds, and her abundant hair was so much cornfloss, only +it was more brightly yellow and was of immeasurably finer texture. In +full sunlight her cheeks were frosted like the surface of a peach, but +the underlying cool pink of them was rather that of a cloud just after +sunset, Richard decided. In all, a taking morsel! though her shapely +hands were hard with labor, and she rarely laughed; for, as if in +recompense, her heart was tender, and she rarely ceased to smile as +though she were thinking of some peculiar and wonderful secret which +she intended, in due time, to share with you and with nobody else. +Branwen had many lovers, and preferred among them young Gwyllem ap +Llyr, a portly lad, who was handsome enough, though he had tiny and +piggish eyes, and who sang divinely. + +One day this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. "Saxon," +he said, "you appear a stout man. Take your pick of these, then, and +have at you." + +"Such are not the weapons I would have named," Richard answered: "yet +in reason, Messire Gwyllem, I can deny you nothing that means nothing +to me." + +With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In these +unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated, +but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and he managed +somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he contrived +this he never ascertained. + +"I have forgotten what we are fighting about," he observed, after ten +minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; "or, to be perfectly exact, I +never knew. But we will fight no more in this place. Come and go with +me to Welshpool, Messire Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a +conclusion over good sack and claret." + +"Content!" cried Gwyllem; "but only if you yield me Branwen." + +"Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?" +Richard demanded; "like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any +one particular toy? Then devil take me if I am not heartily ashamed of +my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I would speak naught save +commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long +as one is able to approach them in a becoming spirit of levity: it is +only their not infrequent misuse which I would condemn; and in my +opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them +has only himself to blame if his chosen goddess will accept no +burnt-offering except his honor and happiness. Yet since time's youth +have many fine men been addicted to this insane practice, as, for +example, were Hercules and Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and, +indeed, the more I reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of +other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I +ashamed of my sex." + +Gwyllem said: "This lazy gabbling of yours is all very fine. Perhaps +it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not reason." + + +"I was endeavoring to prove that," said Richard gently. Then they went +to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem's horse. Tongue loosened by the +claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to +each rapture Richard affably assented. In his heart he likened the boy +to Dionysos at Naxos, and could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover, +the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the +windows, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content. + +"She does not love me?" Gwyllem cried. "It is well enough. I do not +come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered. +Listen, Saxon!" He caught up Richard's lute. The strings shrieked +beneath Gwyllem's fingers as he fashioned his rude song. + +Sang Gwyllem: + + "Love me or love me not, it is enough + That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is + Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,-- + My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred + With tavern-catches, which that pity of his + Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word, + O Branwen! + + "I have accorded you incessant praise + And song and service, dear, because of this; + And always I have dreamed incessantly + Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days + This man or that shall love you, and at last + This man or that shall win you, it must be + That, loving him, you will have pity on me + When happiness engenders memory + And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past, + O Branwen! + + "Of this I know not surely, who am sure + That I shall always love you while I live, + And that, when I am dead, with naught to give + Of song or service, Love will yet endure, + And yet retain his last prerogative, + When I lie still, and sleep out centuries, + With dreams of you and the exceeding love + I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof, + And give God thanks for all, and so find peace, + O Branwen!" + +"Now, were I to get as tipsy as that," Richard enviously thought, +midway in a return to his stolid sheep, "I would simply go to sleep +and wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep +in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, rather, as he hurls himself with +a splurge, I would perform--I wonder, now, what miracle?" + +For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so +earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so untroubled by +forethought: each least desire controlled him, as varying winds sport +with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the +boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was +superb. "And heigho!" said Richard, "I am attestedly a greater fool +than he, but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded." + +The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He declared +himself a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who perfectly +recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker crossed over +into England. + +Richard whistled. "Now my cousin will be quite sure, and now my +anxious cousin will come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux. And now, +by every saint in the calendar! I am as good as King of England." + +He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades of +grass between his fingers while he meditated. Undoubtedly he would +kill this squinting Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience and +even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort of +vermin, but, hand upon heart, Richard was unable to avow any +particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel's death. Thus crudely to +demolish the knave's adroit and year-long schemings savored actually +of grossness. The spider was venomous, and his destruction laudable; +granted, but in crushing him you ruined his web, a miracle of patient +machination, which, despite yourself, compelled hearty admiring and +envy. True, the process would recrown a certain Richard, but then, as +Richard recalled it, being King was rather tedious. Richard was not +now quite sure that he wanted to be King, and, in consequence, be +daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons. "I +shall miss the little huzzy, too," he thought. + +"Heigho!" said Richard, "I shall console myself with purchasing all +beautiful things that can be touched and handled. Life is a flimsy +vapor which passes and is not any more: presently Branwen will be +married to this Gwyllem and will be grown fat and old, and I shall be +remarried to little Dame Isabel, and shall be King of England: and a +trifle later all four of us shall be dead. Pending this deplorable +consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself." + +Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the latter +send the promised implements to Caer Idion. Richard, returning to the +hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, and grovelling at +the threshold. Her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and +through tearless sobs told of what had happened. A half-hour earlier, +while she and Branwen were intent upon their milking, Gwyllem had +ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. Branwen had called him sot, +had bidden him go home. "That I will do," said Gwyllem and suddenly +caught up the girl. Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist +Gwyllem struck her twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away +with Branwen. + +Richard made no observation. In silence he fetched his horse, and did +not pause to saddle it. Quickly he rode to Gwyllem's house, and broke +in the door. Against the farther wall stood lithe Branwen fighting +silently: her breasts and shoulders were naked, where Gwyllem had torn +away her garments. He wheedled, laughed, swore, and hiccoughed, turn +by turn, but she was silent. + +"On guard!" Richard barked. Gwyllem wheeled. His head twisted toward +his left shoulder, and one corner of his mouth convulsively snapped +upward, so that his teeth were bared. There was a knife at Richard's +girdle, which he now unsheathed and flung away. He stepped eagerly +toward the snarling Welshman, and with both hands seized the thick and +hairy throat. What followed was brutal. + +For many minutes Branwen stood with averted face, shuddering. She very +dimly heard the sound of Gwyllem's impotent fists as they beat against +the countenance and body of Richard, and heard the thin splitting +vicious noise of torn cloth as Gwyllem clutched at Richard's tunic and +tore it many times. Richard did not utter any articulate word, and +Gwyllem could not. There was entire silence for a heart-beat, and the +thudding fall of something ponderous and limp. + +"Come!" Richard said then. Through the hut's twilight he came, as +glorious in her eyes as Michael fresh from that primal battle with old +Satan. Tall Richard came to her, his face all blood, and lifted her in +his arms lest Branwen's skirt be soiled by the demolished thing which +sprawled across their path. She never spoke. She could not speak. In +his arms she rode homeward, passive, and content. The horse trod with +deliberation. In the east the young moon was taking heart as the +darkness thickened, and innumerable stars awoke. Branwen noted these +things incuriously. + +Richard was horribly afraid. He it had been, in sober verity it had +been Richard of Bordeaux, that some monstrous force had seized, and +had lifted, and had curtly utilized as its handiest implement. He had +been, and in the moment had known himself to be, the thrown spear as +yet in air, about to kill and quite powerless to refrain from killing. +It was a full three minutes before he had got the better of his +bewilderment and laughed, very softly, lest he disturb this Branwen, +who was so near his heart.... + +Next day she came to him at noon, bearing as always the little basket. +It contained to-day a napkin, some garlic, a ham, and a small soft +cheese; some shalots, salt, nuts, wild apples, lettuce, onions, and +mushrooms. "Behold a feast!" said Richard. He noted then that she +carried also a blue pitcher filled with thin wine, and two cups of +oak-bark. She thanked him for last night's performance, and drank a +mouthful of wine to his health. + +"Decidedly, I shall be sorry to have done with shepherding," said +Richard as he ate. + +Branwen answered, "I too shall be sorry, lord, when the masquerade is +ended." And it seemed to Richard that she sighed, and he was the +happier. + +But he only shrugged. "I am the wisest person unhanged, since I +comprehend my own folly. Yet I grant you that he was wise, too, the +minstrel of old time that sang: 'Over wild lands and tumbling seas +flits Love, at will, and maddens the heart and beguiles the senses of +all whom he attacks, whether his quarry be some monster of the ocean +or some fierce denizen of the forest, or man; for thine, O Love, thine +alone is the power to make playthings of us all.'" + +"Your bard was wise, no doubt, yet it was not in such terms that +Gwyllem sang of this passion. Lord," she demanded shyly, "how would +you sing of love?" + +Richard was replete and contented with the world. He took up the lute, +in full consciousness that his compliance was in large part cenatory. +"In courtesy, thus--" + +Sang Richard: + + "The gods in honor of fair Branwen's worth + Bore gifts to her:--and Jove, Olympus' lord, + Co-rule of Earth and Heaven did accord, + And Hermes brought that lyre he framed at birth, + And Venus her famed girdle (to engirth + A fairer beauty now), and Mars his sword, + And wrinkled Plutus half the secret hoard + And immemorial treasure of mid-earth;-- + + "And while the careful gods were pondering + Which of these goodly gifts the goodliest was, + Young Cupid came among them carolling + And proffered unto her a looking-glass, + Wherein she gazed, and saw the goodliest thing + That Earth had borne, and Heaven might not surpass." + +"Three sounds are rarely heard," said Branwen; "and these are the song +of the birds of Rhiannon, an invitation to feast with a miser, and a +speech of wisdom from the mouth of a Saxon. The song you have made of +courtesy is tinsel. Sing now in verity." + +Richard laughed, though he was sensibly nettled and perhaps a shade +abashed. Presently he sang again. + +Sang Richard: + + "Catullus might have made of words that seek + With rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways, + The perfect song, or in remoter days + Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek; + But I am not as they,--and dare not speak + Of you unworthily, and dare not praise + Perfection with imperfect roundelays, + And desecrate the prize I dare to seek. + + "I do not woo you, then, by fashioning + Vext analogues 'twixt you and Guenevere, + Nor do I come with agile lips that bring + The sugared periods of a sonneteer, + And bring no more--but just with, lips that cling + To yours, in murmuring, 'I love you, dear!'" + +Richard had resolved that Branwen should believe him. Tinsel, indeed! +then here was yet more tinsel which she must receive as gold. He was +very angry, because his vanity was hurt, and the pin-prick spurred him +to a counterfeit so specious that consciously he gloried in it. He was +superb, and she believed him now; there was no questioning the fact, +he saw it plainly, and with exultant cruelty; then curt as lightning +came the knowledge that what Branwen believed was the truth. + +Richard had taken just two strides toward this fair girl. Branwen +stayed motionless, her lips a little parted. The affairs of earth and +heaven were motionless throughout the moment, attendant, it seemed to +him; and to him his whole life was like a wave that trembled now at +full height, and he was aware of a new world all made of beauty and of +pity. Then the lute fell from his spread out hands, and Richard +sighed, and shrugged. + +"There is a task set me," he said--"it is God's work, I think. But I +do not know--I only know that you are very beautiful, Branwen," he +said, and in the name he found a new and piercing loveliness. + +And he said also: "Go! For I have loved many women, and, God help me! +I know that I have but to wheedle you and you, too, will yield! Yonder +is God's work to be done, and within me rages a commonwealth of +devils. Child! child!" he cried, "I am, and ever was, a coward, too +timid to face life without reserve, and always I laughed because I was +afraid to concede that anything is serious!" + +For a long while Richard lay at his ease in the lengthening shadows of +the afternoon. + +"I love her. She thinks me an elderly imbecile with a flat and reedy +singing-voice, and she is perfectly right. She has never even +entertained the notion of loving me. That is well, for to-morrow, or, +it may be, the day after, we must part forever. I would not have the +parting make her sorrowful--or not, at least, too unalterably +sorrowful. It is very well that Branwen does not love me. + +"Why should she? I am almost twice her age, an aging fellow now, +battered and selfish and too indolent to love her--say, as Gwyllem +loved her. I did well to kill that Gwyllem. I am profoundly glad I +killed him, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it; but, after all, the man +loved her in his fashion, and to the uttermost reach of his gross +nature. I love her in a rather more decorous and acceptable fashion, +it is true, but only a half of me loves her. The other half of me +remembers that I am aging, that Caradawc's hut is leaky, that, in +fine, bodily comfort is the single luxury of which one never tires. I +am a very contemptible creature, the empty scabbard of a man, +precisely as Owain said." This settled, Richard whistled to his dog. + +The sun had set. There were no shadows anywhere as Richard and his +sheep went homeward, but on every side the colors of the world were +more sombre. Twice his flock roused a covey of partridges which had +settled for the night. The screech-owl had come out of his hole, and +bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. There was +as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and this was +very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical that he +trudged away from this star. + +Next morning the Welshmen came, and now the trap was ready for Henry +of Lancaster. + +It befell just two days later, about noon, that while Richard idly +talked with Branwen a party of soldiers, some fifteen in number, rode +down the river's bank from the ford above. Their leader paused, then +gave an order. The men drew rein. He cantered forward. + +"God give you joy, fair sir," said Richard, when the cavalier was near +him. + +The new-comer raised his visor. "God give you eternal joy, my fair +cousin," he said, "and very soon. Now send away this woman before that +happens which must happen." + +"Do you plan," said Richard, "to disfigure the stage of our quiet +pastorals with murder?" + +"I design my own preservation," King Henry answered, "for while you +live my rule is insecure." + +"I am sorry," Richard said, "that in part my blood is yours." + +Twice he sounded his horn, and everywhere from rustling underwoods +arose the half-naked Welshmen. Said Richard: "You should read history +more carefully, Cousin Henry. You might have profited, as I have done, +by considering the trick which our grandfather, old Edward Longshanks, +played on the French King at Mezelais. As matters stand, your men are +one to ten. You are impotent. Now, now we balance our accounts! These +persons here will first deal with your followers. Then they will +conduct you to Glyndwyr, who has long desired to deal with you +himself, in privacy, since that Whit-Monday when you murdered his +son." + +The King began, "In mercy, sire--!" and Richard laughed a little, +saying: + +"That virtue is not overabundant among us of Oriander's blood, as we +both know. No, cousin, Fate and Time are merry jesters. See, now, +their latest mockery! You the King of England ride to Sycharth to your +death, and I the tender of sheep depart into London, without any +hindrance, to reign henceforward over these islands. To-morrow you are +worm's-meat, Cousin Henry: to-morrow, as yesterday, I am King of +England." + +Then Branwen gave one sharp, brief cry, and Richard forgot all things +saving this girl, and strode to her. He had caught up her hard, lithe +hands; against his lips he strained them close and very close. + +"Branwen--!" he said. His eyes devoured her. + +"Yes, King," she answered. "O King of England! O fool that I have been +to think you less!" + +In a while Richard said: "Well, I at least am not fool enough to think +of making you a king's whore. So I must choose between a peasant wench +and England. Now I choose, and how gladly! Branwen, help me to be more +than King of England!" + +Low and very low he spoke, and long and very long he gazed at her, and +neither seemed to breathe. Of what she thought I cannot tell you; but +in Richard there was no power of thought, only a great wonderment. +Why, between this woman's love and aught else there was no choice for +him, he knew upon a sudden. Perhaps he would thus worship her always, +he reflected: and then again, perhaps he would be tired of her before +long, just as all other persons seemed to abate in these infatuations: +meanwhile it was certain that he was very happy. No, he could not go +back to the throne and to the little French girl who was in law his +wife. + +And, as if from an immense distance, came to Richard the dogged voice +of Henry of Lancaster. "It is of common report in these islands that I +have a better right to the throne than you. As much was told our +grandfather, King Edward of happy memory, when he educated you and had +you acknowledged heir to the crown, but his love was so strong for his +son the Prince of Wales that nothing could alter his purpose. And +indeed if you had followed even the example of the Black Prince you +might still have been our King; but you have always acted so +contrarily to his admirable precedents as to occasion the rumor to be +generally believed throughout England that you were not, after all, +his son--" + +Richard had turned impatiently. "For the love of Heaven, truncate your +abominable periods. Be off with you. Yonder across that river is the +throne of England, which you appear, through some lunacy, to consider +a desirable possession. Take it, then; for, praise God! the sword has +found its sheath." + +The King answered: "I do not ask you to reconsider your dismissal, +assuredly--Richard," he cried, a little shaken, "I perceive that until +your death you will win contempt and love from every person." + +"Yes, yes, for many years I have been the playmate of the world," said +Richard; "but to-day I wash my hands, and set about another and more +laudable business. I had dreamed certain dreams, indeed--but what had +I to do with all this strife between the devil and the tiger? No, +Glyndwyr will set up Mortimer against you now, and you two must fight +it out. I am no more his tool, and no more your enemy, my +cousin--Henry," he said with quickening voice, "there was a time when +we were boys and played together, and there was no hatred between us, +and I regret that time!" + +"As God lives, I too regret that time!" the bluff, squinting King +replied. He stared at Richard for a while wherein each understood. +"Dear fool," Sire Henry said, "there is no man in all the world but +hates me saving only you." Then the proud King clapped spurs to his +proud horse and rode away. + +More lately Richard dismissed his wondering marauders. Now he and +Branwen were alone and a little troubled, since each was afraid of +that oncoming moment when their eyes must meet. + +So Richard laughed. "Praise God!" he wildly cried, "I am the greatest +fool unhanged!" + +She answered: "I am the happier for your folly. I am the happiest of +God's creatures." + +And Richard meditated. "Faith of a gentleman!" he declared; "but you +are nothing of the sort, and of this fact I happen to be quite +certain." Their lips met then and afterward their eyes; and each of +these ragged peasants was too glad for laughter. + +THE END OF THE EIGHTH NOVEL + + + + +IX + +THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE + + + "J'ay en mon cueur joyeusement + Escript, afin que ne l'oublie, + Ce refrain qu'ayme chierement, + C'estes vous de qui suis amye." + +THE NINTH NOVEL.--JEHANE OF NAVARRE, AFTER A WITHSTANDING OF ALL OTHER +ASSAULTS, IS IN A LONG DUEL, WHEREIN TIME AND COMMON-SENSE ARE +FLOUTED, AND KINGDOMS ARE SHAKEN, DETHRONED AND RECOMPENSED BY AN +ENDURING LUNACY. + + + + +_The Story of the Navarrese_ + + +In the year of grace 1386, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew (thus +Nicolas begins), came to the Spanish coast Messire Peyre de Lesnerac, +in a war-ship sumptuously furnished and manned by many persons of +dignity and wealth, in order suitably to escort the Princess Jehane +into Brittany, where she was to marry the Duke of that province. There +were now rejoicings throughout Navarre, in which the Princess took but +a nominal part and young Antoine Riczi none at all. + +This Antoine Riczi came to Jehane that August twilight in the hedged +garden. "King's daughter!" he sadly greeted her. "Duchess of Brittany! +Countess of Rougemont! Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of +Toufon and Guerche!" + +She answered, "No, my dearest,--I am that Jehane, whose only title is +the Constant Lover." And in the green twilight, lit as yet by one +low-hanging star alone, their lips and desperate young bodies clung, +now, it might be, for the last time. + +Presently the girl spoke. Her soft mouth was lax and tremulous, and +her gray eyes were more brilliant than the star yonder. The boy's arms +were about her, so that neither could be quite unhappy, yet. + +"Friend," said Jehane, "I have no choice. I must wed with this de +Montfort. I think I shall die presently. I have prayed God that I may +die before they bring me to the dotard's bed." + +Young Riczi held her now in an embrace more brutal. "Mine! mine!" he +snarled toward the obscuring heavens. + +"Yet it may be I must live. Friend, the man is very old. Is it wicked +to think of that? For I cannot but think of his great age." + +Then Riczi answered: "My desires--may God forgive me!--have clutched +like starving persons at that sorry sustenance. Friend! ah, fair, +sweet friend! the man is human and must die, but love, we read, is +immortal. I am wishful to kill myself, Jehane. But, oh, Jehane! dare +you to bid me live?" + +"Friend, as you love me, I entreat you to live. Friend, I crave of the +Eternal Father that if I falter in my love for you I may be denied +even the one bleak night of ease which Judas knows." The girl did not +weep; dry-eyed she winged a perfectly sincere prayer toward +incorruptible saints. Riczi was to remember the fact, and through long +years of severance. + +For even now, as Riczi went away from Jehane, a shrill singing-girl +was rehearsing, yonder behind the yew-hedge, the song which she was to +sing at Jehane's bridal feast. + +Sang this joculatrix: + + "When the Morning broke before us + Came the wayward Three astraying, + Chattering in babbling chorus, + (Obloquies of Aether saying),-- + Hoidens that, at pegtop playing, + Flung their Top where yet it whirls + Through the coil of clouds unstaying, + For the Fates are captious girls!" + +And upon the next day de Lesnerac bore young Jehane from Pampeluna and +presently to Saillé, where old Jehan the Brave took her to wife. She +lived as a queen, but she was a woman of infrequent laughter. + +She had Duke Jehan's adoration, and his barons' obeisancy, and his +villagers applauded her passage with stentorian shouts. She passed +interminable days amid bright curious arrasses and trod listlessly +over pavements strewn with flowers. She had fiery-hearted jewels, and +shimmering purple cloths, and much furniture adroitly carven, and many +tapestries of Samarcand and Baldach upon which were embroidered, by +brown fingers that time had turned long ago to Asian dust, innumerable +asps and deer and phoenixes and dragons and all the motley inhabitants +of air and of the thicket; but her memories, too, she had, and for a +dreary while she got no comfort because of them. Then ambition +quickened. + +Young Antoine Riczi likewise nursed his wound as best he might; but at +the end of the second year after Jehane's wedding his uncle, the +Vicomte de Montbrison--a gaunt man, with preoccupied and troubled +eyes--had summoned Antoine into Lyonnois and, after appropriate +salutation, had informed the lad that, as the Vicomte's heir, he was +to marry the Demoiselle Gerberge de Nérac upon the ensuing Michaelmas. + +"That I may not do," said Riczi; and since a chronicler that would +tempt fortune should never stretch the fabric of his wares too thin +(unlike Sir Hengist), I merely tell you these two dwelt together at +Montbrison for a decade: and the Vicomte swore at his nephew and +predicted this or that disastrous destination as often as Antoine +declined to marry the latest of his uncle's candidates,--in whom the +Vicomte was of an astonishing fertility. + +In the year of grace 1401 came the belated news that Duke Jehan had +closed his final day. "You will be leaving me!" the Vicomte growled; +"now, in my decrepitude, you will be leaving me! It is abominable, and +I shall in all likelihood disinherit you this very night." + +"Yet it is necessary," Riczi answered; and, filled with no unhallowed +joy, he rode for Vannes, in Brittany, where the Duchess-Regent held +her court. Dame Jehane had within that fortnight put aside her +mourning. She sat beneath a green canopy, gold-fringed and powdered +with many golden stars, when Riczi came again to her, and the rising +saps of spring were exercising their august and formidable influence. +She sat alone, by prearrangement, to one end of the high-ceiled and +radiant apartment; midway in the hall her lords and divers ladies were +gathered about a saltatrice and a jongleur, who were diverting the +courtiers, to the mincing accompaniment of a lute; but Jehane sat +apart from these, frail, and splendid with many jewels, and a little +sad. + +And Antoine Riczi found no power of speech within him at the first. +Silent he stood before her, still as an effigy, while meltingly the +jongleur sang. + +"Jehane!" said Antoine Riczi, in a while, "have you, then, forgotten, +O Jehane?" + +The resplendent woman had not moved at all. It was as though she were +some tinted and lavishly adorned statue of barbaric heathenry, and he +her postulant; and her large eyes appeared to judge an immeasurable +path, beyond him. Now her lips fluttered somewhat. "I am the Duchess +of Brittany," she said, in the phantom of a voice. "I am the Countess +of Rougemont. The Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of +Toufon and Guerche!... Jehane is dead." + +The man had drawn one audible breath. "You are that Jehane, whose only +title is the Constant Lover!" + +"Friend, the world smirches us," she said half-pleadingly, "I have +tasted too deep of wealth and power. I am drunk with a deadly wine, +and ever I thirst--I thirst--" + +"Jehane, do you remember that May morning in Pampeluna when first I +kissed you, and about us sang many birds? Then as now you wore a gown +of green, Jehane." + +"Friend, I have swayed kingdoms since." + +"Jehane, do you remember that August twilight in Pampeluna when last I +kissed you? Then as now you wore a gown of green, Jehane." + +"But I wore no such chain as this about my neck," the woman answered, +and lifted a huge golden collar garnished with emeralds and sapphires +and with many pearls. "Friend, the chain is heavy, yet I lack the will +to cast it off. I lack the will, Antoine." And now with a sudden shout +of mirth her courtiers applauded the evolutions of the saltatrice. + +"King's daughter!" said Riczi then; "O perilous merchandise! a god +came to me and a sword had pierced his breast. He touched the gold +hilt of it and said, 'Take back your weapon.' I answered, 'I do not +know you.' 'I am Youth' he said; 'take back your weapon.'" + +"It is true," she responded, "it is lamentably true that after +to-night we are as different persons, you and I." + +He said: "Jehane, do you not love me any longer? Remember old years +and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God abhors nothing +so much as unfaith. For your own sake, Jehane,--ah, no, not for your +sake nor for mine, but for the sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, so +you tell me, time has slain!" + +Once or twice she blinked, as if dazzled by a light of intolerable +splendor, but otherwise she stayed rigid. "You have dared, messire, to +confront me with the golden-hearted, clean-eyed Navarrese that once +was I! and I requite." The austere woman rose. "Messire, you swore to +me, long since, eternal service. I claim my right in domnei. +Yonder--gray-bearded, the man in black and silver--is the Earl of +Worcester, the King of England's ambassador, in common with whom the +wealthy dowager of Brittany has signed a certain contract. Go you, +then, with Worcester into England, as my proxy, and in that island, as +my proxy, become the wife of the King of England. Messire, your +audience is done." + +Riczi said this: "Can you hurt me any more, Jehane?--no, even in hell +they cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face +I fling faith like a glove--old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,--and +I will go, Jehane." + +Her heart raged. "Poor, glorious fool!" she thought; "had you but the +wit even now to use me brutally, even now to drag me from this +daïs--!" Instead he went away from her smilingly, treading through the +hall with many affable salutations, while the jongleur sang. + +Sang the jongleur: + + "There is a land those hereabout + Ignore ... Its gates are barred + By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt. + These mercifully guard + That land we seek--the land so fair!-- + And all the fields thereof, + Where daffodils flaunt everywhere + And ouzels chant of love,-- + Lest we attain the Middle-Land, + Whence clouded well-springs rise, + And vipers from a slimy strand + Lift glittering cold eyes. + + "Now, the parable all may understand, + And surely you know the name of the land! + Ah, never a guide or ever a chart + May safely lead you about this land,-- + The Land of the Human Heart!" + +And the following morning, being duly empowered, Antoine Riczi sailed +for England in company with the Earl of Worcester; and upon Saint +Richard's day the next ensuing was, at Eltham, as proxy of Jehane, +married in his own person to the bloat King Henry, the fourth of that +name to reign. This king was that same squinting Harry of Derby +(called also Henry of Lancaster and Bolingbroke) who stole his +cousin's crown, and about whom I have told you in the preceding story. +First Sire Henry placed the ring on Riczi's finger, and then spoke +Antoine Riczi, very loud and clear: + +"I, Antoine Riczi,--in the name of my worshipful lady, Dame Jehane, +the daughter of Messire Charles until lately King of Navarre, the +Duchess of Brittany and the Countess of Rougemont,--do take you, Sire +Henry of Lancaster, King of England and in title of France, and Lord +of Ireland, to be my husband; and thereto I, Antoine Riczi, in the +spirit of my said lady"--the speaker paused here to regard the gross +hulk of masculinity before him, and then smiled very sadly--"in +precisely the spirit of my said lady, I plight you my troth." + +Afterward the King made him presents of some rich garments of scarlet +trimmed with costly furs, and of four silk belts studded with silver +and gold, and with valuable clasps, of which the owner might well be +proud, and Riczi returned to Lyonnois. "Depardieux!" his uncle said; +"so you return alone!" + +"I return as did Prince Troilus," said Riczi--"to boast to you of +liberal entertainment in the tent of Diomede." + +"You are certainly an inveterate fool," the Vicomte considered after a +prolonged appraisal of his face, "since there is always a deal of +other pink-and-white flesh as yet unmortgaged--Boy with my brother's +eyes!" the Vicomte said, in another voice; "I have heard of the task +put upon you: and I would that I were God to punish as is fitting! But +you are welcome home, my lad." + +So these two abode together at Montbrison for a long time, and in the +purlieus of that place hunted and hawked, and made sonnets once in a +while, and read aloud from old romances some five days out of the +seven. The verses of Riczi were in the year of grace 1410 made public, +not without acclamation; and thereafter the stripling Comte de +Charolais, future heir to all Burgundy and a zealous patron of rhyme, +was much at Montbrison, and there conceived for Antoine Riczi such +admiration as was possible to a very young man only. + +In the year of grace 1412 the Vicomte, being then bedridden, died +without any disease and of no malady save the inherencies of his age. +"I entreat of you, my nephew," he said at last, "that always you use +as touchstone the brave deed you did at Eltham. It is necessary for a +gentleman to serve his lady according to her commandments, but you +performed the most absurd and the most cruel task which any woman ever +imposed upon her lover and servitor in domnei. I laugh at you, and I +envy you." Thus he died, about Martinmas. + +Now was Antoine Riczi a powerful baron, but he got no comfort of his +lordship, because that old incendiary, the King of Darkness, daily +added fuel to a smouldering sorrow until grief quickened into vaulting +flames of wrath and of disgust. + +"What now avail my riches?" said the Vicomte. "How much wealthier was +I when I was loved, and was myself an eager lover! I relish no other +pleasures than those of love. I am Love's sot, drunk with a deadly +wine, poor fool, and ever I thirst. All my chattels and my acres +appear to me to be bright vapors, and the more my dominion and my +power increase, the more rancorously does my heart sustain its +bitterness over having been robbed of that fair merchandise which is +the King of England's. To hate her is scant comfort and to despise her +none at all, since it follows that I who am unable to forget the +wanton am even more to be despised than she. I will go into England +and execute what mischief I may against her." + +The new Vicomte de Montbrison set forth for Paris, first to do homage +for his fief, and secondly to be accredited for some plausible mission +into England. But in Paris he got disquieting news. Jehane's husband +was dead, and her stepson Henry, the fifth monarch of that name to +reign in Britain, had invaded France to support preposterous claims +which the man advanced to the crown of that latter kingdom; and as the +earth is altered by the advent of winter, so was the appearance of +France transformed by King Henry's coming, and everywhere the nobles +were stirred up to arms, the castles were closed, the huddled cities +were fortified, and on every side arose entrenchments. + +Thus through this sudden turn was the new Vicomte, the dreamer and the +recluse, caught up by the career of events, as a straw is borne away +by a torrent, when the French lords marched with their vassals to +Harfleur, where they were soundly drubbed by the King of England; as +afterward at Agincourt. + +But in the year of grace 1417 there was a breathing space for +discredited France, and presently the Vicomte de Montbrison was sent +into England, as ambassador. He got in London a fruitless audience of +King Henry, whose demands were such as rendered a renewal of the war +inevitable; and afterward got, in the month of April, about the day of +Palm Sunday, at the Queen's dower-palace of Havering-Bower, an +interview with Queen Jehane.[*] + +[*Nicolas unaccountably omits to mention that during the French +wars she had ruled England as Regent with signal capacity,--although +this fact, as you will see more lately, is the pivot of his +chronicle.] + +A curled pert page took the Vicomte to where she sat alone, by +prearrangement, in a chamber with painted walls, profusely lighted by +the sun, and made pretence to weave a tapestry. When the page had gone +she rose and cast aside the shuttle, and then with a glad and wordless +cry stumbled toward the Vicomte. "Madame and Queen--!" he coldly said. + +His judgment found in her a quite ordinary, frightened woman, aging +now, but still very handsome in these black and shimmering gold robes; +but all his other faculties found her desirable: and with a contained +hatred he had perceived, as if by the terse illumination of a +thunderbolt, that he could never love any woman save the woman whom he +most despised. + +She said: "I had forgotten. I had remembered only you, Antoine, and +Navarre, and the clean-eyed Navarrese--" Now for a little, Jehane +paced the gleaming and sun-drenched apartment as a bright leopardess +might tread her cage. Then she wheeled. "Friend, I think that God +Himself has deigned to avenge you. All misery my reign has been. First +Hotspur, then prim Worcester harried us. Came Glyndwyr afterward to +prick us with his devils' horns. Followed the dreary years that linked +me to the rotting corpse which God's leprosy devoured while the poor +furtive thing yet moved, and endured its share in the punishment of +Manuel's poisonous blood. All misery, Antoine! And now I live beneath +a sword." + +"You have earned no more," he said. "You have earned no more, O +Jehane! whose only title is the Constant Lover!" He spat it out. + +She came uncertainly toward him, as though he had been some not +implacable knave with a bludgeon. "For the King hates me," she +plaintively said, "and I live beneath a sword. The big, fierce-eyed +boy has hated me from the first, for all his lip-courtesy. And now he +lacks the money to pay his troops, and I am the wealthiest person +within his realm. I am a woman and alone in a foreign land. So I must +wait, and wait, and wait, Antoine, till he devises some trumped-up +accusation. Friend, I live as did Saint Damoclus, beneath a sword. +Antoine!" she wailed--for now the pride of Queen Jehane was shattered +utterly--"I am held as a prisoner for all that my chains are of gold." + +"Yet it was not until of late," he observed, "that you disliked the +metal which is the substance of all crowns." + +And now the woman lifted toward him her massive golden necklace, +garnished with emeralds and sapphires and with many pearls, and in the +sunlight the gems were tawdry things. "Friend, the chain is heavy, and +I lack the power to cast it off. The Navarrese we know of wore no such +perilous fetters. Ah, you should have mastered me at Vannes. You could +have done so, very easily. But you only talked--oh, Mary pity us! you +only talked!--and I could find only a servant where I had sore need to +find a master. Let all women pity me!" + +But now came many armed soldiers into the apartment. With spirit Queen +Jehane turned to meet them, and you saw that she was of royal blood, +for now the pride of many emperors blazed and informed her body as +light occupies a lantern. "At last you come for me, messieurs?" + +"Whereas," the leader of these soldiers read from a +parchment--"whereas the King's stepmother, Queen Jehane, is accused by +certain persons of an act of witch-craft that with diabolical and +subtile methods wrought privily to destroy the King, the said Dame +Jehane is by the King committed (all her attendants being removed) to +the custody of Sir John Pelham, who will, at the King's pleasure, +confine her within Pevensey Castle, there to be kept under Sir John's +control: the lands and other properties of the said Dame Jehane being +hereby forfeit to the King, whom God preserve!" + +"Harry of Monmouth!" said Jehane,--"ah, my tall stepson, could I but +come to you, very quietly, with a knife--!" She shrugged her +shoulders, and the gold about her person glittered in the sunlight. +"Witchcraft! ohimé, one never disproves that. Friend, now are you +avenged the more abundantly." + +"Young Riczi is avenged," the Vicomte said; "and I came hither +desiring vengeance." + +She wheeled, a lithe flame (he thought) of splendid fury. "And in the +gutter Jehane dares say what Queen Jehane upon the throne might never +say. Had I reigned all these years as mistress not of England but of +Europe,--had nations wheedled me in the place of barons,--young Riczi +had been none the less avenged. Bah! what do these so-little persons +matter? Take now your petty vengeance! drink deep of it! and know that +always within my heart the Navarrese has lived to shame me! Know that +to-day you despise Jehane, the purchased woman! and that Jehane loves +you! and that the love of proud Jehane creeps like a beaten cur toward +your feet, in the sight of common men! and know that Riczi is +avenged,--you milliner!" + +"Into England I came desiring vengeance--Apples of Sodom! O bitter +fruit!" the Vicomte thought; "O fitting harvest of a fool's assiduous +husbandry!" + +They took her from him: and that afternoon, after long meditation, the +Vicomte de Montbrison entreated a second private audience of King +Henry, and readily obtained it. "Unhardy is unseely," the Vicomte said +at this interview's conclusion. The tale tells that the Vicomte +returned to France and within this realm assembled all such lords as +the abuses of the Queen-Regent Isabeau had more notoriously +dissatisfied. + +The Vicomte had upon occasion an invaluable power of speech; and now, +so great was the devotion of love's dupe, so heartily, so hastily, did +he design to remove the discomforts of Queen Jehane, that now his +eloquence was twin to Belial's insidious talking when that fiend +tempts us to some proud iniquity. + +Then presently these lords had sided with King Henry, as did the +Vicomte de Montbrison, in open field. Next, as luck would have it, +Jehan Sans-Peur was slain at Montereau; and a little later the new +Duke of Burgundy, who loved the Vicomte as he loved no other man, had +shifted his coat, forsaking France. These treacheries brought down the +wavering scales of warfare, suddenly, with an aweful clangor; and now +in France clean-hearted persons spoke of the Vicomte de Montbrison as +they would speak of Ganelon or of Iscariot, and in every market-place +was King Henry proclaimed as governor of the realm. + +Meantime Queen Jehane had been conveyed to prison and lodged therein. +She had the liberty of a tiny garden, high-walled, and of two scantily +furnished chambers. The brace of hard-featured females whom Pelham had +provided for the Queen's attendance might speak to her of nothing that +occurred without the gates of Pevensey, and she saw no other persons +save her confessor, a triple-chinned Dominican; had men already lain +Jehane within the massive and gilded coffin of a queen the outer world +would have made as great a turbulence in her ears. + +But in the year of grace 1422, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew, +and about vespers--for thus it wonderfully fell out,--one of those +grim attendants brought to her the first man, save the fat confessor, +whom the Queen had seen within five years. The proud, frail woman +looked and what she saw was the inhabitant of all her dreams. + +Said Jehane: "This is ill done. Time has avenged you. Be contented +with that knowledge, and, for Heaven's sake, do not endeavor to +moralize over the ruin which Heaven has made, and justly made, of +Queen Jehane, as I perceive you mean to do." She leaned backward in +the chair, very coarsely clad in brown, but knowing that her coloring +was excellent, that she had miraculously preserved her figure, and +that she did not look her real age by a good ten years. Such +reflections beget spiritual comfort even in a prison. + +"Friend," the lean-faced man now said, "I do not come with such +intent, as my mission will readily attest, nor to any ruin, as your +mirror will attest. Instead, madame, I come as the emissary of King +Henry, now dying at Vincennes, and with letters to the lords and +bishops of his council. Dying, the man restores to you your liberty +and your dower-lands, your bed and all your movables, and six gowns of +such fashion and such color as you may elect." + +Then with hurried speech he told her of five years' events: of how +within that period King Henry had conquered France, and had married +the French King's daughter, and had begotten a boy who would presently +inherit the united realms of France and England, since in the supreme +hour of triumph King Henry had been stricken with a mortal sickness, +and now lay dying, or perhaps already dead, at Vincennes; and of how +with his penultimate breath the prostrate conqueror had restored to +Queen Jehane all properties and all honors which she formerly enjoyed. + +"I shall once more be Regent," the woman said when the Vicomte had +made an end; "Antoine, I shall presently be Regent both of France and +of England, since Dame Katharine is but a child." Jehane stood +motionless save for the fine hands that plucked the air. "Mistress of +Europe! absolute mistress, and with an infant ward! now, may God have +mercy on my unfriends, for they will soon perceive great need of it!" + +"Yet was mercy ever the prerogative of royal persons," the Vicomte +suavely said, "and the Navarrese we know of was both royal and very +merciful, O Constant Lover." + +The speech was as a whip-lash. Abruptly suspicion kindled in her +shrewd gray eyes. "Harry of Monmouth feared neither man nor God. It +needed more than any death-bed repentance to frighten him into +restoring my liberty." There was a silence. "You, a Frenchman, come as +the emissary of King Henry who has devastated France! are there no +English lords, then, left alive of his, army?" + +The Vicomte de Montbrison said; "There is at all events no person +better fitted to patch up this dishonorable business of your +captivity, in which no clean man would care to meddle." + +She appraised this, and said with entire irrelevance: "The world has +smirched you, somehow. At last you have done something save consider +how badly I treated you. I praise God, Antoine, for it brings you +nearer." + +He told her all. King Henry, it appeared, had dealt with him at +Havering in perfect frankness. The King needed money for his wars in +France, and failing the seizure of Jehane's enormous wealth, had +exhausted every resource. "And France I mean to have," the King said. +"Now the world knows you enjoy the favor of the Comte de Charolais; so +get me an alliance with Burgundy against my imbecile brother of +France, and Dame Jehane shall repossess her liberty. There you have my +price." + +"And this price I paid," the Vicomte sternly said, "for 'Unhardy is +unseely,' Satan whispered, and I knew that Duke Philippe trusted me. +Yea, all Burgundy I marshalled under your stepson's banner, and for +three years I fought beneath his loathed banner, until at Troyes we +had trapped and slain the last loyal Frenchman. And to-day in France +my lands are confiscate, and there is not an honest Frenchman but +spits upon my name. All infamy I come to you for this last time, +Jehane! as a man already dead I come to you, Jehane, for in France +they thirst to murder me, and England has no further need of +Montbrison, her blunted and her filthy instrument!" + +The woman nodded here. "You have set my thankless service above your +life, above your honor. I find the rhymester glorious and very vile." + +"All vile," he answered; "and outworn! King's daughter, I swore to +you, long since, eternal service. Of love I freely gave you yonder in +Navarre, as yonder at Eltham I crucified my innermost heart for your +delectation. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face I fling +faith like a glove--outworn, it may be, and God knows, unclean! Yet I, +at least, keep faith! Lands and wealth have I given, up for you, O +king's daughter, and life itself have I given you, and lifelong +service have I given you, and all that I had save honor; and at the +last I give you honor, too. Now let the naked fool depart, Jehane, for +he has nothing more to give." + +While the Vicomte de Montbrison spoke thus, she had leaned upon the +sill of an open casement. "Indeed, it had been better," she said, +still with her face averted, and gazing downward at the tree-tops +beneath, "it had been far better had we never met. For this love of +ours has proven a tyrannous and evil lord. I have had everything, and +upon each feast of will and sense the world afforded me this love has +swept down, like a harpy--was it not a harpy you called the bird in +that old poem of yours?--to rob me of delight. And you have had +nothing, for he has pilfered you of life, giving only dreams in +exchange, my poor Antoine, and he has led you at the last to infamy. +We are as God made us, and--I may not understand why He permits this +despotism." + +Thereafter, somewhere below, a peasant sang as he passed supperward +through the green twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging star alone. + +Sang the peasant: + + "King Jesus hung upon the Cross, + 'And have ye sinned?' quo' He,--. + 'Nay, Dysmas, 'tis no honest loss + When Satan cogs the dice ye toss, + And thou shall sup with Me,-- + Sedebis apud angelos, + Quia amavisti!' + + "At Heaven's Gate was Heaven's Queen, + 'And have ye sinned?' quo' She,-- + 'And would I hold him worth a bean + That durst not seek, because unclean, + My cleansing charity?-- + Speak thou that wast the Magdalene, + Quia amavisti!'" + +"It may be that in some sort the jingle answers me!" then said Jehane; +and she began with an odd breathlessness, "Friend, when King Henry +dies--and even now he dies--shall I not as Regent possess such power +as no woman has ever wielded in Europe? can aught prevent this?" + +"It is true," he answered. "You leave this prison to rule over England +again, and over conquered France as well, and naught can prevent it." + +"Unless, friend, I were wedded to a Frenchman. Then would the stern +English lords never permit that I have any finger in the government." +She came to him with conspicuous deliberation and rested her hands +upon his breast. "Friend, I am weary of these tinsel splendors. What +are this England and this France to me, who crave the real kingdom?" + +Her mouth was tremulous and lax, and her gray eyes were more brilliant +than the star yonder. The man's arms were about her, and of the man's +face I cannot tell you. "King's daughter! mistress of half Europe! I +am a beggar, an outcast, as a leper among honorable persons." + +But it was as though he had not spoken. "Friend, it was for this I +have outlived these garish, fevered years, it was this which made me +glad when I was a child and laughed without knowing why. That I might +to-day give up this so-great power for love of you, my all-incapable +and soiled Antoine, was, as I now know, the end to which the Eternal +Father created me. For, look you," she pleaded, "to surrender absolute +dominion over half Europe is a sacrifice. Assure me that it is a +sacrifice, Antoine! O glorious fool, delude me into the belief that I +surrender much in choosing you! Nay, I know it is as nothing beside +what you have given up for me, but it is all I have--it is all I have, +Antoine!" + +He drew a deep and big-lunged breath that seemed to inform his being +with an indomitable vigor; and grief and doubtfulness went quite away +from him. "Love leads us," he said, "and through the sunlight of the +world Love leads us, and through the filth of it Love leads us, but +always in the end, if we but follow without swerving, Love leads +upward. Yet, O God upon the Cross! Thou that in the article of death +didst pardon Dysmas! as what maimed warriors of life, as what bemired +travellers in muddied byways, must we presently come to Thee!" + +"Ah, but we will come hand in hand," she answered; "and He will +comprehend." + +THE END OF THE NINTH NOVEL + + + + +X + +THE STORY OF THE FOX-BRUSH + + + "Dame serez de mon cueur, sans debat, + Entierement, jusques mort me consume. + Laurier souëf qui pour mon droit combat, + Olivier franc, m'ostant toute amertume." + +THE TENTH NOVEL.--KATHARINE OF VALOIS IS LOVED BY A HUNTSMAN, AND +LOVES HIM GREATLY; THEN FINDS HIM, TO HER HORROR, AN IMPOSTOR; AND FOR +A SUFFICIENT REASON CONSENTS TO MARRY QUITE ANOTHER PERSON, NOT ALL +UNWILLINGLY. + + + + +_The Story of the Fox-Brush_ + + +In the year of grace 1417, about Martinmas (thus Nicolas begins), +Queen Isabeau fled with her daughter the Lady Katharine to Chartres. +There the Queen was met by the Duke of Burgundy, and these two laid +their heads together to such good effect that presently they got back +into Paris, and in its public places massacred some three thousand +Armagnacs. That, however, is a matter which touches history; the root +of our concernment is that, when the Queen and the Duke rode off to +attend to this butcher's business, the Lady Katharine was left behind +in the Convent of Saint Scholastica, which then stood upon the +outskirts of Chartres, in the bend of the Eure just south of that +city. She dwelt for a year in this well-ordered place. + +There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint John the +Baptist, the fine August morning that starts the tale. Katharine the +Fair, men called her, with considerable show of reason. She was very +tall, and slim as a rush. Her eyes were large and black, having an +extreme lustre, like the gleam of undried ink,--a lustre at some times +uncanny. Her abundant hair, too, was black, and to-day seemed doubly +sombre by contrast with the gold netting which confined it. Her mouth +was scarlet, all curves, and her complexion was famous for its +brilliancy; only a precisian would have objected that she possessed +the Valois nose, long and thin and somewhat unduly overhanging the +mouth. + +To-day as she came through the orchard, crimson garbed, she paused +with lifted eyebrows. Beyond the orchard wall there was a hodgepodge +of noises, among which a nice ear might distinguish the clatter of +hoofs, a yelping and scurrying, and a contention of soft bodies, and +above all a man's voice commanding the turmoil. She was seventeen, so +she climbed into the crotch of an apple-tree and peered over the wall. + +He was in rusty brown and not unshabby; but her regard swept over this +to his face, and there noted how his eyes shone like blue winter stars +under the tumbled yellow hair, and noted the flash of his big teeth as +he swore between them. He held a dead fox by the brush, which he was +cutting off; two hounds, lank and wolfish, were scaling his huge body +in frantic attempts to get at the carrion. A horse grazed close at +hand. + +So for a heart-beat she saw him. Then he flung the tailless body to +the hounds, and in the act spied two black eyes peeping through the +apple-leaves. He laughed, all mirth to the heels of him. +"Mademoiselle, I fear we have disturbed your devotions. But I had not +heard that it was a Benedictine custom to rehearse aves in tree-tops." +Then, as she leaned forward, both elbows resting more comfortably upon +the wall, and thereby disclosing her slim body among the foliage like +a crimson flower green-calyxed, he said, "You are not a nun--Blood of +God! you are the Princess Katharine!" + +The nuns, her present guardians, would have declared the ensuing +action horrific, for Katharine smiled frankly at him and asked how +could he thus recognise her at one glance. + +He answered slowly: "I have seen your portrait. Hah, your portrait!" +he jeered, head flung back and big teeth glinting in the sunlight. +"There is a painter who merits crucifixion." + +She considered this indicative of a cruel disposition, but also of a +fine taste in the liberal arts. Aloud she stated: + +"You are not a Frenchman, messire. I do not understand how you can +have seen my portrait." + +The man stood for a moment twiddling the fox-brush. "I am a harper, my +Princess. I have visited the courts of many kings, though never that +of France. I perceive I have been woefully unwise." + +This trenched upon insolence--the look of his eyes, indeed, carried it +well past the frontier,--but she found the statement interesting. +Straightway she touched the kernel of those fear-blurred legends +whispered about Dom Manuel's reputed descendants. + +"You have, then, seen the King of England?" + +"Yes, Highness." + +"Is it true that in him, the devil blood of Oriander has gone mad, and +that he eats children--like Agrapard and Angoulaffre of the Broken +Teeth?" + +His gaze widened. "I have heard a deal of scandal concerning the man. +But certainly I never heard that." + +Katharine settled back, luxuriously, in the crotch of the apple-tree. +"Tell me about him." + +Composedly he sat down upon the grass and began to acquaint her with +his knowledge and opinions concerning Henry, the fifth of that name to +reign in England, and the son of that squinting Harry of Derby about +whom I have told you so much before. + +Katharine punctuated the harper's discourse with eager questionings, +which are not absolutely to our purpose. In the main, this harper +thought the man now buffeting France a just king, and he had heard, +when the crown was laid aside, Sire Henry was sufficiently jovial, and +even prankish. The harper educed anecdotes. He considered that the +King would manifestly take Rouen, which the insatiable man was now +besieging. Was the King in treaty for the hand of the Infanta of +Aragon? Yes, he undoubtedly was. + +Katharine sighed her pity for this ill-starred woman. "And now tell me +about yourself." + +He was, it appeared, Alain Maquedonnieux, a harper by vocation, and by +birth a native of Ireland. Beyond the fact that it was a savage +kingdom adjoining Cataia, Katharine knew nothing of Ireland. The +harper assured her that in this she was misinformed, since the kings +of England claimed Ireland as an appanage, though the Irish themselves +were of two minds as to the justice of these pretensions; all in all, +he considered that Ireland belonged to Saint Patrick, and that the +holy man had never accredited a vicar. + +"Doubtless, by the advice of God," Alain said: "for I have read in +Master Roger de Wendover's Chronicles of how at the dread day of +judgment all the Irish are to muster before the high and pious +Patrick, as their liege lord and father in the spirit, and by him be +conducted into the presence of God; and of how, by virtue of Saint +Patrick's request, all the Irish will die seven years to an hour +before the second coming of Christ, in order to give the blessed saint +sufficient time to marshal his company, which is considerable." +Katharine admitted the convenience of this arrangement, as well as the +neglect of her education. Alain gazed up at her for a long while, as +if in reflection, and presently said: "Doubtless the Lady Heleine of +Argos also was thus starry-eyed and found in books less diverting +reading than in the faces of men." It flooded Katharine's cheeks with +a livelier hue, but did not vex her irretrievably; if she chose to +read this man's face, the meaning was plain enough. + +I give you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is +trivial. But it was a day when one entered love's wardship with a +plunge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by bit, as +though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a long while, +with laughter mutually provoked and shared, with divers eloquent and +dangerous pauses. The harper squatted upon the ground, the Princess +leaned over the wall; but to all intent they sat together upon the +loftiest turret of Paradise, and it was a full two hours before +Katharine hinted at departure. + +Alain rose, approaching the wall. "To-morrow I ride for Milan to take +service with Duke Filippo. I had broken my journey these three days +past at Châteauneuf yonder, where this fox has been harrying my host's +chickens. To-day I went out to slay him, and he led me, his murderer, +to the fairest lady earth may boast. Do you not think that, in +returning good for evil, this fox was a true Christian, my Princess?" + +Katharine said: "I lament his destruction. Farewell, Messire Alain! +And since chance brought you hither--" + +"Destiny brought me hither," Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his +eyes. "Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she +continue so." But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be, +Alain shook his tawny head. "Presently you shall know, Highness, but +not now. I return to Châteauneuf on certain necessary businesses; +to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti's livery. +Farewell!" He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the +hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus +Tristran de Léonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, +thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. +She went to her apartments, singing an inane song about the amorous +and joyful time of spring when everything and everybody is happy,-- + + "El tems amoreus plein de joie, + El tems où tote riens s'esgaie,--" + +and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were born every day, +she reflected, such hosts of women-children, who were not princesses, +and therefore compelled to marry detestable kings. + +Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a +cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant +trees. In the slaty twilight the garden's verdure was lustreless, the +grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed +like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere +a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, +two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers +swaddled by ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional +scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest +as much; and presently came a singing, less musical than that of many +a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart +in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely. + +Sang Alain: + + "O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, + Be not too obdurate to us who pray + That this our transient grant of youth be spent + In laughter as befits a holiday, + From which the evening summons us away, + From which to-morrow wakens us to strife + And toil and grief and wisdom,--and to-day + Grudge us not life! + + "O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, + Why need our elders trouble us at play? + We know that very soon we shall repent + The idle follies of our holiday, + And being old, shall be as wise as they: + But now we are not wise, and lute and fife + Plead sweetlier than axioms,--so to-day + Grudge us not life! + + "O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, + You have given us youth--and must we cast away + The cup undrained and our one coin unspent + Because our elders' beards and hearts are gray? + They have forgotten that if we delay + Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife + Or cord or fever flouts the prayer we pray-- + 'Grudge us not life!' + + "Madam, recall that in the sun we play + But for an hour, then have the worm for wife, + The tomb for habitation--and to-day + Grudge us not life!" + +Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the crotch +of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but the +Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort. + +"You came!" this harper said, transfigured; and then again, "You +came!" + +She breathed, "Yes." + +So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found +adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man's mind not +a grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to leer at his +unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man and woman, +meeting, knew no sweeter terror. + +It was by the minstrel that a familiar earth and the grating speech of +earth were earlier regained. "The affair is of the suddenest," Alain +observed, and he now swung the lute behind him. He indicated no +intention of touching her, though he might easily have done so as he +sat there exalted by the height of his horse. "A meteor arrives with +more prelude. But Love is an arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has +seized it, and accordingly I would now brave hell to come to you, and +finding you there, would esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already +made my prayer to Destiny that she concede me love. Now of God, our +Father and Master, I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For, +God willing, I shall come to you again, even if in order to do this I +have to split the world like a rotten orange." + +"Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!" Katharine said. "You are a +minstrel and I am a king's daughter." + +"Is it madness? Why, then, I think sane persons are to be +commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this some design. Across half +the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Hey, God's face!" Alain swore; +"the foxes which Samson, that old sinewy captain, loosed among the +corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as this fox has set +afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and olives spoilt, a bushel +or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin. +There will be martial argument shortly if you bid me come again." + +"I bid you come," said Katharine; and after they had stared at each +other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It was through a dank +and tear-flawed world that she stumbled conventward, while out of the +east the sun came bathed in mists, a watery sun no brighter than a +silver coin. + +And for a month the world seemed no less dreary, but about Michaelmas +the Queen-Regent sent for her. At the Hôtel de Saint-Pol matters were +much the same. Katharine found her mother in foul-mouthed rage over +the failure of a third attempt to poison the Dauphin of Vienne, as +Queen Isabeau had previously poisoned her two elder sons; I might here +trace out a curious similitude between the Valois and that +dragon-spawned race which Jason very anciently slew at Colchis, since +the world was never at peace so long as any two of them existed. But +King Charles greeted his daughter with ampler deference, esteeming her +to be the wife of Presbyter John, the tyrant of Aethiopia. However, +ingenuity had just suggested card-playing for King Charles' amusement, +and he paid little attention nowadays to any one save his opponent at +this new game. + +So the French King chirped his senile jests over the card-table, while +the King of England was besieging the French city of Rouen sedulously +and without mercy. In late autumn an armament from Ireland joined +Henry's forces. The Irish fought naked, it was said, with long knives. +Katharine heard discreditable tales of these Irish, and reflected how +gross are the exaggerations of rumor. + +In the year of grace 1419, in January, the burgesses of Rouen, having +consumed their horses, and finding frogs and rats unpalatable, yielded +the town. It was the Queen-Regent who brought the news to Katharine. + +"God is asleep," the Queen said; "and while He nods, the Butcher of +Agincourt has stolen our good city of Rouen." She sat down and +breathed heavily. "Never was any poor woman so pestered as I! The +puddings to-day were quite uneatable, as you saw for yourself, and on +Sunday the Englishman entered Rouen in great splendor, attended by his +chief nobles; but the Butcher rode alone, and before him went a page +carrying a fox-brush on the point of his lance. I put it to you, is +that the contrivance of a sane man? Euh! euh!" Dame Isabeau squealed +on a sudden; "you are bruising me." + +Katharine had gripped her by the shoulder. "The King of England--a +tall, fair man? with big teeth? a tiny wen upon his neck--here--and +with his left cheek scarred? with blue eyes, very bright, bright as +tapers?" She poured out her questions in a torrent, and awaited the +answer, seeming not to breathe at all. + +"I believe so," the Queen said, "and they say, too, that he has the +damned squint of old Manuel the Redeemer." + +"O God!" said Katharine. + +"Ay, our only hope now. And may God show him no more mercy than has +this misbegotten English butcher shown us!" the good lady desired, +with fervor. "The hog, having won our Normandy, is now advancing on +Paris itself. He repudiated the Aragonish alliance last August; and +until last August he was content with Normandy, they tell us, but now +he swears to win all France. The man is a madman, and Scythian +Tamburlaine was more lenient. And I do not believe that in all France +there is a cook who understands his business." She went away +whimpering, and proceeded to get tipsy. + +The Princess remained quite still, as Dame Isabeau had left her; you +may see a hare crouch so at sight of the hounds. Finally the girl +spoke aloud. "Until last August!" Katharine said. "Until last August! +_Poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin, now that you bid me come +to you again_. And I bade this devil's grandson come to me, as my +lover!" Presently she went into her oratory and began to pray. + +In the midst of her invocation she wailed: "Fool, fool! How could I +have thought him less than a king!" + +You are to imagine her breast thus adrum with remorse and hatred of +herself, the while that town by town fell before the invader like +card-houses. Every rumor of defeat--and the news of some fresh defeat +came daily--was her arraignment; impotently she cowered at God's +knees, knowing herself a murderess, whose infamy was still afoot, +outpacing her prayers, whose victims were battalions. Tarpeia and +Pisidicé and Rahab were her sisters; she hungered in her abasement for +Judith's nobler guilt. + +In May he came to her. A truce was patched up, and French and English +met amicably in a great plain near Meulan. A square space was staked +out and on three sides boarded in, the fourth side being the river +Seine. This enclosure the Queen-Regent, Jehan of Burgundy, and +Katharine entered from the French side. Simultaneously the English +King appeared, accompanied by his brothers the Dukes of Clarence and +Gloucester, and followed by the Earl of Warwick. Katharine raised her +eyes with I know not what lingering hope; but it was he, a young Zeus +now, triumphant and uneager. In his helmet in place of a plume he wore +a fox-brush spangled with jewels. + +These six entered the tent pitched for the conference--the hanging of +blue velvet embroidered with fleurs-de-lys of gold blurred before the +girl's eyes,--and there the Earl of Warwick embarked upon a sea of +rhetoric. His French was indifferent, his periods were interminable, +and his demands exorbitant; in brief, the King of England wanted +Katharine and most of France, with a reversion at the French King's +death of the entire kingdom. Meanwhile Sire Henry sat in silence, his +eyes glowing. + +"I have come," he said, under cover of Warwick's oratory--"I have come +again, my lady." + +Katharine's gaze flickered over him. "Liar!" she said, very softly. +"Has God no thunders remaining in His armory that this vile thief +still goes unblasted? Would you steal love as well as kingdoms?" + +His ruddy face was now white. "I love you, Katharine." + +"Yes," she answered, "for I am your pretext. I can well believe, +messire, that you love your pretext for theft and murder." + +Neither spoke after this, and presently the Earl of Warwick having +come to his peroration, the matter was adjourned till the next day. +The party separated. It was not long before Katharine had informed her +mother that, God willing, she would never again look upon the King of +England's face uncoffined. Isabeau found her a madwoman. The girl +swept opposition before her with gusts of demoniacal fury, wept, +shrieked, tore at her hair, and eventually fell into a sort of +epileptic seizure; between rage and terror she became a horrid, +frenzied beast. I do not dwell upon this, for it is not a condition in +which the comeliest maid shows to advantage. But, for the Valois, +insanity always lurked at the next corner, and they knew it; to save +the girl's reason the Queen was forced to break off all discussion of +the match. Accordingly, the Duke of Burgundy went next day to the +conference alone. Jehan began with "ifs," and over these flimsy +barriers Henry, already fretted by Katharine's scorn, presently +vaulted to a towering fury. + +"Fair cousin," the King said, after a deal of vehement bickering, "we +wish you to know that we will have the daughter of your King, and that +we will drive both him and you out of this kingdom." + +The Duke answered, not without spirit, "Sire, you are pleased to say +so; but before you have succeeded in ousting my lord and me from this +realm, I am of the opinion that you will be very heartily tired." + +At this the King turned on his heel; over his shoulder he flung: "I am +tireless; also, I am agile as a fox in the pursuit of my desires. Say +that to your Princess." Then he went away in a rage. + +It had seemed an approvable business to win love incognito, according +to the example of many ancient emperors, but in practice he had +tripped over an ugly outgrowth from the legendary custom. The girl +hated him, there was no doubt about it; and it was equally certain he +loved her. Particularly caustic was the reflection that a twitch of +his finger would get him Katharine as his wife, for before long the +Queen-Regent was again attempting secret negotiations to bring this +about. Yes, he could get the girl's body by a couple of pen-strokes, +and had he been older that might have contented him: as it was, what +he wanted was to rouse the look her eyes had borne in Chartres orchard +that tranquil morning, and this one could not readily secure by +fiddling with seals and parchments. You see his position: this +high-spirited young man now loved the Princess too utterly to take her +on lip-consent, and this marriage was now his one possible excuse for +ceasing from victorious warfare. So he blustered, and the fighting +recommenced; and he slew in a despairing rage, knowing that by every +movement of his arm he became to her so much the more detestable. + +Then the Vicomte de Montbrison, as you have heard, betrayed France, +and King Henry began to strip the French realm of provinces as you +peel the layers from an onion. By the May of the year of grace 1420 +France was, and knew herself to be, not beaten but demolished. Only a +fag-end of the French army lay entrenched at Troyes, where King +Charles and his court awaited Henry's decision as to the morrow's +action. If he chose to destroy them root and branch, he could; and +they knew such mercy as was in the man to be quite untarnished by +previous using. Sire Henry drew up a small force before the city and +made no overtures toward either peace or throat-cutting. + +This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday after +Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in his +apartments at the Hôtel de Ville. The King was pursing his lips over +an alternative play, when somebody began singing below in the +courtyard. + +Sang the voice: + + "I can find no meaning in life, + That have weighed the world,--and it was + Abundant with folly, and rife + With sorrows brittle as glass, + And with joys that flicker and pass + Like dreams through a fevered head; + And like the dripping of rain + In gardens naked and dead + Is the obdurate thin refrain + Of our youth which is presently dead. + + "And she whom alone I have loved + Looks ever with loathing on me, + As one she hath seen disproved + And stained with such smirches as be + Not ever cleansed utterly; + And is both to remember the days + When Destiny fixed her name + As the theme and the goal of my praise; + And my love engenders shame, + And I stain what I strive for and praise. + + "O love, most perfect of all, + Just to have known you is well! + And it heartens me now to recall + That just to have known you is well, + And naught else is desirable + Save only to do as you willed + And to love you my whole life long;-- + But this heart in me is filled + With hunger cruel and strong, + And with hunger unfulfilled. + + "Fond heart, though thy hunger be + As a flame that wanders unstilled, + There is none more perfect than she!" + +Malise now came into the room, and, without speaking, laid a fox-brush +before the Princess. + +Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered table. +"So you are in his pay, Malise? I am sorry. But you know that your +employer is master here. Who am I to forbid him entrance?" The girl +went away silently, abashed, and the Princess sat quite still, tapping +the brush against the table. + +"They do not want me to sign another treaty, do they?" her father +asked timidly. "It appears to me they are always signing treaties, and +I cannot see that any good comes of it. And I would have won the last +game, Katharine, if Malise had not interrupted us. You know I would +have won." + +"Yes, Father, you would have won. Oh, he must not see you!" Katharine +cried, a great tide of love mounting in her breast, the love that +draws a mother fiercely to shield her backward boy. "Father, will you +not go into your chamber? I have a new book for you, Father--all +pictures, dear. Come--" She was coaxing him when Sire Henry appeared +in the doorway. + +"But I do not wish to look at pictures," Charles said, peevishly; "I +wish to play cards. You are an ungrateful daughter, Katharine. You are +never willing to amuse me." He sat down with a whimper and began to +pluck at his dribbling lips. + +Katharine had moved a little toward the door. Her face was white. "Now +welcome, sire!" she said. "Welcome, O great conqueror, who in your +hour of triumph can find no nobler recreation than to shame a maid +with her past folly! It was valorously done, sire. See, Father; here +is the King of England come to observe how low we sit that yesterday +were lords of France." + +"The King of England!" echoed Charles, and he rose now to his feet. "I +thought we were at war with him. But my memory is treacherous. You +perceive, brother of England, I am planning a new mouse-trap, and my +mind is somewhat preëmpted. I recall now that you are in treaty for my +daughter's hand. Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but +I suppose--" He paused, as if to regard and hear some invisible +counsellor, and then briskly resumed: "Yes, I suppose policy demands +that she should marry you. We trammelled kings can never go free of +policy--ey, my compère of England? No; it was through policy I wedded +her mother; and we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in +your ear, son-in-law: Madame Isabeau's soul formerly inhabited a sow, +as Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the +influence of the moon drew it hither." + +Henry did not say anything. Steadily his calm blue eyes appraised Dame +Katharine. And King Charles went on, very knowingly: + +"Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, though by +ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy again, +son-in-law: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the great +hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten flies-- +very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of parricides,--and +afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the Mediterranean hath its +sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at cards. Cheats, sir!--and +I her father!" The incessant peering, the stealthy cunning with which +Charles whispered this, the confidence with which he clung to his +destroyer's hand, was that of a conspiring child. + + +"Come, Father," Katharine said. "Come away to bed, dear." + +"Hideous basilisk!" he spat at her; "dare you rebel against me? Am I +not King of France, and is it not blasphemy for a King of France to be +mocked? Frail moths that flutter about my splendor," he shrieked, in +an unheralded frenzy, "beware of me, beware! for I am omnipotent! I am +King of France, Heaven's regent. At my command the winds go about the +earth, and nightly the stars are kindled for my recreation. Perhaps I +am mightier than God, but I do not remember now. The reason is written +down and lies somewhere under a bench. Now I sail for England. Eia! +eia! I go to ravage England, terrible and merciless. But I must have +my mouse-traps, Goodman Devil, for in England the cats of the +middle-sea wait unfed." He went out of the room, giggling, and in the +corridor began to sing: + + "A hundred thousand times good-bye! + I go to seek the Evangelist, + For here all persons cheat and lie ..." + +All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon +Katharine. Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the +boulder, and they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But +she turned and met his gaze squarely. She noted now for the first time +how oddly his left eyebrow drooped. Katharine said: "And that is the +king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable conquest to overcome +so wise a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? There are cut-throats +in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would scorn the action. Now shall +I fetch my mother, sire? the commander of that great army which you +overcame? As the hour is late, she is by this time tipsy, but she will +come. Or perhaps she is with some paid lover, but if this conqueror, +this second Alexander, wills it she will come. O God!" the girl +wailed, on a sudden; "O just and all-seeing God! are not we of Valois +so contemptible that in conquering us it is the victor who is shamed?" + +"Flower of the marsh!" he said, and his voice pulsed with tender +cadences--"flower of the marsh! it is not the King of England who now +comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry Plantagenet God has led +hither by the hand to punish the sins of this realm, and to reign in +it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet will cast out the Valois from +the throne they have defiled, as Darius cast out Belshazzar, for such +is the desire and the intent of God. But to you comes Alain the +harper, not as a conqueror but as a suppliant,--Alain who has loved +you whole-heartedly these two years past, and who now kneels before +you entreating grace." + +Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he had +fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood that he +believed France to be his by Divine favor and Heaven's peculiar +intervention. He thought himself God's factor, not His rebel. He was +rather stupid, this huge, handsome, squinting boy; and as she +comprehended this, her hand went to his shoulder, half maternally. + +"It is nobly done, sire. But I understand. You must marry me in order +to uphold your claim to France. You sell, and I with my body purchase, +peace for France. There is no need of a lover's posture when hucksters +meet." + +"So changed!" he said, and he was silent for an interval, still +kneeling. Then he began: "You force me to point out that I do not need +any pretext for holding France. France lies before me prostrate. By +God's singular grace I reign in this fair kingdom, mine by right of +conquest, and an alliance with the house of Valois will neither make +nor mar me." She was unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact. +"But I love you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you +not understand that there can be between us no question of expediency? +Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know of; +now in Troyes they meet again,--not as princess and king, but as man +and maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your heart, I think. +And now in all the world there is one thing I covet--to gain for the +poor king some portion of that love you would have squandered on the +harper." His hand closed upon her hand. + +At his touch the girl's composure vanished. "My lord, you woo too +timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced advocates. I am +daughter to the King of France, and next to my soul's salvation I +esteem the welfare of France. Can I, then, fail to love the King of +England, who chooses the blood of my countrymen as a judicious garb to +come a-wooing in? How else, since you have ravaged my native land, +since you have besmirched the name I bear, since yonder afield every +wound in my dead and yet unburied Frenchmen is to me a mouth which +shrieks your infamy?" + +He rose. "And yet, for all that, you love me." + +She could not at the first effort find words with which to answer him, +but presently she said, quite simply, "To see you lying in your coffin +I would willingly give up my hope of heaven, for heaven can afford no +sight more desirable." + +"You loved Alain." + +"I loved the husk of a man. You can never comprehend how utterly I +loved him." + +"You are stubborn. I shall have trouble with you. But this notion of +yours is plainly a mistaken notion. That you love me is indisputable, +and this I propose to demonstrate. You will observe that I am quite +unarmed except for this dagger, which I now throw out of the +window--" with the word it jangled in the courtyard below. "I am in +Troyes alone among some thousand Frenchmen, any one of whom would +willingly give his life for the privilege of taking mine. You have but +to sound the gong beside you, and in a few moments I shall be a dead +man. Strike, then! For with me dies the English power in France. +Strike, Katharine! If you see in me but the King of England." + +She was rigid; and his heart leapt when he saw it was because of +terror. + +"You came alone! You dared!" + +He answered, with a wonderful smile, "Proud spirit! How else might I +conquer you?" + +"You have not conquered!" Katharine lifted the baton beside the gong, +poising it. God had granted her prayer--to save France. Now the past +and the ignominy of the past might be merged in Judith's nobler guilt. +But I must tell you that in the supreme hour, Destiny at her beck, her +main desire was to slap the man for his childishness. Oh, he had no +right thus to besot himself with adoration! This dejection at her feet +of his high destiny awed her, and pricked her, too, with her inability +to understand him. Angrily she flung away the baton. "Go! Ah, go!" she +cried, like one strangling. "There has been enough of bloodshed, and I +must spare you, loathing you as I do, for I cannot with my own hand +murder you." + +But the King was a kindly tyrant, crushing independence from his +associates as lesser folk squeeze water from a sponge. "I cannot go +thus. Acknowledge me to be Alain, the man you love, or else strike +upon the gong." + +"You are cruel!" she wailed, in her torture. + +"Yes, I am cruel." + +Katharine raised straining arms above her head in a hard gesture of +despair. "You have conquered. You know that I love you. Oh, if I could +find words to voice my shame, to shriek it in your face, I could +better endure it! For I love you. With all my body and heart and soul +I love you. Mine is the agony, for I love you! and presently I shall +stand quite still and see little Frenchmen scramble about you as +hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill you. And after that I +shall live! I preserve France, but after I have slain you, Henry, I +must live. Mine is the agony, the enduring agony." She stayed +motionless for an interval. "God, God! Let me not fail!" Katharine +breathed; and then: "O fair sweet friend, I am about to commit a vile +action, but it is for the sake of the France that I love next to God. +As Judith gave her body to Holofernes, I crucify my heart for the +preservation of France." Very calmly she struck upon the gong. + +If she could have found any reproach in his eyes during the ensuing +silence, she could have borne it; but there was only love. And with +all that, he smiled like one who knew the upshot of this matter. + +A man-at-arms came into the room. "Germain--" said Katharine, and then +again, "Germain--" She gave a swallowing motion and was silent. When +she spoke it was with crisp distinctness. "Germain, fetch a harp. +Messire Alain here is about to play for me." + +At the man's departure she said: "I am very pitiably weak. Need you +have dragged my soul, too, in the dust? God heard my prayer, and you +have forced me to deny His favor, as Peter denied Christ. My dear, be +very kind to me, for I come to you naked of honor." She fell at the +King's feet, embracing his knees. "My master, be very kind to me, for +there remains only your love." + +He raised her to his breast. "Love is enough," he said. + +She was conscious, as he held her thus, of the chain mail under his +jerkin. He had come armed; he had his soldiers no doubt in the +corridor; he had tricked her, it might be from the first. But that did +not matter now. + +"Love is enough," she told her master docilely. + +Next day the English entered Troyes and in the cathedral church these +two were betrothed. Henry was there magnificent in a curious suit of +burnished armor; in place of his helmet-plume he wore a fox-brush +ornamented with jewels, which unusual ornament afforded great matter +of remark among the busybodies of both armies. + +THE END OF THE TENTH NOVEL + + + + +THE EPILOGUE + + + "Et je fais sçavoir à tous lecteurs de ce Livret que les choses que + je dis avoir vues et sues sont enregistrés icy, afin que vous pouviez + les regarder selon vostre bon sens, s'il vous plaist." + +HERE IS APPENDED THE EPILOGUE THAT MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN AFFIXED TO +THE BOOK WHICH HE HAD MADE ACCORDING TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY; AND +WHICH (IN CONSEQUENCE) HE DARED NOT APPRAISE. + + + + +_The Epilogue_ + + +_A Son Livret_ + + +Intrepidly depart, my little book, into the presence of that most +illustrious lady who bade me compile you. Bow down before her +judgment. And if her sentence be that of a fiery death, I counsel you +not to grieve at what cannot be avoided. + +But, if by any miracle that glorious, strong fortress of the weak +consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pass thence, my little +book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live out your +little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your appointed +season perish and be forgotten. Thus may you share your betters' fate, +and be at one with those famed comedies of Greek Menander and all the +poignant songs of Sappho. _Et quid Pandoniae_--thus, little book, I +charge you to poultice your more-merited oblivion--_quid Pandoniae +restat nisi nomen Athenae?_ + +Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with those who +will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and protest +assertions which are only fables. To these you will reply that I, your +maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of the most high and +noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at and about her house of +Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person with Dame Katharine, then +happily remarried to a private gentleman of Wales; and so obtained the +matter of the ninth story and of the tenth authentically. You will say +also that Messire de Montbrison afforded me the main matter of the +sixth and seventh stories, and many of the songs which this book +contains; and that, moreover, I once journeyed to Caer Idion and +talked for some two hours with Richard Holland (whom I found a very +old and garrulous and cheery person), and got of him the matter of the +eighth tale in this dizain, together with much information as concerns +the sixth and the seventh. And you will add that the matter of the +fourth and fifth tales was in every detail related to me by my most +illustrious mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this +information from her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady, +and one that was in youth Dame Philippa's most dear associate. For the +rest you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book +to be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say) +even in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd +times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always +endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me. + +I have pieced together these tales about the women who intermarried, +not very enviably, with the demon-tainted blood of Edward Longshanks, +because it seems to me that these tales, when they are rightly +considered, compose the initial portion of a troubling history. +Whether (as some declare) the taint came from Manuel of Poictesme, or +whether (as yet others say) this poison was inherited from the demon +wife whom Foulques Plantagenet fetched out of hell, the blood in these +men was not all human. These men might not tread equally with human +beings: their wives suffered therefor, just as they that had inherited +this blood suffered therefor, and all England suffered therefor. And +the upshot of it I have narrated elsewhere, in the book called and +entitled _The Red Cuckold_, which composes the final portion of this +history, and tells of the last spilling and of the extinction of this +blood. + +Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people who +will jeer at you, and will say that you and I have cheated them of +your purchase-money. To these you will reply, with Plutarch, _Non mi +aurum posco, nec mi pretium_. Secondly you will say that, of +necessity, the tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; and that +he cannot undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering Orion suitably +when the resources of his shop amount to only a few yards of cambric. +Indeed had I the power to make you better, my little book, I would +have exercised that power to the utmost. A good conscience is a +continual feast, and I summon high Heaven to be my witness that had I +been Homer you had awed the world, another Iliad. I lament your +inability to do this, as heartily as any person living; yet Heaven +willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven these aforementioned +cavillers should rightfully complain. + +So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless indeed +you should elect to answer them by repetition of this song which I now +make for you, my little book, at your departure from me. And the song +runs in this fashion: + + Depart, depart, my book! and live and die + Dependent on the idle fantasy + Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I. + + For I am fond, and willingly mistake + My book to be the book I meant to make, + And cannot judge you, for that phantom's sake. + + Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill + In making you, that never spared the will + To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill. + + Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I + Had wrought in you some wizardry so high + That no man but had listened ... + + They pass by, + And shrug--as we, who know that unto us + It has been granted never to fare thus, + And never to be strong and glorious. + + Is it denied me to perpetuate + What so much loving labor did create?-- + I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate, + And acquiesce, not all disconsolate. + + For I have got such recompense + Of that high-hearted excellence + Which the contented craftsman knows, + Alone, that to loved labor goes, + And daily does the work he chose, + And counts all else impertinence! + +EXPLICIT DECAS REGINARUM + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIVALRY*** + + +******* This file should be named 11752-8.txt or 11752-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/7/5/11752 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Chivalry</p> +<p>Author: James Branch Cabell</p> +<p>Release Date: March 28, 2004 [eBook #11752]</p> +<p>[Date last updated: September 30, 2005]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: iso-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIVALRY***</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<center><b>E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Joris Van Dael, Susan Lucy,<br /> + and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</b></center> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr class="full" /> +<br /> + +<h1 align="center">CHIVALRY:</h1> +<h2 align="center">Dizain des Reines </h2> + +<h2 align="center">JAMES BRANCH CABELL</h2> + + + + +<h3 align="center">1921</h3> + + + +<div class="ded"> +TO ANNE BRANCH CABELL +</div> + + + + + +<p class="ded2"> + “AINSI A VOUS, MADAME, A MA TRÈS HAULTE ET + TRÈS NOBLE DAME, A QUI J’AYME A DEVOIR + ATTACHEMENT ET OBÉISSANCE, + J’ENVOYE CE LIVRET<a href="#cont">.</a>” +</p> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<div class="chapter"> +<br /> +INTRODUCTION +</div> + +<p> Few of the more astute critics who have appraised the work of +James Branch Cabell have failed to call attention to that +extraordinary cohesion which makes his very latest novel a further +flowering of the seed of his very earliest literary work. Especially +among his later books does the scheme of each seem to dovetail into +the scheme of the other and the whole of his writing take on the +character of an uninterrupted discourse. To this phenomenon, which +is at once a fact and an illusion of continuity, Mr. Cabell himself +has consciously contributed, not only by a subtly elaborate use of +conjunctions, by repetition, and by reintroducing characters from +his other books, but by actually setting his expertness in genealogy +to the genial task of devising a family tree for his figures of +fiction. </p> + +<p> If this were an actual continuity, more tangible than that fluid +abstraction we call the life force; if it were merely a tireless +reiteration and recasting of characters, Mr. Cabell’s work +would have an unbearable monotony. But at bottom this apparent +continuity has no more material existence than has the thread of +lineal descent. To insist upon its importance is to obscure, as has +been obscured, the epic range of Mr. Cabell’s creative genius. +It is to fail to observe that he has treated in his many books every +mainspring of human action and that his themes have been the +cardinal dreams and impulses which have in them heroic qualities. +Each separate volume has a unity and harmony of a complete and +separate life, for the excellent reason that with the consummate +skill of an artist he is concerned exclusively in each book with one +definite heroic impulse and its frustrations. </p> + +<p> It is true, of course, that like the fruit of the tree of life, +Mr. Cabell’s artistic progeny sprang from a first conceptual +germ—“In the beginning was the Word.” That +animating idea is the assumption that if life may be said to have an +aim it must be an aim to terminate in success and splendor. It +postulates the high, fine importance of excess, the choice or +discovery of an overwhelming impulse in life and a conscientious +dedication to its fullest realization. It is the quality and +intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological +norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the +exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, +aimless mediocrities about him. What the dream is, matters not at +all—it may be a dream of sainthood, kingship, love, art, +asceticism or sensual pleasure—so long as it is fully +expressed with all the resources of self. It is this sort of +completion which Mr. Cabell has elected to depict in all his work: +the complete sensualist in Demetrios, the complete phrase-maker in +Felix Kennaston, the complete poet in Marlowe, the complete lover in +Perion. In each he has shown that this complete self-expression is +achieved at the expense of all other possible selves, and that +herein lies the tragedy of the ideal. Perfection is a costly flower +and is cultured only by an uncompromising, strict husbandry. </p> + +<p> All this is, we see, the ideational gonfalon under which surge +the romanticists; but from the evidence at hand it is the banner to +which life also bears allegiance. It is in humanity’s records +that it has reserved its honors for its romantic figures. It +remembers its Caesars, its saints, its sinners. It applauds, with a +complete suspension of moral judgment, its heroines and its heroes +who achieve the greatest self-realization. And from the splendid +triumphs and tragic defeats of humanity’s individual strivings +have come our heritage of wisdom and of poetry. </p> + +<p> Once we understand the fundamentals of Mr. Cabell’s +artistic aims, it is not easy to escape the fact that in <i>Figures +of Earth</i> he undertook the staggering and almost unsuspected task +of rewriting humanity’s sacred books, just as in <i>Jurgen</i> +he gave us a stupendous analogue of the ceaseless quest for beauty. +For we must accept the truth that Mr. Cabell is not a novelist at +all in the common acceptance of the term, but a historian of the +human soul. His books are neither documentary nor representational; +his characters are symbols of human desires and motives. By the not +at all simple process of recording faithfully the projections of his +rich and varied imagination, he has written thirteen books, which he +accurately terms biography, wherein is the bitter-sweet truth about +human life. </p> + +<p align="center"> II </p> + + +<p> Among the scant certainties vouchsafed us is that every age +lives by its special catchwords. Whether from rebellion against the +irking monotony of its inherited creeds or from compulsions +generated by its own complexities, each age develops its code of +convenient illusions which minimize cerebration in dilemmas of +conduct by postulating an unequivocal cleavage between the current +right and the current wrong. It works until men tire of it or +challenge the cleavage, or until conditions render the code +obsolete. It has in it, happily, a certain poetic merit always; it +presents an ideal to be lived up to; it gives direction to the +uncertain, stray impulses of life. </p> + +<p> The Chivalric code is no worse than most and certainly it is +prettier than some. It is a code peculiar to an age, or at least it +flourishes best in an age wherein sentiment and the stuff of dreams +are easily translatable into action. Its requirements are less of +the intellect than of the heart. It puts God, honor, and mistress +above all else, and stipulates that a knight shall serve these three +without any reservation. It requires of its secular practitioners +the holy virtues of an active piety, a modified chastity, and an +unqualified obedience, at all events, to the categorical imperative. +The obligation of poverty it omits, for the code arose at a time +when the spiritual snobbery of the meek and lowly was not pressing +the simile about the camel and the eye of the needle. It leads to +charming manners and to delicate amenities. It is the opposite of +the code of Gallantry, for while the code of Chivalry takes +everything with a becoming seriousness, the code of Gallantry takes +everything with a wink. If one should stoop to pick flaws with the +Chivalric ideal, it would be to point out a certain priggishness and +intolerance. For, while it is all very well for one to cherish the +delusion that he is God’s vicar on earth and to go about his +Father’s business armed with a shining rectitude, yet the +unhallowed may be moved to deprecate the enterprise when they +recall, with discomfort, the zealous vicarship of, say, the late +Anthony J. Comstock. </p> + +<p> But here I blunder into Mr. Cabell’s province. For he has +joined many graceful words in delectable and poignant proof of just +that lamentable tendency of man to make a mess of even his most +immaculate conceivings. When he wrote <i>Chivalry</i>, Mr. Cabell +was yet young enough to view the code less with the appraising eye +of a pawnbroker than with the ardent eye of an amateur. He knew its +value, but he did not know its price. So he made of it the thesis +for a dizain of beautiful happenings that are almost flawless in +their verbal beauty. </p> + + +<p align="center"> III </p> <p> It is perhaps of historical interest +here to record the esteem in which Mark Twain held the genius of Mr. +Cabell as it was manifested as early as a dozen years ago. Mr. +Cabell wrote <i>The Soul of Melicent</i>, or, as it was rechristened +on revision, <i>Domnei</i>, at the great humorist’s request, +and during the long days and nights of his last illness it was Mr. +Cabell’s books which gave Mark Twain his greatest joy. This +knowledge mitigates the pleasure, no doubt, of those who still, +after his fifteen years of writing, encounter him intermittently +with a feeling of having made a great literary discovery. The truth +is that Mr. Cabell has been discovered over and over with each +succeeding book from that first fine enthusiasm with which Percival +Pollard reviewed <i>The Eagle’s Shadow</i> to that generous +acknowledgment by Hugh Walpole that no one in England, save perhaps +Conrad and Hardy, was so sure of literary permanence as James Branch +Cabell. </p> + +<p> With <i>The Cream of the Jest</i>, <i>Beyond Life</i>, and +<i>Figures of Earth</i> before him, it is not easy for the +perceptive critic to doubt this permanence. One might as sensibly +deny a future to Ecclesiastes, <i>The Golden Ass</i>, +<i>Gulliver’s Travels</i>, and the works of Rabelais as to +predict oblivion for such a thesaurus of ironic wit and fine +fantasy, mellow wisdom and strange beauty as <i>Jurgen</i>. But to +appreciate the tales of <i>Chivalry</i> is, it seems, a gift more +frequently reserved for the general reader than for the professional +literary evaluator. Certainly years before discussion of Cabell was +artificially augmented by the suppression of <i>Jurgen</i> there +were many genuine lovers of romance who had read these tales with +pure enjoyment. That they did not analyse and articulate their +enjoyment for the edification of others does not lessen the quality +of their appreciation. Even in those years they found in +Cabell’s early tales what we find who have since been directed +to them by the curiosity engendered by his later work, namely, a +superb craftsmanship in recreating a vanished age, an atmosphere in +keeping with the themes, a fluid, graceful, personal style, a poetic +ecstasy, a fine sense of drama, and a unity and symmetry which are +the hall-marks of literary genius. </p> + +<p align="right"> BURTON RASCOE. New York City, September, 1921. </p> +<a name="cont"></a> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<br /> +CONTENTS +</div> + +<table summary=""> + <tr> + <td> </td> <td> <a href="#pre">PRECAUTIONAL</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> </td> <td> <a href="#pro">THE PROLOGUE</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">I</td> <td> <a href="#I">THE STORY OF THE SESTINA</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">II</td> <td> <a href="#II">THE STORY OF THE TENSON</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">III</td> <td> <a href="#III">THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">IV</td> <td> <a href="#IV">THE STORY OF THE CHOICES</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">V</td> <td> <a href="#V">THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">VI</td> <td> <a href="#VI">THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">VII</td> <td> <a href="#VII">THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">VIII</td> <td> <a href="#VIII">THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">IX</td> <td> <a href="#IX">THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="right">X</td> <td> <a href="#X">THE STORY OF THE FOX-BRUSH</a></td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td> </td> <td> <a href="#epi">THE EPILOGUE</a></td> + </tr> +</table> +<br /> +<br /> + +<a name="pre"></a> + +<div class="chapter"> +<br /> +PRECAUTIONAL +</div> + +<p> Imprimis, as concerns the authenticity of these tales perhaps +the less debate may be the higher wisdom, if only because this +Nicolas de Caen, by common report, was never a Gradgrindian. And in +this volume in particular, writing it (as Nicolas is supposed to +have done) in 1470, as a dependant on the Duke of Burgundy, it were +but human nature should he, in dealing with the putative descendants +of Dom Manuel and Alianora of Provence, be niggardly in his +ascription of praiseworthy traits to any member of the house of +Lancaster or of Valois. Rather must one in common reason accept old +Nicolas as confessedly a partisan writer, who upon occasion will +recolor an event with such nuances as will be least inconvenient to +a Yorkist and Burgundian bias. </p> + +<p> The reteller of these stories needs in addition to plead guilty +of having abridged the tales with a free hand. Item, these tales +have been a trifle pulled about, most notably in “The Story of +the Satraps,” where it seemed advantageous, on reflection, to +put into Gloucester’s mouth a history which in the original +version was related <i>ab ovo</i>, and as a sort of bungling +prologue to the story proper. </p> + +<p> Item, the re-teller of these stories desires hereby to tender +appropriate acknowledgment to Mr. R. E. Townsend for his assistance +in making an English version of the lyrics included hereinafter; and +to avoid discussion as to how freely, in these lyrics, Nicolas has +plagiarized from Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and other elder poets.<a id="footnotetag1" name="footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a> +</p> + +<p> And—“sixth and lastly”—should confession +be made that in the present rendering a purely arbitrary title has +been assigned this little book; chiefly for commercial reasons, +since the word “dizain” has been adjudged both +untranslatable and, in its pristine form, repellantly +<i>outré</i>. </p> + + +<p align="center"> 2 </p> + +<p> You are to give my titular makeshift, then, a wide +interpretation; and are always to remember that in the bleak, florid +age these tales commemorate this Chivalry was much the rarelier +significant of any personal trait than of a world-wide code in +consonance with which all estimable people lived and died. Its root +was the assumption (uncontested then) that a gentleman will always +serve his God, his honor and his lady without any reservation; nor +did the many emanating by-laws ever deal with special cases as +concerns this triple, fixed, and fundamental homage. </p> + +<p> Such is the trinity served hereinafter. Now about lady-service, +or <i>domnei</i>, I have written elsewhere. Elsewhere also I find it +recorded that “the cornerstone of Chivalry is the idea of +vicarship: for the chivalrous person is, in his own eyes at least, +the child of God, and goes about this world as his Father’s +representative in an alien country.” </p> + +<p> I believe the definition holds: it certainly tends to explain +the otherwise puzzling pertinacity with which the characters in +these tales talk about God and act upon an assured knowledge as to +Heaven’s private intentions and preferences. These people are +the members of one family engrossed, as all of us are apt to be when +in the society of our kin, by family matters and traditions and +by-words. It is not merely that they are all large children +consciously dependent in all things upon a not foolishly indulgent +Father, Who keeps an interested eye upon the least of their doings, +and punishes at need,—not merely that they know themselves to +act under surveillance and to speak within ear-shot of a divine +eavesdropper. The point is, rather, that they know this observation +to be as tender, the punishment to be as unwilling, as that which +they themselves extend to their own children’s pranks and +misdemeanors. The point is that to them Heaven is a place as actual +and tangible as we consider Alaska or Algiers to be, and that their +living is a conscious journeying toward this actual place. The point +is that the Father is a real father, and not a word spelt with +capital letters in the Church Service; not an abstraction, not a +sort of a something vaguely describable as “the Life +Force,” but a very famous kinsman, of whom one is naïvely +proud, and whom one is on the way to visit.... The point, in brief, +is that His honor and yours are inextricably blended, and are both +implicated in your behavior on the journey. </p> + +<p> We nowadays can just cloudily imagine this viewing of life as a +sort of boarding-school from which one eventually goes home, with an +official report as to progress and deportment: and in retaliation +for being debarred from the comforts of this view, the +psychoanalysts have no doubt invented for it some opprobrious +explanation. At all events, this Chivalry was a pragmatic +hypothesis: it “worked,” and served society for a long +while, not faultlessly of course, but by creating, like all the +other codes of human conduct which men have yet tried, a tragi-comic +mêlée wherein contended “courtesy and humanity, +friendliness, hardihood, love and friendship, and murder, hate, and +virtue, and sin.” </p> + +<p align="center"> 3 </p> + +<p> For the rest, since good wine needs no bush, and an inferior +beverage is not likely to be bettered by arboreal adornment, I elect +to piece out my exordium (however lamely) with “The +Printer’s Preface.” And it runs in this fashion: </p> + +<p> “Here begins the volume called and entitled the Dizain of +Queens, composed and extracted from divers chronicles and other +sources of information, by that extremely venerable person and +worshipful man, Messire Nicolas de Caen, priest and chaplain to the +right noble, glorious and mighty prince in his time, Philippe, Duke +of Burgundy, of Brabant, etc., in the year of the Incarnation of our +Lord God a thousand four hundred and seventy: and imprinted by me, +Colard Mansion, at Bruges, in the year of our said Lord God a +thousand four hundred and seventy-one; at the commandment of the +right high, mighty and virtuous Princess, my redoubted Lady, +Isabella of Portugal, by the grace of God Duchess of Burgundy and +Lotharingia, of Brabant and Limbourg, of Luxembourg and of Gueldres, +Countess of Flanders, of Artois, and of Burgundy, Palatine of +Hainault, of Holland, of Zealand and of Namur, Marquesse of the Holy +Empire, and Lady of Frisia, of Salins and of Mechlin; whom I beseech +Almighty God less to increase than to continue in her virtuous +disposition in this world, and after our poor fleet existence to +receive eternally. Amen.” </p> + +<br /> +<a name="pro"></a> +<div class="chapter"> +<p>THE PROLOGUE</p> +</div> + + + <div class="epigram"> + “Afin que les entreprises honorables et les nobles aventures + et faicts d’armes soyent noblement enregistrés et + conservés, je vais traiter et raconter et inventer ung + galimatias.” +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE DIZAIN OF QUEENS OF THAT NOBLE MAKER IN THE FRENCH TONGUE, MESSIRE +NICOLAS DE CAEN, DEDICATED TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS ISABELLA OF PORTUGAL, +OF THE HOUSE OF THE INDOMITABLE ALFONSO HENRIQUES, AND DUCHESS DOWAGER +OF BURGUNDY. HERE BEGINS IN AUSPICIOUS WISE THE PROLOGUE. +</div> + + + +<p class="subhead"> +The Prologue +</p> + +<p class="salutation">A Sa Dame</p> + +<p> Inasmuch as it was by your command, illustrious and exalted lady, +that I have gathered together these stories to form the present little +book, you should the less readily suppose I have presumed to dedicate to +your Serenity this trivial offering because of my esteeming it to be not +undeserving of your acceptance. The truth is otherwise: your postulant +approaches not spurred toward you by vainglory, but rather by equity, +and equity’s plain need to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of +noble ladies must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who +is the light and mainstay of our age. I humbly bring my book to you as +Phidyle approached another and less sacred shrine, <i>farre pio et +saliente mica</i>, and lay before you this my valueless mean tribute not +as appropriate to you but as the best I have to offer. </p> + +<p> It is a little book wherein I treat of divers queens and of +their love-business; and with necessitated candor I concede my +chosen field to have been harvested, and scrupulously gleaned, by +many writers of innumerable conditions. Since Dares Phrygius wrote +of Queen Heleine, and Virgil (that shrewd necromancer) of Queen +Dido, a preponderating mass of clerks, in casting about for high and +serious matter, have chosen, as though it were by common instinct, +to dilate upon the amours of royal women. Even in romance we +scribblers must contrive it so that the fair Nicolete shall be +discovered in the end to be no less than the King’s daughter +of Carthage, and that Sir Doön of Mayence shall never sink in +his love affairs beneath the degree of a Saracen princess; and we +are backed in this old procedure not only by the authority of +Aristotle but, oddly enough, by that of reason. </p> + +<p> Kings have their policies and wars wherewith to drug each human +appetite. But their consorts are denied these makeshifts; and love may +rationally be defined as the pivot of each normal woman’s life, and in +consequence as the arbiter of that ensuing life which is eternal. +Because—as anciently Propertius demanded, though not, to speak the +truth, of any woman—</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> Quo fugis? ah demens! nulla est fuga, tu licet usque</p> + <p>Ad Tanaim fugias, usque sequetur amor.</p> +</div> + +<p>And a dairymaid, let us say, may love whom she will, and nobody else +be a penny the worse for her mistaking of the preferable nail whereon to +hang her affections; whereas with a queen this choice is more +portentous. She plays the game of life upon a loftier table, ruthlessly +illuminated, she stakes by her least movement a tall pile of counters, +some of which are, of necessity, the lives and happiness of persons whom +she knows not, unless it be by vague report. Grandeur sells itself at +this hard price, and at no other. A queen must always play, in fine, as +the vicar of destiny, free to choose but very certainly compelled in the +ensuing action to justify that choice: as is strikingly manifested by +the authentic histories of Brunhalt, and of Guenevere, and of swart +Cleopatra, and of many others that were born to the barbaric queenhoods +of extinct and dusty times. </p> + +<p> All royal persons are (I take it) the immediate and the responsible +stewards of Heaven; and since the nature of each man is like a troubled +stream, now muddied and now clear, their prayer must ever be, <i>Defenda +me, Dios, de me</i>! Yes, of exalted people, and even of their near +associates, life, because it aims more high than the aforementioned +Aristotle, demands upon occasion a more great catharsis, which would +purge any audience of unmanliness, through pity and through terror, +because, by a quaint paradox, the players have been purged of humanity. +For a moment Destiny has thrust her scepter into the hands of a human +being and Chance has exalted a human being to decide the issue of many +human lives. These two—with what immortal chucklings one may +facilely imagine—have left the weakling thus enthroned, free to +direct the heavy outcome, free to choose, and free to evoke much +happiness or age-long weeping, but with no intermediate course unbarred. +<i>Now prove thyself</i>! saith Destiny; and Chance appends: <i>Now +prove thyself to be at bottom a god or else a beast, and now eternally +abide that choice. And now</i> (O crowning irony!) <i>we may not tell +thee clearly by which choice thou mayst prove either</i>. </p> + +<p> In this little book about the women who intermarried, not very +enviably, with an unhuman race (a race predestinate to the red ending +which I have chronicled elsewhere, in <i>The Red Cuckold</i>), it is of +ten such moments that I treat. </p> + +<p> You alone, I think, of all persons living, have learned, as you have +settled by so many instances, to rise above mortality in such a testing, +and unfailingly to merit by your conduct the plaudits and the adoration +of our otherwise dissentient world. You have often spoken in the stead +of Destiny, with nations to abide your verdict; and in so doing have +both graced and hallowed your high vicarship. If I forbear to speak of +this at greater length, it is because I dare not couple your well-known +perfection with any imperfect encomium. Upon no plea, however, can any +one forbear to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of noble ladies +must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who is the light +and mainstay of our age. </p> + +<p> <i>Therefore to you, madame—most excellent and noble lady, to +whom I love to owe both loyalty and love—I dedicate this little +book.</i> </p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="I"></a> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +I +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE SESTINA +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Armatz de fust e de fer e d’acier,</p> + <p>Mos ostal seran bosc, fregz, e semdier,</p> + <p>E mas cansos sestinas e descortz,</p> + <p> E mantenrai los frevols contra ’ls fortz.”</p> +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE FIRST NOVEL.—ALIANORA OF PROVENCE, COMING IN DISGUISE AND IN +ADVERSITY TO A CERTAIN CLERK, IS BY HIM CONDUCTED ACROSS A HOSTILE +COUNTRY; AND IN THAT TROUBLED JOURNEY ARE MADE MANIFEST TO EACH THE +SNARES WHICH HAD BEGUILED THEM AFORETIME. +</div> + +<div class="subhead"> +<p>The Story of the Sestina</p> +</div> + +<p> In this place we have to do with the opening tale of the Dizain of +Queens. I abridge, as afterward, at discretion; and an initial account +of the Barons’ War, among other superfluities, I amputate as more +remarkable for veracity than interest. The result, we will agree at +outset, is that to the Norman cleric appertains whatever these tales may +have of merit, whereas what you find distasteful in them you must impute +to my delinquencies in skill rather than in volition. </p> + +<p> Within the half hour after de Giars’ death (here one overtakes +Nicolas mid-course in narrative) Dame Alianora thus stood alone in the +corridor of a strange house. Beyond the arras the steward and his lord +were at irritable converse. </p> + +<p> First, “If the woman be hungry,” spoke a high and +peevish voice, “feed her. If she need money, give it to her. +But do not annoy me.” </p> + +<p> “This woman demands to see the master of the house,” +the steward then retorted. </p> + +<p> “O incredible Boeotian, inform her that the master of the +house has no time to waste upon vagabonds who select the middle of +the night as an eligible time to pop out of nowhere. Why did you not +do so in the beginning, you dolt?” The speaker got for answer +only a deferential cough, and very shortly continued: “This is +remarkably vexatious. <i>Vox et praeterea nihil</i>—which +signifies, Yeck, that to converse with women is always delightful. +Admit her.” This was done, and Dame Alianora came into an +apartment littered with papers, where a neat and shriveled gentleman +of fifty-odd sat at a desk and scowled. </p> + +<p> He presently said, “You may go, Yeck.” He had risen, +the magisterial attitude with which he had awaited her entrance cast +aside. “Oh, God!” he said; “you, madame!” +His thin hands, scholarly hands, were plucking at the air. </p> + +<p> Dame Alianora had paused, greatly astonished, and there was an +interval before she said, “I do not recognize you, +messire.” </p> + +<p> “And yet, madame, I recall very clearly that some thirty +years ago the King-Count Raymond Bérenger, then reigning in +Provence, had about his court four daughters, each one of whom was +afterward wedded to a king. First, Meregrett, the eldest, now +regnant in France; then Alianora, the second and most beautiful of +these daughters, whom troubadours hymned as the Unattainable +Princess. She was married a long while ago, madame, to the King of +England, Lord Henry, third of that name to reign in these +islands.” </p> + +<p> Dame Alianora’s eyes were narrowing. “There is +something in your voice,” she said, “which I +recall.” </p> + +<p> He answered: “Madame and Queen, that is very likely, for +it is a voice which sang a deal in Provence when both of us were +younger. I concede with the Roman that I have somewhat deteriorated +since the reign of Cynara. Yet have you quite forgotten the +Englishman who made so many songs of you? They called him Osmund +Heleigh.” </p> + +<p> “He made the Sestina of Spring which won the violet crown +at my betrothal,” the Queen said; and then, with eagerness: +“Messire, can it be that you are Osmund Heleigh?” He +shrugged assent. She looked at him for a long time, rather sadly, +and demanded if he were the King’s man or of the barons’ +party. </p> + +<p> The nervous hands were raised in deprecation. “I have no +politics,” Messire Heleigh began, and altered it, gallantly +enough, to, “I am the Queen’s man, madame.” </p> + +<p> “Then aid me, Osmund,” she said. </p> + +<p> He answered with a gravity which singularly became him, +“You have reason to understand that to my fullest power I will +aid you.” </p> + +<p> “You know that at Lewes these swine overcame us.” He +nodded assent. “Now they hold the King, my husband, captive at +Kenilworth. I am content that he remain there, for he is of all the +King’s enemies the most dangerous. But, at Wallingford, +Leicester has imprisoned my son, Prince Edward. The Prince must be +freed, my Osmund. Warren de Basingbourne commands what is left of +the royal army, now entrenched at Bristol, and it is he who must +liberate my son. Get me to Bristol, then. Afterward we will take +Wallingford.” The Queen issued these orders in cheery, +practical fashion, and did not admit opposition into the account, +for she was a capable woman. </p> + +<p> “But you, madame?” he stammered. “You came +alone?” </p> + +<p> “I come from France, where I have been +entreating—and vainly entreating—succor from yet another +monkish king, the holy Lewis of that realm. Eh, what is God about +when He enthrones these whining pieties! Were I a king, were I even +a man, I would drive these smug English out of their foggy isle in +three days’ space! I would leave alive not one of these curs +that dare yelp at me! I would—” She paused, anger +veering into amusement. “See how I enrage myself when I think +of what your people have made me suffer,” the Queen said, and +shrugged her shoulders. “In effect, I skulked back in disguise +to this detestable island, accompanied by Avenel de Giars and Hubert +Fitz-Herveis. To-night some half-dozen fellows—robbers, +thorough knaves, like all you English,—attacked us on the +common yonder and slew the men of our party. While they were cutting +de Giars’ throat I slipped away in the dark and tumbled +through many ditches till I spied your light. There you have my +story. Now get me an escort to Bristol.” </p> + +<p> It was a long while before Messire Heleigh spoke. Then, +“These men,” he said—“this de Giars and this +Fitz-Herveis—they gave their lives for yours, as I understand +it,—<i>pro caris amicis</i>. And yet you do not grieve for +them.” </p> + +<p> “I shall regret de Giars,” the Queen acknowledged, +“for he made excellent songs. But Fitz-Herveis?—foh! the +man had a face like a horse.” Again her mood changed. +“Many persons have died for me, my friend. At first I wept for +them, but now I am dry of tears.” </p> + +<p> He shook his head. “Cato very wisely says, ‘If thou +hast need of help, ask it of thy friends.’ But the sweet friend that +I remember was a clean eyed girl, joyous and exceedingly beautiful. +Now you appear to me one of those ladies of remoter +times—Faustina, or Jael, or Artemis, the King’s wife of +Tauris,—they that slew men, laughing. I am somewhat afraid of +you, madame.” </p> + +<p> She was angry at first; then her face softened. “You +English!” she said, only half mirthful. “Eh, my God! you +remember me when I was a high hearted young sorceress. Now the +powers of the Apsarasas have departed from me, and time has thrust +that Alianora, who was once the Unattainable Princess, chin deep in +misery. Yet even now I am your Queen, messire, and it is not yours +to pass judgment upon me.” “I do not judge you,” +he returned. “Rather I cry with him of old, <i>Omnia incerta +ratione</i>! and I cry with Salomon that he who meddles with the +strife of another man is like to him that takes a hound by the ears. +Yet listen, madame and Queen. I cannot afford you an escort to +Bristol. This house, of which I am in temporary charge, is +Longaville, my brother’s manor. Lord Brudenel, as you doubtless +know, is of the barons’ party and—scant cause for +grief!—is with Leicester at this moment. I can trust none of +my brother’s people, for I believe them to be of much the same +opinion as those Londoners who not long ago stoned you and would +have sunk your barge in Thames River. Oh, let us not blink the fact +that you are not overbeloved in England. So an escort is out of the +question. Yet I, madame, if you so elect, will see you safe to +Bristol.” +</p> + +<p> “You? Singly?” the Queen demanded. </p> + +<p> “My plan is this: Singing folk alone travel whither they +will. We will go as jongleurs, then. I can yet manage a song to the +viol, I dare affirm. And you must pass as my wife.” </p> + +<p> He said this with simplicity. The plan seemed unreasonable, and +at first Dame Alianora waved it aside. Out of the question! But +reflection suggested nothing better; it was impossible to remain at +Longaville, and the man spoke sober truth when he declared any +escort other than himself to be unprocurable. Besides, the lunar +madness of the scheme was its strength; that the Queen would venture +to cross half England unprotected—and Messire Heleigh on the +face of him was a paste-board buckler—was an event which +Leicester would neither anticipate nor on report credit. There you +were! these English had no imagination. The Queen snapped her +fingers and said: “Very willingly will I be your wife, my +Osmund. But how do I know that I can trust you? Leicester would give +a deal for me; he would pay any price for the pious joy of burning +the Sorceress of Provence. And you are not wealthy, I +suspect.” </p> + +<p> “You may trust me, mon bel esper,”—his eyes +here were those of a beaten child—“because my memory is +better than yours.” Messire Osmund Heleigh gathered his papers +into a neat pile. “This room is mine. To-night I keep guard in +the corridor, madame. We will start at dawn.” +</p> + +<p> When he had gone, Dame Alianora laughed contentedly. “Mon +bel esper! my fairest hope! The man called me that in his +verses—thirty years ago! Yes, I may trust you, my poor +Osmund.” </p> + +<p> So they set out at cockcrow. He had procured for himself a viol and +a long falchion, and had somewhere got suitable clothes for the Queen; +and in their aging but decent garb the two approached near enough to the +appearance of what they desired to be thought. In the courtyard a knot +of servants gaped, nudged one another, but openly said nothing. Messire +Heleigh, as they interpreted it, was brazening out an affair of +gallantry before the countryside; and they esteemed his casual +observation that they would find a couple of dead men on the common +exceedingly diverting. </p> + +<p> When the Queen asked him the same morning, “And what will +you sing, my Osmund? Shall we begin the practise of our new +profession with the Sestina of Spring?”—old Osmund +Heleigh grunted out: “I have forgotten that rubbish long ago. +<i>Omnis amans, amens</i>, saith the satirist of Rome town, and with +reason.” </p> + +<p> Followed silence. </p> + +<p> One sees them thus trudging the brown, naked plains under a sky +of steel. In a pageant the woman, full-veined and comely, her russet +gown girded up like a harvester’s might not inaptly have +prefigured October; and for less comfortable November you could +nowhere have found a symbol more precise than her lank companion, +humorously peevish under his white thatch of hair, and constantly +fretted by the sword tapping at his ankles. </p> + +<p> They made Hurlburt prosperously and found it vacant, for the +news of Falmouth’s advance had driven the villagers hillward. +There was in this place a child, a naked boy of some two years, +lying on a doorstep, overlooked in his elders’ gross terror. +As the Queen with a sob lifted this boy the child died. </p> + +<p> “Starved!” said Osmund Heleigh; “and within a +stone’s throw of my snug home!” </p> + +<p> The Queen laid down the tiny corpse, and, stooping, lightly +caressed its sparse flaxen hair. She answered nothing, though her +lips moved.</p> + +<p> Past Vachel, scene of a recent skirmish, with many dead in the +gutters, they were overtaken by Falmouth himself, and stood at the +roadside to afford his troop passage. The Marquess, as he went by, flung +the Queen a coin, with a jest sufficiently high flavored. She knew the +man her inveterate enemy, knew that on recognition he would have killed +her as he would a wolf; she smiled at him and dropped a curtsey. </p> + +<p> “This is remarkable,” Messire Heleigh observed. “I was hideously +afraid, and am yet shaking. But you, madame, laughed.” </p> + +<p> The Queen replied: “I laughed because I know that some day I shall +have Lord Falmouth’s head. It will be very sweet to see it roll in the +dust, my Osmund.” </p> + +<p> Messire Heleigh somewhat dryly observed that tastes differed. </p> + +<p> At Jessop Minor befell a more threatening adventure. Seeking food at +the <i>Cat and Hautbois</i> in that village, they blundered upon the +same troop at dinner in the square about the inn. Falmouth and his +lieutenants were somewhere inside the house. The men greeted the +supposed purveyors of amusement with a shout; and one of these +soldiers—a swarthy rascal with his head tied in a +napkin—demanded that the jongleurs grace their meal with a song. +</p> + +<p> Osmund tried to put him off with a tale of a broken viol. </p> + +<p> But, “Haro!” the fellow blustered; “by blood +and by nails! you will sing more sweetly with a broken viol than +with a broken head. I would have you understand, you hedge thief, +that we gentlemen of the sword are not partial to wordy +argument.” Messire Heleigh fluttered inefficient hands as the +men-at-arms gathered about them, scenting some genial piece of +cruelty. “Oh, you rabbit!” the trooper jeered, and +caught at Osmund’s throat, shaking him. In the act this rascal +tore open Messire Heleigh’s tunic, disclosing a thin chain +about his neck and a handsome locket, which the fellow wrested from +its fastening. “Ahoi!” he continued. “Ahoi, my +comrades, what sort of minstrel is this, who goes about England all +hung with gold like a Cathedral Virgin! He and his +sweetheart”—the actual word was +grosser—“will be none the worse for an interview with +the Marquess.” </p> + +<p> The situation smacked of awkwardness, because Lord Falmouth was +familiar with the Queen, and to be brought specifically to his +attention meant death for two detected masqueraders. Hastily Osmund +Heleigh said: </p> + +<p> “Messire, the locket contains the portrait of a lady whom +in my youth I loved very greatly. Save to me, it is valueless. I +pray you, do not rob me of it.” </p> + +<p> But the trooper shook his head with drunken solemnity. “I +do not like the looks of this. Yet I will sell it to you, as the +saying is, for a song.” </p> + +<p> “It shall be the king of songs,” said +Osmund,—“the song that Arnaut Daniel first made. I will +sing for you a Sestina, messieurs,—a Sestina in salutation of +Spring.” </p> + +<p> The men disposed themselves about the dying grass, and presently +he sang. </p> + +<p> +Sang Messire Heleigh: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Awaken! for the servitors of Spring</p> + <p>Proclaim his triumph! ah, make haste to see</p> + <p>With what tempestuous pageantry they bring</p> + <p>The victor homeward! haste, for this is he</p> + <p>That cast out Winter and all woes that cling</p> + <p>To Winter’s garments, and bade April be!</p> + +<p class="stanzai2">“And now that Spring is master, let us be</p> + <p>Content, and laugh, as anciently in spring</p> + <p>The battle-wearied Tristan laughed, when he</p> + <p> Was come again Tintagel-ward, to bring</p> + <p>Glad news of Arthur’s victory—and see</p> + <p>Ysoude, with parted lips, that waver and cling.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“Not yet in Brittany must Tristan cling</p> + <p>To this or that sad memory, and be</p> + <p>Alone, as she in Cornwall; for in spring</p> + <p>Love sows against far harvestings,—and he</p> + <p>Is blind, and scatters baleful seed that bring</p> + <p>Such fruitage as blind Love lacks eyes to see!”</p> +</div> + +<p> +Osmund paused here for an appreciable interval, staring at the Queen. +You saw his flabby throat a-quiver, his eyes melting, saw his cheeks +kindle, and youth seeping into the lean man like water over a crumbling +dam. His voice was now big and desirous. +</p> + +<p> +Sang Messire Heleigh: +</p> +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see</p> + <p>The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling,</p> + <p>Never again when in the grave ye be</p> + <p>Incurious of your happiness in spring,</p> + <p>And get no grace of Love there, whither he</p> + <p>That bartered life for love no love may bring.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “No braggart Heracles avails to bring</p> + <p>Alcestis hence; nor here may Roland see</p> + <p>The eyes of Aude; nor here the wakening spring</p> + <p>Vex any man with memories: for there be</p> + <p>No memories that cling as cerements cling,</p> + <p>No force that baffles Death, more strong than he.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Us hath he noted, and for us hath he</p> + <p>An hour appointed; and that hour will bring</p> + <p>Oblivion.—Then, laugh! Laugh, dear, and see</p> + <p>The tyrant mocked, while yet our bosoms cling,</p> + <p>While yet our lips obey us, and we be</p> + <p>Untrammeled in our little hour of spring!</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Thus in the spring we jeer at Death, though he</p> + <p>Will see our children perish and will briny</p> + <p>Asunder all that cling while love may be.”</p> +</div> + +<p> Then Osmund put the viol aside and sat quite silent. The +soldiery judged, and with cordial frankness stated, that the +difficulty of his rhyming scheme did not atone for his lack of +indecency, but when the Queen of England went among them with +Messire Heleigh’s faded green hat she found them liberal. Even +the fellow with the broken head admitted that a bargain was +proverbially a bargain, and returned the locket with the addition of +a coin. So for the present these two went safe, and quitted the +<i>Cat and Hautbois</i> fed and unmolested. </p> + +<p> “My Osmund,” Dame Alianora said, presently, +“your memory is better than I had thought.” </p> + +<p> “I remembered a boy and a girl,” he returned. +“And I grieved that they were dead.” </p> + +<p> Afterward they plodded on toward Bowater, and the ensuing night +rested in Chantrell Wood. They had the good fortune there to +encounter dry and windless weather and a sufficiency of brushwood, +with which Osmund constructed an agreeable fire. In its glow these +two sat, eating bread and cheese. </p> + +<p> But talk languished at the outset. The Queen had complained of +an ague, and Messire Heleigh was sedately suggesting three spiders +hung about the neck as an infallible corrective for this ailment, +when Dame Alianora rose to her feet. “Eh, my God!” she +said; “I am wearied of such ungracious aid! Not an inch of the +way but you have been thinking of your filthy books and longing to +be back at them! No; I except the moments when you were frightened +into forgetfulness—first by Falmouth, then by the trooper. O +Eternal Father! afraid of a single dirty soldier!” </p> + +<p> “Indeed, I was very much afraid,” said Messire +Heleigh, with perfect simplicity; “<i>timidus perire, +madame</i>.” </p> + +<p> “You have not even the grace to be ashamed! Yet I am +shamed, messire, that Osmund Heleigh should have become the +book-muddled pedant you are. For I loved young Osmund +Heleigh.” </p> + +<p> He also had risen in the firelight, and now its convulsive +shadows marred two dogged faces. “I think it best not to +recall that boy and girl who are so long dead. And, frankly, madame +and Queen, the merit of the business I have in hand is questionable. +It is you who have set all England by the ears, and I am guiding you +toward opportunities for further mischief. I must serve you. +Understand, madame, that ancient folly in Provence yonder has +nothing to do with the affair. Count Manuel left you: and between +his evasion and your marriage you were pleased to amuse yourself +with me—” </p> + +<p> “You were more civil then, my Osmund—” </p> + +<p> “I am not uncivil, I merely point out that this old folly +constitutes no overwhelming obligation, either way. I cry <i>nihil +ad Andromachen</i>! For the rest, I must serve you because you are a +woman and helpless; yet I cannot forget that he who spares the wolf +is the sheep’s murderer. It would be better for all England if +you were dead. Hey, your gorgeous follies, madame! Silver peacocks +set with sapphires! Cloth of fine gold—” </p> + +<p> “Would you have me go unclothed?” Dame Alianora +demanded, pettishly. </p> + +<p> “Not so,” Osmund retorted; “again I say to you +with Tertullian, ‘Let women paint their eyes with the tints of +chastity, insert into their ears the Word of God, tie the yoke of +Christ about their necks, and adorn their whole person with the silk +of sanctity and the damask of devotion.’ I say to you that the +boy you wish to rescue from Wallingford, and make King of England, +is freely rumored to be not verily the son of Sire Henry but the +child of tall Manuel of Poictesme. I say to you that from the first +you have made mischief in England. And I say to you—” +</p> + +<p> But Dame Alianora was yawning quite frankly. “You will say +to me that I brought foreigners into England, that I misguided the +King, that I stirred up strife between the King and his barons. Eh, +my God! I am sufficiently familiar with the harangue. Yet listen, my +Osmund: They sold me like a bullock to a man I had never seen. I +found him a man of wax, and I remoulded him. They asked of me an +heir for England: I provided that heir. They gave me England as a +toy; I played with it. I was the Queen, the source of honor, the +source of wealth—the trough, in effect, about which swine +gathered. Never since I came into England, Osmund, has any man or +woman loved me; never in all my English life have I loved man or +woman. Do you understand, my Osmund?—the Queen has many +flatterers, but no friends. Not a friend in the world, my Osmund! +And so the Queen made the best of it and amused herself.” </p> + +<p> Somewhat he seemed to understand, for he answered without +asperity: </p> + +<p> “Mon bel esper, I do not find it anywhere in Holy Writ +that God requires it of us to amuse ourselves; but upon many +occasions we have been commanded to live righteously. We are tempted +in divers and insidious ways. And we cry with the Psalmist, +‘My strength is dried up like a potsherd.’ But God +intends this, since, until we have here demonstrated our valor upon +Satan, we are manifestly unworthy to be enregistered in God’s +army. The great Captain must be served by proven soldiers. We may be +tempted, but we may not yield. O daughter of the South! we must not +yield!” </p> + +<p> “Again you preach,” Dame Alianora said. “That +is a venerable truism.” </p> + +<p> “Ho, madame,” he returned, “is it on that +account the less true?” </p> + +<p> Pensively the Queen considered this. “You are a good man, +my Osmund,” she said, at last, “though you are very +droll. Ohimé! it is a pity that I was born a princess! Had it +been possible for me to be your wife, I would have been a better +woman. I shall sleep now and dream of that good and stupid and +contented woman I might have been.” So presently these two +slept in Chantrell Wood. </p> + +<p> Followed four days of journeying. As Messer Dante had not yet +surveyed Malebolge, Osmund Heleigh and Dame Alianora lacked a +parallel for that which they encountered; their traverse discovered +England razed, charred, and depopulate—picked bones of an +island, a vast and absolute ruin about which passion-wasted men +skulked like rats. Messire Heleigh and the Queen traveled without +molestation; malice and death had journeyed before them on this +road, and had swept it clear. </p> + +<p> At every trace of these hideous precessors Osmund Heleigh would +say, “By a day’s ride I might have prevented +this.” Or, “By a day’s ride I might have saved +this woman.” Or, “By two days’ riding I might have +fed this child.” </p> + +<p> The Queen kept Spartan silence, but daily you saw the fine woman +age. In their slow advance every inch of misery was thrust before +her for inspection; meticulously she observed and evaluated her +handiwork. Enthroned, she had appraised from a distance the +righteous wars she set afoot; trudging thus among the débris +of these wars, she found they had unsuspected aspects. Bastling the +royal army had recently sacked. There remained of this village the +skeletons of two houses, and for the rest a jumble of bricks, +rafters half-burned, many calcined fragments of humanity, and ashes. +At Bastling, Messire Heleigh turned to the Queen toiling behind. +</p> + +<p> “Oh, madame!” he said, in a dry whisper, “this +was the home of so many men!” </p> + +<p> “I burned it,” Dame Alianora replied. “That +man we passed just now I killed. Those other men and women—my +folly slew them all. And little children, my Osmund! The hair like +flax, blood-dabbled!” </p> + +<p> “Oh, madame!” he wailed, in the extremity of his +pity. </p> + +<p> For she stood with eyes shut, all gray. The Queen demanded: +“Why have they not slain me? Was there no man in England to +strangle the proud wanton? Are you all cowards here?” </p> + +<p> He said: “I detect only one coward in the affair. Your men +and Leicester’s men also ride about the world, and draw sword +and slay and die for the right as they see it. And you and Leicester +contend for the right as ye see it. But I, madame! I! I, who sat +snug at home spilling ink and trimming rose-bushes! God’s +world, madame, and I in it afraid to speak a word for Him! +God’s world, and a curmudgeon in it grudging God the life He +gave!” The man flung out his soft hands and snarled: +“<i>We are tempted in divers and insidious ways.</i> But I, +who rebuked you! behold, now, with how gross a snare was I +entrapped!” “I do not understand, my Osmund.” </p> + +<p> “I was afraid, madame,” he returned, dully. +“Everywhere men fight, and I am afraid to die.” </p> + +<p> So they stood silent in the ruins of Bastling. </p> + +<p> “Of a piece with our lives,” Dame Alianora said at +last. “All ruin, my Osmund.” </p> + +<p> But Messire Heleigh threw back his head and laughed, new color +in his face. “Presently men will build here, my Queen. +Presently, as in legend was re-born the Arabian bird, arises from +these ashes a lordlier and more spacious town.” </p> + +<p> They went forward. The next day chance loosed upon them Gui +Camoys, lord of Bozon, Foliot, and Thwenge, who, riding alone +through Poges Copse, found there a man and a woman over their +limited supper. The woman had thrown back her hood, and Camoys drew +rein to stare at her. Lispingly he spoke the true court dialect. +</p> + +<p> “Ma belle,” said this Camoys, in friendly +condescension, “n’estez vous pas jongleurs?” </p> + +<p> Dame Alianora smiled up at him. “Ouais, messire; mon mary +faict les chançons—” She paused, with dilatory +caution, for Camoys had leaped from his horse, giving a great laugh. +</p> + +<p> “A prize! ho, an imperial prize!” Camoys shouted. +“A peasant woman with the Queen’s face, who speaks +French! And who, madame, is this? Have you by any chance brought +pious Lewis from oversea? Have I bagged a brace of monarchs?” +</p> + +<p> Here was imminent danger, for Camoys had known the Queen some +fifteen years. Messire Heleigh rose, his five days’ beard +glinting like hoar-frost as his mouth twitched. </p> + +<p> “I am Osmund Heleigh, messire, younger brother to the Earl +of Brudenel.” </p> + +<p> “I have heard of you, I believe—the fellow who +spoils parchment. This is odd company, however, Messire Osmund, for +Brudenel’s brother.” </p> + +<p> “A gentleman must serve his Queen, messire. As Cicero very +justly observes—” </p> + +<p> “I am inclined to think that his political opinions are +scarcely to our immediate purpose. This is a high matter, Messire +Heleigh. To let the sorceress pass is, of course, out of the +question; upon the other hand, I observe that you lack weapons of +defence. Yet if you will have the kindness to assist me in unarming, +your courtesy will place our commerce on more equal footing.” +</p> + +<p> Osmund had turned very white. “I am no swordsman, +messire—”</p> + +<p> “Now, this is not handsome of you,” Camoys began. +“I warn you that people will speak harshly of us if we lose +this opportunity of gaining honor. And besides, the woman will be +burned at the stake. Plainly, you owe it to all three of us to +fight.” </p> + +<p> “—But I refer my cause to God. I am quite at your +service.” “No, my Osmund!” Dame Alianora then +cried. “It means your death.” </p> + +<p> He spread out his hands. “That is God’s affair, +madame.” </p> + +<p> “Are you not afraid?” she breathed. </p> + +<p> “Of course I am afraid,” said Messire Heleigh, +irritably. </p> + +<p> After that he unarmed Camoys, and presently they faced each +other in their tunics. So for the first time in the journey +Osmund’s long falchion saw daylight. He had thrown away his +dagger, as Camoys had none. </p> + +<p> The combat was sufficiently curious. Camoys raised his left +hand. “So help me God and His saints, I have upon me neither +bone, stone, nor witchcraft wherethrough the power and the word of +God might be diminished or the devil’s power increased.” +</p> + +<p> Osmund made similar oath. “Judge Thou this woman’s +cause!” he cried, likewise. </p> + +<p> Then Gui Camoys shouted, as a herald might have done, +“Laissez les aller, laissez les aller, laissez les aller, les +bons combatants!” and warily each moved toward the other. </p> + +<p> On a sudden Osmund attacked, desperately apprehensive of his own +cowardice. Camoys lightly eluded him and slashed at Osmund’s +undefended thigh, drawing much blood. Osmund gasped. He flung away +his sword, and in the instant catching Camoys under the arms, threw +him to the ground. Messire Heleigh fell with his opponent, who in +stumbling had lost his sword, and thus the two struggled unarmed, +Osmund atop. But Camoys was the younger man, and Osmund’s +strength was ebbing rapidly by reason of his wound. Now +Camoys’ tethered horse, rearing with nervousness, tumbled his +master’s flat-topped helmet into the road. Osmund caught up +this helmet and with it battered Camoys in the face, dealing severe +blows. </p> + +<p> “God!” Camoys cried, his face all blood. </p> + +<p> “Do you acknowledge my quarrel just?” said Osmund, +between horrid sobs. </p> + +<p> “What choice have I?” said Gui Camoys, very +sensibly. </p> + +<p> So Osmund rose, blind with tears and shivering. The Queen bound +up their wounds as best she might, but Camoys was much dissatisfied. +</p> + +<p> “For private purposes of His own, madame,” he +observed, “and doubtless for sufficient reasons, God has +singularly favored your cause. I am neither a fool nor a pagan to +question His decision, and you two may go your way unhampered. But I +have had my head broken with my own helmet, and this I consider to +be a proceeding very little conducive toward enhancing my +reputation. Of your courtesy, messire, I must entreat another +meeting.” </p> + +<p> Osmund shrank as if from a blow. Then, with a short laugh, he +conceded that this was Camoys’ right, and they fixed upon the +following Saturday, with Poges Copse as the rendezvous. </p> + +<p> “I would suggest that the combat be to the death,” +Gui Camoys said, “in consideration of the fact it was my own +helmet. You must undoubtedly be aware, Messire Osmund, that such an +affront is practically without any parallel.” </p> + +<p> This, too, was agreed upon. </p> + +<p> Then, after asking if they needed money, which was courteously +declined, Gui Camoys rode away, and sang as he went. Osmund Heleigh +remained motionless. He raised quivering hands to the sky. </p> + +<p> “Thou hast judged!” he cried. “Thou hast +judged, O puissant Emperor of Heaven! Now pardon! Pardon us twain! +Pardon for unjust stewards of Thy gifts! Thou hast loaned this woman +dominion over England, with all instruments to aid Thy cause, and +this trust she has abused. Thou hast loaned me life and manhood, +agility and wit and strength, all instruments to aid Thy cause. +Talents in a napkin, O God! Repentant we cry to Thee. Pardon for +unjust stewards! Pardon for the ungirt loin, for the service +shirked, for all good deeds undone! Pardon and grace, O King of +kings!” </p> + +<p> Thus he prayed, while Gui Camoys sang, riding deeper into the +tattered, yellowing forest. By an odd chance Camoys had lighted on +that song made by Thibaut of Champagne, beginning <i>Signor, saciez, +ki or ne s’en ira</i>, which denounces all half-hearted +servitors of Heaven; and this he sang with a lilt gayer than his +matter countenanced. Faintly there now came to Osmund and the Queen +the sound of Camoys’ singing, and they found it, in the +circumstances, ominously apt. </p> + +<p> Sang Camoys: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Et vos, par qui je n’ci onques aïe,</p> + <p>Descendez luit en infer le parfont.”</p> +</div> + +<p> Dame Alianora shivered. But she was a capable woman, and so she +said: “I may have made mistakes. But I am sure I never meant +any harm, and I am sure, too, that God will be more sensible about +it than are you poets.” </p> + +<p> They slept that night in Ousley Meadow, and the next afternoon +came safely to Bristol. You may learn elsewhere with what rejoicing +the royal army welcomed the Queen’s arrival, how courage +quickened at sight of the generous virago. In the ebullition Messire +Heleigh was submerged, and Dame Alianora saw nothing more of him +that day. Friday there were counsels, requisitions, orders signed, a +memorial despatched to Pope Urban, chief of all a letter (this in +the Queen’s hand throughout) privily conveyed to the Lady +Maude de Mortemer, who shortly afterward contrived Prince +Edward’s escape from her husband’s gaolership. There was +much sowing of a seed, in fine, that eventually flowered victory. +There was, however, no sign of Osmund Heleigh, though by Dame +Alianora’s order he was sought. </p> + +<p> On Saturday at seven in the morning he came to her lodging, in +complete armor. From the open helmet his wrinkled face, showing like +a wizened nut in a shell, smiled upon her questionings. </p> + +<p> “I go to fight Gui Camoys, madame and Queen.” </p> + +<p> Dame Alianora wrung her hands. “You go to your +death.” </p> + +<p> He answered: “That is true. Therefore I am come to bid you +farewell.” </p> + +<p> The Queen stared at him for a while; on a sudden she broke into +a curious fit of deep but tearless sobbing, which bordered upon +laughter, too. </p> + +<p> “Mon bel esper,” said Osmund Heleigh, gently, +“what is there in all this worthy of your sorrow? The man will +kill me; granted, for he is my junior by some fifteen years, and is +in addition a skilled swordsman. I fail to see that this is +lamentable. Back to Longaville I cannot go after recent happenings; +there a rope’s end awaits me. Here I must in any event shortly +take to the sword, since a beleaguered army has very little need of +ink-pots; and shortly I must be slain in some skirmish, dug under +the ribs perhaps by a greasy fellow I have never seen. I prefer a +clean death at a gentleman’s hands.” </p> + +<p> “It is I who bring about your death!” she said. +“You gave me gallant service, and I have requited you with +death, and it is a great pity.” </p> + +<p> “Indeed the debt is on the other side. The trivial +services I rendered you were such as any gentleman must render a +woman in distress. Naught else have I afforded you, madame, save +very anciently a Sestina. Ho, a Sestina! And in return you have +given me a Sestina of fairer make,—a Sestina of days, six days +of manly common living.” His eyes were fervent. </p> + +<p> She kissed him on either cheek. “Farewell, my +champion!” </p> + +<p> “Ay, your champion. In the twilight of life old Osmund +Heleigh rides forth to defend the quarrel of Alianora of Provence. +Reign wisely, my Queen, so that hereafter men may not say I was +slain in an evil cause. Do not, I pray you, shame my maiden venture +at a man’s work.” </p> + +<p> “I will not shame you,” the Queen proudly said; and +then, with a change of voice: “O my Osmund! My Osmund, you +have a folly that is divine, and I lack it.” </p> + +<p> He caught her by each wrist, and stood crushing both her hands +to his lips, with fierce staring. “Wife of my King! wife of my +King!” he babbled; and then put her from him, crying, “I +have not failed you! Praise God, I have not failed you!” </p> + +<p> From her window she saw him ride away, a rich flush of glitter +and color. In new armor with a smart emblazoned surcoat the lean +pedant sat conspicuously erect; and as he went he sang defiantly, +taunting the weakness of his flesh. </p> + +<p> +Sang Osmund Heleigh: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see</p> + <p>The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling</p> + <p>Never again when in the grave ye be</p> + <p>Incurious of your happiness in spring,</p> + <p>And get no grace of Love, there, whither he</p> + <p>That bartered life for love no love may bring.”</p> +</div> + +<p> +So he rode away and thus out of our history. But in the evening Gui +Camoys came into Bristol under a flag of truce, and behind him heaved a +litter wherein lay Osmund Heleigh’s body. +</p> + +<p> “For this man was frank and courteous,” Camoys said +to the Queen, “and in the matter of the reparation he owed me +acted very handsomely. It is fitting that he should have honorable +interment.” </p> + +<p> “That he shall not lack,” the Queen said, and gently +unclasped from Osmund’s wrinkled neck the thin gold chain, now +locketless. “There was a portrait here,” she said; +“the portrait of a woman whom he loved in his youth, Messire +Camoys. And all his life it lay above his heart.” </p> + +<p> Camoys answered stiffly: “I imagine this same locket to +have been the object which Messire Heleigh flung into the river, +shortly before we began our combat. I do not rob the dead, +madame.” </p> + +<p> “Well,” the Queen said, “he always did queer +things, and so, I shall always wonder what sort of lady he picked +out to love, but it is none of my affair.” </p> + +<p> Afterward she set to work on requisitions in the King’s +name. But Osmund Heleigh she had interred at Ambresbury, commanding +it to be written on his tomb that he died in the Queen’s +cause. </p> + +<p> How the same cause prospered (Nicolas concludes), how presently +Dame Alianora reigned again in England and with what wisdom, and how +in the end this great Queen died a nun at Ambresbury and all England +wept therefor—this you may learn elsewhere. I have chosen to +record six days of a long and eventful life; and (as Messire Heleigh +might have done) I say modestly with him of old, <i>Majores majora +sonent</i>. Nevertheless, I assert that many a forest was once a +pocketful of acorns. </p> + +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE FIRST NOVEL +</p> +<a name="II"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +II +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE TENSON +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Plagues à Dieu ja la nueitz non falhis,</p> + <p>Ni’l mieus amicx lone de mi nos partis,</p> + <p>Ni la gayta jorn ni alba ne vis.</p> + <p>Oy Dieus! oy Dieus! de l’alba tan tost we!”</p> +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE SECOND NOVEL.—ELLINOR OF CASTILE, BEING ENAMORED OF A HANDSOME +PERSON, IS IN HER FLIGHT FROM MARITAL OBLIGATIONS ASSISTED BY HER +HUSBAND, AND IS IN THE END BY HIM CONVINCED OF THE RATIONALITY OF ALL +ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Tenson +</p> + + +<p> In the year of grace 1265 (Nicolas begins), about the festival +of Saint Peter <i>ad Vincula</i>, the Prince de Gâtinais came +to Burgos. Before this he had lodged for three months in the +district of Ponthieu; and the object of his southern journey was to +assure the tenth Alphonso, then ruling in Castile, that the +latter’s sister Ellinor, now resident at Entréchat, was +beyond any reasonable doubt the transcendent lady whose existence +old romancers had anticipated, however cloudily, when they fabled in +remote time concerning Queen Heleine of Sparta. </p> + +<p> There was a postscript to this news. The world knew that the +King of Leon and Castile desired to be King of Germany as well, and +that at present a single vote in the Diet would decide between his +claims and those of his competitor, Earl Richard of Cornwall. De +Gâtinais chaffered fairly; he had a vote, Alphonso had a +sister. So that, in effect—ohé, in effect, he made no +question that his Majesty understood! </p> + +<p> The Astronomer twitched his beard and demanded if the fact that +Ellinor had been a married woman these ten years past was not an +obstacle to the plan which his fair cousin had proposed? </p> + +<p> Here the Prince was accoutred cap-à-pie, and hauled out a +paper. Dating from Viterbo, Clement, Bishop of Rome, servant to the +servants of God, desirous of all health and apostolical blessing for +his well-beloved son in Christ, stated that a compact between a boy +of fifteen and a girl of ten was an affair of no particular moment; +and that in consideration of the covenantors never having clapped +eyes upon each other since the wedding-day,—even had not the +precontract of marriage between the groom’s father and the +bride’s mother rendered a consummation of the childish oath an +obvious and a most heinous enormity,—why, that, in a sentence, +and for all his coy verbosity, the new pontiff was perfectly +amenable to reason. </p> + +<p> So in a month it was settled. Alphonso would give his sister to +de Gâtinais, and in exchange get the latter’s vote to +make Alphonso King of Germany; and Gui Foulques of +Sabionetta—now Clement, fourth Pope to assume that +name—would annul the previous marriage, and in exchange get an +armament to serve him against Manfred, the late and troublesome +tyrant of Sicily and Apulia. The scheme promised to each one of them +that which he in particular desired, and messengers were presently +sent into Ponthieu. </p> + +<p> It is now time we put aside these Castilian matters and speak of +other things. In England, Prince Edward had fought, and won, a +shrewd battle at Evesham. People said, of course, that such behavior +was less in the manner of his nominal father, King Henry, than +reminiscent of Count Manuel of Poictesme, whose portraits certainly +the Prince resembled to an embarrassing extent. Either way, the +barons’ power was demolished, there would be no more +internecine war; and spurred by the unaccustomed idleness, Prince +Edward began to think of the foreign girl he had not seen since the +day he wedded her. She would be a woman by this, and it was +befitting that he claim his wife. He rode with Hawise Bulmer and her +baby to Ambresbury, and at the gate of the nunnery they parted, with +what agonies are immaterial to this history’s progression; the +tale merely tells that, having thus decorously rid himself of his +mistress, the Prince went into Lower Picardy alone, riding at +adventure as he loved to do, and thus came to Entréchat, +where his wife resided with her mother, the Countess Johane. </p> + +<p> In a wood near the castle he approached a company of Spaniards, +four in number, their horses tethered while these men (Oviedans, as +they told him) drank about a great stone which served them for a +table. Being thirsty, he asked and was readily accorded hospitality, +and these five fell into amicable discourse. One fellow asked his +name and business in those parts, and the Prince gave each without +hesitancy as he reached for the bottle, and afterward dropped it +just in time to catch, cannily, with his naked left hand, the +knife-blade with which the rascal had dug at the unguarded ribs. The +Prince was astounded, but he was never a subtle man: here were four +knaves who, for reasons unexplained—but to them of undoubted +cogency—desired his death: manifestly there was here an +actionable difference of opinion; so he had his sword out and killed +the four of them. </p> + +<p> Presently came to him an apple-cheeked boy, habited as a page, +who, riding jauntily through the forest, lighted upon the Prince, +now in bottomless vexation. The lad drew rein, and his lips outlined +a whistle. At his feet were several dead men in various conditions +of dismemberment. And seated among them, as if throned upon this +boulder, was a gigantic and florid person, so tall that the heads of +few men reached to his shoulder; a person of handsome exterior, +high-featured and blond, having a narrow, small head, and vivid +light blue eyes, and the chest of a stallion; a person whose left +eyebrow had an odd oblique droop, so that the stupendous man +appeared to be winking the information that he was in jest. </p> + +<p> “Fair friend,” said the page. “God give you +joy! and why have you converted this forest into a shambles?” +</p> + +<p> The Prince told him as much of the half-hour’s action as +has been narrated. “I have perhaps been rather hasty,” +he considered, by way of peroration, “and it vexes me that I +did not spare, say, one of these lank Spaniards, if only long enough +to ascertain why, in the name of Termagaunt, they should have +desired my destruction.” </p> + +<p> But midway in his tale the boy had dismounted with a gasp, and +he was now inspecting the features of one carcass. “Felons, my +Prince! You have slain some eight yards of felony which might have +cheated the gallows had they got the Princess Ellinor safe to +Burgos. Only two days ago this chalk-eyed fellow conveyed to her a +letter.” </p> + +<p> Prince Edward said, “You appear, lad, to be somewhat +overheels in the confidence of my wife.” </p> + +<p> Now the boy arose and defiantly flung back his head in shrill +laughter. “Your wife! Oh, God have mercy! Your wife, and for +ten years left to her own devices! Why, look you, to-day you and +your wife would not know each other were you two brought face to +face.” </p> + +<p> Prince Edward said, “That is very near the truth.” +But, indeed, it was the absolute truth, and as it concerned him was +already attested. </p> + +<p> “Sire Edward,” the boy then said, “your wife +has wearied of this long waiting till you chose to whistle for her. +Last summer the young Prince de Gâtinais came +a-wooing—and he is a handsome man.” The page made known +all which de Gâtinais and King Alphonso planned, the words +jostling as they came in torrents, but so that one might understand. +“I am her page, my lord. I was to follow her. These fellows +were to be my escort, were to ward off possible pursuit. Cry haro, +beau sire! Cry haro, and shout it lustily, for your wife in company +with six other knaves is at large between here and +Burgos,—that unreasonable wife who grew dissatisfied after a +mere ten years of neglect.” </p> + +<p> “I have been remiss,” the Prince said, and one huge +hand strained at his chin; “yes, perhaps I have been remiss. +Yet it had appeared to me—But as it is, I bid you mount, my +lad!” </p> + +<p> The boy demanded, “And to what end?” </p> + +<p> “Oy Dieus, messire! have I not slain your escort? Why, in +common reason, equity demands that I afford you my protection so far +as Burgos, messire, just as plainly as equity demands I slay de +Gâtinais and fetch back my wife to England.” </p> + +<p> The page wrung exquisite hands with a gesture which was but +partially tinged with anguish, and presently began to laugh. +Afterward these two rode southerly, in the direction of Castile. +</p> + +<p> For it appeared to the intriguing little woman a diverting jest +that in this fashion her husband should be the promoter of her +evasion. It appeared to her more diverting when in two days’ +space she had become fond of him. She found him rather slow of +comprehension, and she was humiliated by the discovery that not an +eyelash of the man was irritated by his wife’s decampment; he +considered, to all appearances, that some property of his had been +stolen, and he intended, quite without passion, to repossess himself +of it, after, of course, punishing the thief. </p> + +<p> This troubled the Princess somewhat; and often, riding by her +stolid husband’s side, the girl’s heart raged at memory +of the decade so newly overpast which had kept her always dependent +on the charity of this or that ungracious patron—on any one +who would take charge of her while the truant husband fought out his +endless squabbles in England. Slights enough she had borne during +the period, and squalor, and physical hunger also she had known, who +was the child of a king and a saint.<a id="footnotetag2" +name="footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> But +now she rode toward the dear southland; and presently she would be +rid of this big man, when he had served her purpose; and afterward +she meant to wheedle Alphonso, just as she had always wheedled him, +and later still, she and Etienne would be very happy: in fine, +to-morrow was to be a new day. </p> + +<p> So these two rode southward, and always Prince Edward found this +new page of his—this Miguel de Rueda,—a jolly lad, who +whistled and sang inapposite snatches of balladry, without any +formal ending or beginning, descanting always with the delicate +irrelevancy of a bird-trill. </p> + +<p> +Sang Miguel de Rueda: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Man’s Love, that leads me day by day</p> + <p>Through many a screened and scented way,</p> + <p>Finds to assuage my thirst.</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “No love that may the old love slay,</p> + <p>None sweeter than the first.</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Fond heart of mine, that beats so fast</p> + <p>As this or that fair maid trips past,</p> + <p>Once, and with lesser stir</p> + <p>We viewed the grace of love, at last,</p> + <p>And turned idolater.</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Lad’s Love it was, that in the spring</p> + <p>When all things woke to blossoming</p> + <p>Was as a child that came</p> + <p>Laughing, and filled with wondering,</p> + <p>Nor knowing his own name—”</p> +</div> + +<p> “And still I would prefer to think,” the big man +interrupted, heavily, “that Sicily is not the only allure. I +would prefer to think my wife so beautiful.—And yet, as I +remember her, she was nothing extraordinary.” </p> + +<p> The page a little tartly said that people might forget a deal +within a decade. </p> + +<p> The Prince continued his unriddling of the scheme hatched in +Castile. “When Manfred is driven out of Sicily they will give +the throne to de Gâtinais. He intends to get both a kingdom +and a handsome wife by this neat affair. And in reason, England must +support my Uncle Richard’s claim to the German crown, against +El Sabio—Why, my lad, I ride southward to prevent a war that +would devastate half Europe.” </p> + +<p> “You ride southward in the attempt to rob a miserable +woman of her sole chance of happiness,” Miguel de Rueda +estimated. </p> + +<p> “That is undeniable, if she loves this thrifty Prince, as +indeed I do not question my wife does. Yet our happiness here is a +trivial matter, whereas war is a great disaster. You have not +seen—as I, my little Miguel, have often seen—a man +viewing his death-wound with a face of stupid wonder, a bewildered +wretch in point to die in his lord’s quarrel and understanding +never a word of it. Or a woman, say—a woman’s twisted +and naked body, the breasts yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes +of some village, or the already dripping hoofs which will presently +crush this body. Well, it is to prevent many such ugly spectacles +hereabout that I ride southward.” </p> + +<p> Miguel de Rueda shuddered. But, “She has her right to +happiness,” the page stubbornly said. </p> + +<p> “She has only one right,” the Prince retorted; +“because it has pleased the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us +twain to lofty stations, to entrust to us the five talents of the +parable; whence is our debt to Him, being fivefold, so much the +greater than that of common persons. Therefore the more is it our +sole right, being fivefold, to serve God without faltering, and +therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more an +inconsiderable matter. For, as I have read in the Annals of the +Romans—” He launched upon the story of King Pompey and +his daughter, whom a certain duke regarded with impure and improper +emotions. “My little Miguel, that ancient king is our Heavenly +Father, that only daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here +delivered for protection to five soldiers—that is, to the five +senses,—to preserve it from the devil, the world, and the +flesh. But, alas! the too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon +the gaudy vapors of this world—” </p> + +<p> “You whine like a canting friar,” the page +complained; “and I can assure you that the Lady Ellinor was +prompted rather than hindered by her God-given faculties of sight +and hearing and so on when she fell in love with de Gâtinais. +Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer and the more +intelligent man, and it was God who bestowed on her sufficient wit +to perceive the superiority of de Gâtinais. And what am I to +deduce from this?” </p> + +<p> The Prince reflected. At last he said: “I have also read +in these same Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on +account of the malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm +will engender; but if the body be smitten by lightning, in a few +days the carcass will abound with vermin. My little Miguel, both men +and women are at birth empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no +worm—that is, no virtue. But once they are struck with +lightning—that is, by the grace of God,—they are +astonishingly fruitful in good works.” </p> + +<p> The page began to laugh. “You are hopelessly absurd, my +Prince, though you will never know it,—and I hate you a +little,—and I envy you a great deal.” </p> + +<p> “Ah, but,” Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, +for the man was never quick-witted,—“but it is not for +my own happiness that I ride southward.” </p> + +<p> The page then said, “What is her name?” </p> + +<p> Prince Edward answered, very fondly, “Hawise.” </p> + +<p> “I hate her, too,” said Miguel de Rueda; “and +I think that the holy angels alone know how profoundly I envy +her.” </p> + +<p> In the afternoon of the same day they neared Ruffec, and at the +ford found three brigands ready, two of whom the Prince slew, and +the other fled. </p> + +<p> Next night they supped at Manneville, and sat afterward in the +little square, tree-chequered, that lay before their inn. Miguel had +procured a lute from the innkeeper, and he strummed idly as these +two debated together of great matters; about them was an +immeasurable twilight, moonless, but tempered by many stars, and +everywhere they could hear an agreeable whispering of leaves. </p> + +<p> “Listen, my Prince,” the boy said: “here is +one view of the affair.” And he began to chant, without +rhyming, without raising his voice above the pitch of talk, while +the lute monotonously accompanied his chanting. </p> + +<p> +Sang Miguel: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> <p +class="i2"> “Passeth a little while, +and Irus the beggar and Menephtah the high king are at sorry unison, +and Guenevere is a skull. Multitudinously we tread toward oblivion, +as ants hasten toward sugar, and presently Time cometh with his +broom. Multitudinously we tread dusty road toward oblivion; but +yonder the sun shines upon a grass-plot, converting it into an +emerald; and I am aweary of the trodden path.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> “Vine-crowned is +the fair peril that guards the grasses yonder, and her breasts are +naked. ‘Vanity of Vanities!’ saith the beloved. But she +whom I love seems very far away to-night, though I might be with her +if I would. And she may not aid me now, for not even love is +all-powerful. She is most dear of created women, and very wise, but +she may never understand that at any time one grows aweary of the +trodden path.</p> + + +<p class="stanzai2"> “At sight of my +beloved, love closes over my heart like a flood. For the sake of my +beloved I have striven, with a good endeavor, to my tiny uttermost. +Pardie, I am not Priam at the head of his army! A little while and I +will repent; to-night I cannot but remember that there are women +whose lips are of a livelier tint, that life is short at best, that +wine evokes in me some admiration for myself, and that I am aweary +of the trodden path.</p> + + +<p class="stanzai2"> “She is very far +from me to-night. Yonder in the Hörselberg they exult and make +sweet songs, songs which are sweeter, immeasurably sweeter, than +this song of mine, but in the trodden path I falter, for I am +tired, tired in every fibre of me, and I am aweary of the trodden +path”</p> </div> + +<p> Followed a silence. “Ignorance spoke there,” the +Prince said. “It is the song of a woman, or else of a boy who +is very young. Give me the lute, my little Miguel.” And +presently the Prince, too, sang. </p> + +<p> Sang the Prince: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + +<p class="i2"> “I was in a path, and I +trod toward the citadel of the land’s Seigneur, and on either +side were pleasant and forbidden meadows, having various names. And +one trod with me who babbled of the brooding mountains and of the +low-lying and adjacent clouds; of the west wind and of the budding +fruit-trees. He debated the significance of these things, and he +went astray togather violets, while I walked in the trodden +path.”</p> + + +<p class="stanzai2"> “He babbled of +genial wine and of the alert lips of women, of swinging censers and +of the serene countenances of priests, and of the clear, lovely +colors of bread and butter, and his heart was troubled by a world +profuse in beauty. And he leaped a stile to share his allotted +provision with a dying dog, and afterward, being hungry, a wall to +pilfer apples, while I walked in the trodden path.</p> + + +<p class="stanzai2"> “He babbled of +Autumn’s bankruptcy and of the age-long lying promises of +Spring; and of his own desire to be at rest; and of running waters +and of decaying leaves. He babbled of the far-off stars; and he +debated whether they were the eyes of God or gases which burned, and +he demonstrated, with logic, that neither existed. At times he +stumbled as he stared about him and munched his apples, so that he +was all bemired, but I walked in the trodden path.</p> + + +<p class="stanzai2"> “And the path led +to the gateway of a citadel, and through the gateway. ‘Let us +not enter,’ he said, ‘for the citadel is vacant, and, +moreover, I am in profound terror, and, besides, I have not as yet +eaten all my apples.’ And he wept aloud, but I was not afraid, +for I had walked in the trodden path.”</p> +</div> + +<p> Again there was a silence. “You paint a dreary world, my +Prince.” </p> + +<p> “My little Miguel, I paint the world as the Eternal Father +made it. The laws of the place are written large, so that all may +read them; and we know that every road, whether it be my trodden +path or some byway through your gayer meadows, yet leads in the end +to God. We have our choice,—or to come to Him as a laborer +comes at evening for the day’s wages fairly earned, or to come +as a roisterer haled before the magistrate.” </p> + +<p> “I consider you to be in the right,” the boy said, +after a lengthy interval, “although I decline—and +decline emphatically—to believe you.” </p> + +<p> The Prince laughed. “There spoke Youth,” he said, +and he sighed as though he were a patriarch. “But we have +sung, we two, the Eternal Tenson of God’s will and of +man’s desires. And I claim the prize, my Little Miguel.” +</p> + +<p> Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. “You have +conquered, my very dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that +Hawise—” But Miguel de Rueda choked. “Oh, I do not +understand! and yet in part I understand!” the boy wailed in +the darkness. </p> + +<p> And the Prince laid one hand upon his page’s hair, and +smiled in the darkness to note how soft was this hair, since the man +was less a fool than at first view you might have taken him to be; +and he said: </p> + +<p> “One must play the game out fairly, my lad. We are no +little people, she and I, the children of many kings, of God’s +regents here on earth; and it was never reasonable, my Miguel, that +gentlefolk should cheat at their dicing.” </p> + +<p> The same night Miguel de Rueda repeated the prayer which Saint +Theophilus made long ago to the Mother of God: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Dame, je n’ose,</p> + <p>Flors d’aiglentier et lis et rose,</p> + <p>En qui li filz Diex se repose,”</p> +</div> + +<p> and so on. Or, in other wording: “Hearken, O gracious +Lady! thou that art more fair than any flower of the eglantine, more +comely than the blossoming of the rose or of the lily! thou to whom +was confided the very Son of God! Harken, for I am afraid! afford +counsel to me that am ensnared by Satan and know not what to do! +Never will I make an end of praying. O Virgin débonnaire! O +honored Lady! Thou that wast once a woman—!” </p> + +<p> So he prayed, and upon the next day as these two rode southward, +he sang half as if in defiance. </p> + +<p> Sang Miguel: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“And still,—whatever years impend</p> + <p>To witness Time a fickle friend,</p> + <p>And Youth a dwindling fire,—</p> + <p>I must adore till all years end</p> + <p>My first love, Heart’s Desire.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“I may not hear men speak of her</p> + <p>Unmoved, and vagrant pulses stir</p> + <p>To greet her passing-by,</p> + <p>And I, in all her worshipper</p> + <p>Must serve her till I die.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> “For I remember: this is she</p> + <p>That reigns in one man’s memory</p> + <p>Immune to age and fret,</p> + <p>And stays the maid I may not see</p> + <p>Nor win to, nor forget.”</p> +</div> + +<p> It was on the following day, near Bazas, that these two +encountered Adam de Gourdon, a Provençal knight, with whom +the Prince fought for a long while, without either contestant giving +way; in consequence a rendezvous was fixed for the November of that +year, and afterward the Prince and de Gourdon parted, highly pleased +with each other. </p> + +<p> Thus the Prince and his attendant came, in late September, to +Mauléon, on the Castilian frontier, and dined there at the +<i>Fir Cone</i>. Three or four lackeys were about—some exalted +person’s retinue? Prince Edward hazarded to the swart little +landlord, as the Prince and Miguel lingered over the remnants of +their meal. </p> + +<p> Yes, the fellow informed them: the Prince de Gâtinais had +lodged there for a whole week, watching the north road, as +circumspect of all passage as a cat over a mouse-hole. Eh, +monseigneur expected some one, doubtless—a lady, it might +be,—the gentlefolk had their escapades like every one else. +The innkeeper babbled vaguely, for on a sudden he was very much +afraid of his gigantic patron. </p> + +<p> “You will show me to his room,” Prince Edward said, +with a politeness that was ingratiating. </p> + +<p> The host shuddered and obeyed. </p> + +<p> Miguel de Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips +drumming upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his +shoulders, all resolution. On the stairway he passed the black +little landlord, who was now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. +But Miguel de Rueda went on to the room above. The door was ajar. He +paused there. </p> + +<p> De Gâtinais had risen from his dinner and stood facing the +door. He, too, was a blond man and the comeliest of his day. And at +sight of him awoke in the woman’s heart all the old +tenderness; handsome and brave and witty she knew him to be, as +indeed the whole world knew him to be distinguished by every namable +grace; and the innate weakness of de Gâtinais, which she alone +suspected, made him now seem doubly dear. Fiercely she wanted to +shield him, less from bodily hurt than from that self-degradation +which she cloudily apprehended to be at hand; the test was come, and +Etienne would fail. Thus much she knew with a sick, illimitable +surety, and she loved de Gâtinais with a passion which dwarfed +comprehension. </p> + +<p> “O Madame the Virgin!” prayed Miguel de Rueda, +“thou that wast once a woman, even as I am now a woman! grant +that the man may slay him quickly! grant that he may slay Etienne +very quickly, honored Lady, so that my Etienne may die +unshamed!” </p> + +<p> “I must question, messire,” de Gâtinais was +saying, “whether you have been well inspired. Yes, quite +frankly, I do await the arrival of her who is your nominal wife; and +your intervention at this late stage, I take it, can have no outcome +save to render you absurd. So, come now! be advised by me, +messire—” </p> + +<p> Prince Edward said, “I am not here to talk.” </p> + +<p> “—For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary +disputation the cutting of one gentleman’s throat by another +gentleman is well enough, since the argument is unanswerable. Yet in +this case we have each of us too much to live for; you to govern +your reconquered England, and I—you perceive that I am +candid—to achieve in turn the kingship of another realm. Now +to secure this realm, possession of the Lady Ellinor is to me +essential; to you she is nothing.” </p> + +<p> “She is a woman whom I have deeply wronged,” Prince +Edward said, “and to whom, God willing, I mean to make +atonement. Ten years ago they wedded us, willy-nilly, to avert the +impending war between Spain and England; to-day El Sabio intends to +purchase Germany with her body as the price; you to get Sicily as +her husband. Mort de Dieu! is a woman thus to be bought and sold +like hog’s flesh! We have other and cleaner customs, we of +England.” </p> + +<p> “Eh, and who purchased the woman first?” de +Gâtinais spat at him, viciously, for the Frenchman now saw his +air-castle shaken to the corner-stone. </p> + +<p> “They wedded me to the child in order that a great war +might be averted. I acquiesced, since it appeared preferable that +two people suffer inconvenience rather than many thousands be slain. +And still this is my view of the matter. Yet afterward I failed her. +Love had no clause in our agreement; but I owed her more protection +than I have afforded. England has long been no place for women. I +thought she would comprehend that much. But I know very little of +women. Battle and death are more wholesome companions, I now +perceive, than such folk as you and Alphonso. Woman is the weaker +vessel—the negligence was mine—I may not blame +her.” The big and simple man was in an agony of repentance. +</p> + +<p> On a sudden he strode forward, his sword now shifted to his left +hand and his right hand outstretched. “One and all, we are +weaklings in the net of circumstance. Shall one herring, then, blame +his fellow if his fellow jostle him? We walk as in a mist of error, +and Belial is fertile in allurements; yet always it is granted us to +behold that sin is sin. I have perhaps sinned through anger, Messire +de Gâtinais, more deeply than you have planned to sin through +luxury and through ambition. Let us then cry quits, Messire de +Gâtinais, and afterward part in peace, and in common +repentance.” </p> + +<p> “And yield you Ellinor?” de Gâtinais said. +“Oh no, messire, I reply to you with Arnaud de Marveil, that +marvellous singer of eld, ‘They may bear her from my presence, +but they can never untie the knot which unites my heart to her; for +that heart, so tender and so constant, God alone divides with my +lady, and the portion which God possesses He holds but as a part of +her domain, and as her vassal.’” “This is +blasphemy,” Prince Edward now retorted, “and for such +observations alone you merit death. Will you always talk and talk +and talk? I perceive that the devil is far more subtle than you, +messire, and leads you, like a pig with a ring in his nose, toward +gross iniquity. Messire, I tell you that for your soul’s +health I doubly mean to kill you now. So let us make an end of +this.” </p> + +<p> De Gâtinais turned and took up his sword. “Since you +will have it,” he rather regretfully said; “yet I +reiterate that you play an absurd part. Your wife has deserted you, +has fled in abhorrence of you. For three weeks she has been tramping +God knows whither or in what company—” </p> + +<p> He was here interrupted. “What the Lady Ellinor has +done,” Prince Edward crisply said, “was at my request. +We were wedded at Burgos; it was natural that we should desire our +reunion to take place at Burgos; and she came to Burgos with an +escort which I provided.” </p> + +<p> De Gâtinais sneered. “So that is the tale you will +deliver to the world?” </p> + +<p> “After I have slain you,” the Prince said, +“yes.” </p> + +<p> “The reservation is wise. For if I were dead, Messire +Edward, there would be none to know that you risk all for a drained +goblet, for an orange already squeezed—quite dry, +messire.” </p> + +<p> “Face of God!” the Prince said. </p> + +<p> But de Gâtinais flung back both arms in a great gesture, +so that he knocked a flask of claret from the table at his rear. +“I am candid, my Prince. I would not see any brave gentleman +slain in a cause so foolish. In consequence I kiss and tell. In +effect, I was eloquent, I was magnificent, so that in the end her +reserve was shattered like the wooden flask yonder at our feet. Is +it worth while, think you, that our blood flow like this +flagon’s contents?” </p> + +<p> “Liar!” Prince Edward said, very softly. “O +hideous liar! Already your eyes shift!” He drew near and +struck the Frenchman. “Talk and talk and talk! and lying talk! +I am ashamed while I share the world with a thing as base as +you.” </p> + +<p> De Gâtinais hurled upon him, cursing, sobbing in an +abandoned fury. In an instant the place resounded like a smithy, for +there were no better swordsmen living than these two. The +eavesdropper could see nothing clearly. Round and round they veered +in a whirl of turmoil. Presently Prince Edward trod upon the broken +flask, smashing it. His foot slipped in the spilth of wine, and the +huge body went down like an oak, his head striking one leg of the +table. </p> + +<p> “A candle!” de Gâtinais cried, and he panted +now—“a hundred candles to the Virgin of +Beaujolais!” He shortened his sword to stab the Prince of +England. </p> + +<p> The eavesdropper came through the doorway, and flung herself +between Prince Edward and the descending sword. The sword dug deep +into her shoulder, so that she shrieked once with the cold pain of +this wound. Then she rose, ashen. “Liar!” she said. +“Oh, I am shamed while I share the world with a thing as base +as you!” </p> + +<p> In silence de Gâtinais regarded her. There was a long +interval before he said, “Ellinor!” and then again, +“Ellinor!” like a man bewildered. </p> + +<p> “<i>I was eloquent, I was magnificent</i>” she said, +“<i>so that in the end her reserve was shattered</i>! +Certainly, messire, it is not your death which I desire, since a man +dies so very, very quickly. I desire for you—I know not what I +desire for you!” the girl wailed. </p> + +<p> “You desire that I should endure this present +moment,” de Gâtinais replied; “for as God reigns, +I love you, of whom I have spoken infamy, and my shame is very +bitter.” </p> + +<p> She said: “And I, too, loved you. It is strange to think +of that.” </p> + +<p> “I was afraid. Never in my life have I been afraid before +to-day. But I was afraid of this terrible and fair and righteous +man. I saw all hope of you vanish, all hope of Sicily—in +effect, I lied as a cornered beast spits out his venom.” </p> + +<p> “I know,” she answered. “Give me water, +Etienne.” She washed and bound the Prince’s head with a +vinegar-soaked napkin. Ellinor sat upon the floor, the big +man’s head upon her knee. “He will not die of this, for +he is of strong person. Look you, Messire de Gâtinais, you and +I are not strong. We are so fashioned that we can enjoy only the +pleasant things of life. But this man can enjoy—enjoy, mark +you—the commission of any act, however distasteful, if he +think it to be his duty. There is the difference. I cannot fathom +him. But it is now necessary that I become all which he +loves—since he loves it,—and that I be in thought and +deed all which he desires. For I have heard the Tenson +through.” </p> + +<p> “You love him!” said de Gâtinais. </p> + +<p> She glanced upward with a pitiable smile. “No, it is you +whom I love, my Etienne. You cannot understand how at this very +moment every fibre of me—heart, soul, and body—may be +longing just to comfort you, and to give you all which you desire, +my Etienne, and to make you happy, my handsome Etienne, at however +dear a cost. No; you will never understand that. And since you may +not understand, I merely bid you go and leave me with my +husband.” </p> + +<p> And then there fell between these two an infinite silence. </p> + +<p> “Listen,” de Gâtinais said; “grant me +some little credit for what I do. You are alone; the man is +powerless. My fellows are within call. A word secures the +Prince’s death; a word gets me you and Sicily. And I do not +speak that word, for you are my lady as well as his, and your will +is my one law.” </p> + +<p> But there was no mercy in the girl, no more for him than for +herself. The big head lay upon her breast; she caressed the gross +hair of it ever so lightly. “These are tinsel oaths,” +she crooned, as if rapt with incurious content; “these are the +old empty protestations of all you strutting poets. A word gets you +what you desire! Then why do you not speak that word? Why do you not +speak many words, and become again as eloquent and as magnificent as +you were when you contrived that adultery about which you were just +now telling my husband?” </p> + +<p> De Gâtinais raised clenched hands. “I am +shamed,” he said; and then he said, “It is just.” +</p> + +<p> He left the room and presently rode away with his men. I say +that, here at last, he had done a knightly deed, but she thought +little of it, never raised her head as the troop clattered from +Mauléon, with a lessening beat which lapsed now into the +blunders of an aging fly who doddered about the window yonder. </p> + +<p> She stayed thus, motionless, her meditations adrift in the +future; and that which she foreread left her not all sorry nor +profoundly glad, for living seemed by this, though scarcely the +merry and colorful business which she had esteemed it, yet +immeasurably the more worth while. </p> + +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE SECOND NOVEL +</p> +<a name="III"></a> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +III +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Leixant a part le stil dels trobados,</p> + <p>Dos grans dezigs ban combatut ma pensa,</p> + <p>Mas lo voler vers un seguir dispensa:</p> + <p>Yo l’vos publich, amar dretament vos.”</p> +</div> + +<p class="synopsis"> +THE THIRD NOVEL.—MEREGRETT OF FRANCE, THINKING TO PRESERVE A +HOODWINKED GENTLEMAN, ANNOYS A SPIDER; AND BY THE GRACE OF DESTINY THE +WEB OF THAT CUNNING INSECT ENTRAPS A BUTTERFLY, A WASP, AND THEN A GOD; +WHO SHATTERS IT. +</p> + + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Rat-Trap +</p> + + +<p> In the year of grace 1298, a little before Candlemas (thus +Nicolas begins), came letters to the first King Edward of England +from his kinsman and ambassador to France, Earl Edmund of Lancaster. +It was perfectly apparent, the Earl wrote, that the French King +meant to surrender to the Earl’s lord and brother neither the +duchy of Guienne nor the Lady Blanch. This lady, I must tell you, +was now affianced to King Edward, whose first wife, Dame Ellinor, +had died eight years before this time. </p> + +<p> The courier found Sire Edward at Ipswich, midway in celebration +of his daughter’s marriage to the Count of Holland. The King +read the letters through and began to laugh; and presently broke +into a rage such as was possible (men whispered) only to the +demon-tainted blood of Oriander’s descendants. Next day the +keeper of the privy purse entered upon the house-hold-books a +considerable sum “to make good a large ruby and an emerald +lost out of his coronet when the King’s Grace was pleased to +throw it into the fire”; and upon the same day the King +recalled Lancaster. The King then despatched yet another embassy +into France to treat about Sire Edward’s marriage. This last +embassy was headed by the Earl of Aquitaine: his lieutenant was Lord +Pevensey, the King’s natural son by Hawise Bulmer. </p> + +<p> The Earl got audience of the French King at Mezelais. Walking +alone came this Earl of Aquitaine, with a large retinue, into the +hall where the barons of France stood according to their rank; in +unadorned russet were the big Earl and his attendants, but upon the +scarlets and purples of the French lords many jewels shone: it was +as though through a corridor of gayly painted sunlit glass that the +grave Earl came to the dais where sat King Philippe. </p> + +<p> The King had risen at close sight of the new envoy, and had +gulped once or twice, and without speaking, had hurriedly waved his +lords out of ear-shot. The King’s perturbation was very +extraordinary. </p> + +<p> “Fair cousin,” the Earl now said, without any +prelude, “four years ago I was affianced to your sister, Dame +Blanch. You stipulated that Gascony be given up to you in guaranty, +as a settlement on any children I might have by that incomparable +lady. I assented, and yielded you the province, upon the +understanding, sworn to according to the faith of loyal kings, that +within forty days you assign to me its seignory as your vassal. And +I have had of you since then neither my province nor my betrothed +wife, but only excuses, Sire Philippe.” </p> + +<p> With eloquence the Frenchman touched upon the emergencies to +which the public weal so often drives men of high station, and upon +his private grief over the necessity—unavoidable, +alas!—of returning a hard answer before the council; and +became so voluble that Sire Edward merely laughed in that big-lunged +and disconcerting way of his, and afterward lodged for a week at +Mezelais, nominally passing by his minor title of Earl of Aquitaine, +and as his own ambassador. </p> + +<p> Negotiations became more swift of foot, since a man serves +himself with zeal. In addition, the French lords could make nothing +of a politician so thick-witted that he replied to every +consideration of expediency with a parrot-like reiteration of the +circumstance that already the bargain was signed and sworn to: in +consequence, while daily they fumed over his stupidity, daily he +gained his point. During this period he was, upon one pretext or +another, very often in the company of his affianced wife, Dame +Blanch. </p> + +<p> This lady, I must tell you, was the handsomest of her day; there +could nowhere be found a creature more agreeable to every sense; and +she compelled the adoring regard of men, it is recorded, not gently +but in an imperious fashion. Sire Edward, who, till this, had loved +her merely by report, and, in accordance with the high custom of +old, through many perusals of her portrait, now appeared besotted. +He was an aging man, near sixty, huge and fair, with a crisp beard, +and the bright unequal eyes of Manuel of Poictesme. The better-read +at Mezelais began to liken this so candidly enamored monarch and his +Princess to Sieur Hercules at the feet of Queen Omphale. </p> + +<p> The court hunted and slew a stag of ten in the woods of +Ermenoueïl, which stand thick about the château; and at +the hunt’s end, these two had dined at Rigon the +forester’s hut, in company with Dame Meregrett, the French +King’s younger sister. She sat a little apart from the +betrothed, and stared through the hut’s one window. We know, +nowadays, it was not merely the trees she was considering. </p> + +<p> Dame Blanch seemed undisposed to mirth. “We have slain the +stag, beau sire,” she said, “and have made of his death +a brave diversion. To-day we have had our sport of death,—and +presently the gay years wind past us, as our cavalcade came toward +the stag, and God’s incurious angel slays us, much as we slew +the stag. And we shall not understand, and we shall wonder, as the +stag did, in helpless wonder. And Death will have his sport of us, +as if in atonement.” Her big eyes shone, as when the sun +glints upon a sand-bottomed pool. “Ohé, I have known +such happiness of late, beau sire, that I am hideously afraid to +die.” </p> + +<p> The King answered, “I too have been very happy of +late.” </p> + +<p> “But it is profitless to talk about death thus drearily. +Let us flout him, instead, with some gay song.” And thereupon +she handed Sire Edward a lute. </p> + +<p> The King accepted it. “Death is not reasonably mocked by +any person,” Sire Edward said, “since in the end he +conquers, and of the lips that gibed at him remains but a little +dust. Rather should I, who already stand beneath a lifted sword, +make for my destined and inescapable conqueror a Sirvente, which is +the Song of Service.” </p> + +<p> +Sang Sire Edward:<a id="footnotetag3" name="footnotetag3"></a><a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “I sing of Death, that comes unto the king,</p> + <p>And lightly plucks him from the cushioned throne;</p> + <p>And drowns his glory and his warfaring</p> + <p>In unrecorded dim oblivion;</p> + <p>And girds another with the sword thereof;</p> + <p>And sets another in his stead to reign;</p> + <p>And ousts the remnant, nakedly to gain</p> + <p>Styx’ formless shore and nakedly complain</p> + <p>Midst twittering ghosts lamenting life and love.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “For Death is merciless: a crack-brained king</p> + <p>He raises in the place of Prester John,</p> + <p>Smites Priam, and mid-course in conquering</p> + <p>Bids Caesar pause; the wit of Salomon,</p> + <p>The wealth of Nero and the pride thereof,</p> + <p>And battle-prowess—or of Tamburlaine</p> + <p>Darius, Jeshua, or Charlemaigne,—</p> + <p>Wheedle and bribe and surfeit Death in vain,</p> + <p>And get no grace of him nor any love.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Incuriously he smites the armored king</p> + <p>And tricks his counsellors—”</p> +</div> + +<p> “True, O God!” murmured the tiny woman, who sat +beside the window yonder. With that, Dame Meregrett rose, and passed +from the room. </p> + +<p> The two lovers started, and laughed, and afterward paid little +heed to her outgoing. Sire Edward had put aside the lute and sat now +regarding the Princess. His big left hand propped the bearded chin; +his grave countenance was flushed, and his intent eyes shone under +their shaggy brows, very steadily, although the left eye was now so +nearly shut as to reveal the merest spark. </p> + +<p> Irresolutely, Dame Blanch plucked at her gown; then rearranged a +fold of it, and with composure awaited the ensuing action, afraid at +bottom, but not at all ill-pleased; and she looked downward. </p> + +<p> The King said: “Never before were we two alone, madame. +Fate is very gracious to me this morning.” </p> + +<p> “Fate,” the lady considered, “has never denied +much to the Hammer of the Scots.” </p> + +<p> “She has denied me nothing,” he sadly said, +“save the one thing that makes this business of living seem a +rational proceeding. Fame and power and wealth fate has accorded me, +no doubt, but never the common joys of life. And, look you, my +Princess, I am of aging person now. During some thirty years I have +ruled England according to my interpretation of God’s will as +it was anciently made manifest by the holy Evangelists; and during +that period I have ruled England not without odd by-ends of +commendation: yet behold, to-day I forget the world-applauded, +excellent King Edward, and remember only Edward +Plantagenet—hot-blooded and desirous man!—of whom that +much-commended king has made a prisoner all these years.” </p> + +<p> “It is the duty of exalted persons,” Blanch +unsteadily said, “to put aside such private inclinations as +their breasts may harbor—” </p> + +<p> He said, “I have done what I might for the happiness of +every Englishman within my realm saving only Edward Plantagenet; and +now I think his turn to be at hand.” Then the man kept +silence; and his hot appraisal daunted her. </p> + +<p> “Lord,” she presently faltered, “lord, you +know that we are already betrothed, and, in sober verity, Love +cannot extend his laws between husband and wife, since the gifts of +love are voluntary, and husband and wife are but the slaves of +duty—” </p> + +<p> “Troubadourish nonsense!” Sire Edward said; +“yet it is true that the gifts of love are voluntary. And +therefore—Ha, most beautiful, what have you and I to do with +all this chaffering over Guienne?” The two stood very close to +each other now. Blanch said, “It is a high +matter—” Then on a sudden the full-veined girl was +aglow. “It is a trivial matter.” He took her in his +arms, since already her cheeks flared in scarlet anticipation of the +event. </p> + +<p> Thus holding her, he wooed the girl tempestuously. Here, indeed, +was Sieur Hercules enslaved, burned by a fiercer fire than that of +Nessus, and the huge bulk of the unconquerable visibly shaken by his +adoration. In a disordered tapestry of verbiage, aflap in winds of +passion, she presently beheld herself prefigured by Balkis, the +Judean’s lure, and by that Princess of Cyprus who reigned in +Aristotle’s time, and by Nicolete, the King’s daughter +of Carthage,—since the first flush of morning was as a +rush-light before her resplendency, the man swore; and in +conclusion, he likened her to a modern Countess of Tripolis, for +love of whom he, like Rudel, had cleft the seas, and losing whom he +must inevitably die as did Rudel. Sire Edward snapped his fingers +now over any consideration of Guienne. He would conquer for her all +Muscovy and all Cataia, too, if she desired mere acreage. Meanwhile +he wanted her, and his hard and savage passion beat down opposition +as if with a bludgeon. </p> + +<p> “Heart’s emperor,” the trembling girl replied, +“I think that you were cast in some larger mould than we of +France. Oh, none of us may dare resist you! and I know that nothing +matters, nothing in all the world, save that you love me. Then take +me, since you will it,—and take me not as King, since you will +otherwise, but as Edward Plantagenet. For listen! by good luck you +have this afternoon despatched Rigon for Chevrieul, where to-morrow +we were to hunt the great boar. So to-night this hut will be +unoccupied.” </p> + +<p> The man was silent. He had a gift that way when occasion served. +</p> + +<p> “Here, then, beau sire! here, then, at nine, you are to +meet me with my chaplain. Behold, he marries us, as glibly as though +we two were peasants. Poor king and princess!” cried Dame +Blanch, and in a voice which thrilled him, “shall ye not, +then, dare to be but man and woman?” </p> + +<p> “Ha!” the King said. “So the chaplain makes a +third! Well, the King is pleased to loose his prisoner, that +long-imprisoned Edward Plantagenet: and I will do it.” </p> + +<p> So he came that night, without any retinue, and habited as a +forester, with a horn swung about his neck, into the unlighted hut +of Rigon the forester, and he found a woman there, though not the +woman whom he had expected. </p> + +<p> “Treachery, beau sire! Horrible treachery!” she +wailed. </p> + +<p> “I have encountered it before this,” the big man +said. </p> + +<p> “Presently will come to you not Blanch but Philippe, with +many men to back him. And presently they will slay you. You have +been trapped, beau sire. Ah, for the love of God, go! Go, while +there is yet time!” Sire Edward reflected. Undoubtedly, to +light on Edward Longshanks alone in a forest would appear to King +Philippe, if properly attended, a tempting chance to settle divers +difficulties, once for all; and Sire Edward knew the conscience of +his old opponent to be invulnerable. The act would violate the core +of hospitality and knighthood, no doubt, but its outcome would be a +very definite gain to France, and for the rest, merely a dead body +in a ditch. Not a monarch in Christendom, Sire Edward reflected, but +feared and in consequence hated the Hammer of the Scots, and in +further consequence would not lift a finger to avenge him; and not a +being in the universe would rejoice more heartily at the success of +Philippe’s treachery than would Sire Edward’s son and +immediate successor, the young Prince Edward of Caernarvon. Taking +matters by and large, Philippe had all the powers of common-sense to +back him in contriving an assassination. </p> + +<p> What Sire Edward said was, “Dame Blanch, then, knew of +this?” But Meregrett’s pitiful eyes had already answered +him, and he laughed a little. </p> + +<p> “In that event, I have to-night enregistered my name among +the goodly company of Love’s Lunatics,—as yokefellow +with Dan Merlin in his thornbush, and with wise Salomon when he +capered upon the high places of Chemosh, and with Duke Ares +sheepishly agrin in the net of Mulciber. Rogues all, madame! fools +all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and allures the soul to such +sensual delights as bar its passage toward the eternal life wherein +alone lies the empire and the heritage of the soul. And why does +this carnal prison so impede the soul? Because Satan once ranked +among the sons of God, and the Eternal Father, as I take it, has not +yet forgotten the antique relationship,—and hence it is +permitted even in our late time that always the flesh rebel against +the spirit, and that always these so tiny and so thin-voiced +tricksters, these highly tinted miracles of iniquity, so gracious in +demeanor and so starry-eyed—” </p> + +<p> Then he turned and pointed, no longer the orotund zealot but the +expectant captain now. “Look, my Princess!” In the +pathway from which he had recently emerged stood a man in full armor +like a sentinel. “Mort de Dieu, we can but try to get out of +this,” Sire Edward said. </p> + +<p> “You should have tried without talking so much,” +replied Meregrett. She followed him. And presently, in a big splash +of moonlight, the armed man’s falchion glittered across their +way. “Back,” he bade them, “for by the +King’s orders, I can let no man pass.” </p> + +<p> “It would be very easy now to strangle this +herring,” Sire Edward reflected. </p> + +<p> “But it is not easy to strangle a whole school of +herring,” the fellow retorted. “Hoh, Messire +d’Aquitaine, the bushes of Ermenoueîl are alive with my +associates. The hut yonder, in effect, is girdled by them,—and +we have our orders to let no man pass.” </p> + +<p> “Have you any orders concerning women?” the King +said. </p> + +<p> The man deliberated. Sire Edward handed him three gold pieces. +“There was assuredly no specific mention of petticoats,” +the soldier now recollected, “and in consequence I dare to +pass the Princess, against whom certainly nothing can be +planned.” </p> + +<p> “Why, in that event,” Sire Edward said, “we +two had as well bid each other adieu.” </p> + +<p> But Meregrett only said, “You bid me go?” </p> + +<p> He waved his hand. “Since there is no choice. For that +which you have done—however tardily—I thank you. +Meantime I return to Rigon’s hut to rearrange my toga as King +Caesar did when the assassins fell upon him, and to encounter with +due decorum whatever Dame Luck may prefer.” </p> + +<p> She said, “You go to your death.” </p> + +<p> He shrugged his broad shoulders. “In the end we +necessarily die.” </p> + +<p> Dame Meregrett turned, and without faltering passed back into +the hut. </p> + +<p> When he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, +Sire Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation. +“Presently come your brother and his tattling lords. To be +discovered here with me at night, alone, means trouble for you. If +Philippe chances to fall into one of his Capetian rages it means +death.” </p> + +<p> She answered, as though she were thinking about other matters, +“Yes.” </p> + +<p> Now, for the first time, Sire Edward regarded her with profound +consideration. To the finger-tips this so-little lady showed a +descendant of the holy Lewis whom he had known and loved in old +years. Small and thinnish she was, with soft and profuse hair that, +for all its blackness, gleamed in the lamplight with stray ripples +of brilliancy, as you may see sparks shudder to extinction over +burning charcoal. She had the Valois nose, long and delicate in +form, and overhanging a short upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious +in tint, and the whiteness of her skin would have matched the +Hyperborean snows tidily enough. As for her eyes, the customary +similes of the court poets were gigantic onyxes or ebony highly +polished and wet with May dew. These eyes were too big for her +little face: they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which +nervously endured each incident of life, like a foreigner uneasily +acquiescent to the custom of the country. </p> + +<p> Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. +“Madame, I do not understand.” </p> + +<p> Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. “It +means that I love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for +presently you die. Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may +hearten me to live.” </p> + +<p> The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming +to Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful +haze of forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes +a god and transmutes whatever in corporeal man would have been a +defect into some divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must +tell you in this place, since no other occasion offers, that even +until the end of her life it was so. For to her what in other +persons would have seemed flagrant dulness showed somehow, in Sire +Edward, as the majestic deliberation of one that knows his verdict +to be decisive, and therefore appraises cautiously; and if sometimes +his big, irregular calm eyes betrayed no apprehension of the jest at +which her lips were laughing, and of which her brain approved, +always within the instant her heart convinced her that a god is not +lightly moved to mirth. </p> + +<p> And now it was a god—<i>O deus certè</i>!—who +had taken a woman’s paltry face between his hands, half +roughly. “And the maid is a Capet!” Sire Edward mused. +</p> + +<p> “Blanch has never desired you any ill, beau sire. But she +loves the Archduke of Austria. And once you were dead, she might +marry him. One cannot blame her,” Meregrett considered, +“since he wishes to marry her, and she, of course, wishes to +make him happy.” </p> + +<p> “And not herself, save in some secondary way!” the +big King said. “In part I comprehend, madame. Now I too hanker +after this same happiness, and my admiration for the cantankerous +despoiler whom I praised this morning is somewhat abated. There was +a Tenson once—Lord, Lord, how long ago! I learn too late that +truth may possibly have been upon the losing side—” Thus +talking incoherencies, he took up Rigon’s lute. </p> + +<p> +Sang Sire Edward: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Incuriously he smites the armored king</p> + <p>And tricks his counsellors—</p> +</div> + +<p> “yes, the jingle ran thus. Now listen, madame—listen, the while +that I have my singing out, whatever any little cut-throats may be +planning in corners.” </p> + +<p> +Sang Sire Edward: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“As, later on,</p> + <p>Death will, half-idly, still our pleasuring,</p> + <p>And change for fevered laughter in the sun</p> + <p>Sleep such as Merlin’s,—and excess thereof,—</p> + <p>Whence we, divorceless Death our Viviaine</p> + <p>Implacable, may never more regain</p> + <p>The unforgotten rapture, and the pain</p> + <p>And grief and ecstasy of life and love.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“For, presently, as quiet as the king</p> + <p>Sleeps now that planned the keeps of Ilion,</p> + <p>We, too, will sleep, whilst overhead the spring</p> + <p>Rules, and young lovers laugh—as we have done,—</p> + <p>And kiss—as we, that take no heed thereof,</p> + <p>But slumber very soundly, and disdain</p> + <p>The world-wide heralding of winter’s wane</p> + <p>And swift sweet ripple of the April rain</p> + <p>Running about the world to waken love.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“We shall have done with Love, and Death be king</p> + <p>And turn our nimble bodies carrion,</p> + <p>Our red lips dusty;—yet our live lips cling</p> + <p>Despite that age-long severance and are one</p> + <p>Despite the grave and the vain grief thereof,—</p> + <p>Which we will baffle, if in Death’s domain</p> + <p>Fond memories may enter, and we twain</p> + <p>May dream a little, and rehearse again</p> + <p>In that unending sleep our present love.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“Speed forth to her in halting unison,</p> + <p>My rhymes: and say no hindrance may restrain</p> + <p>Love from his aim when Love is bent thereon;</p> + <p>And that were love at my disposal lain—</p> + <p>All mine to take!—and Death had said, ‘Refrain,</p> + <p>Lest I, even I, exact the cost thereof,’</p> + <p>I know that even as the weather-vane</p> + <p>Follows the wind so would I follow Love.”</p> +</div> + +<p> Sire Edward put aside the lute. “Thus ends the Song of +Service,” he said, “which was made not by the King of +England but by Edward Plantagenet—hot-blooded and desirous +man!—in honor of the one woman who within more years than I +care to think of has at all considered Edward Plantagenet.” +</p> + +<p> “I do not comprehend,” she said. And, indeed, she +dared not. </p> + +<p> But now he held both tiny hands in his. “At best, your +poet is an egotist. I must die presently. Meantime I crave largesse, +madame, and a great almsgiving, so that in his unending sleep your +poet may rehearse our present love.” And even in Rigon’s +dim light he found her kindling eyes not niggardly. </p> + +<p> Sire Edward strode to the window and raised big hands toward the +spear-points of the aloof stars. “Master of us all!” he +cried; “O Father of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the +Scourge of France, the conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and +the flail of the accursed race that slew Thine only Son! the King of +England am I, who have made of England an imperial nation, and have +given to Thy Englishmen new laws! And to-night I crave my hire. +Never, O my Father, have I had of any person aught save reverence or +hatred! never in my life has any person loved me! And I am old, my +Father—I am old, and presently I die. As I have served +Thee—as Jacob wrestled with Thee at the ford of +Jabbok—at the place of Peniel—” Against the +tremulous blue and silver of the forest the Princess saw how +horribly the big man was shaken. “My hire! my hire!” he +hoarsely said. “Forty long years, my Father! And now I will +not let Thee go except Thou hear me, and grant me life and this +woman’s love.” </p> + +<p> He turned, stark and black in the rearward splendor of the moon. +“<i>As a prince hast thou power with God</i>,” he calmly +said, “<i>and thou hast prevailed</i>. For the King of kings +was never obdurate, my dear, to them that have deserved well of Him. +So He will attend to my request, and will get us out of this pickle +somehow.” </p> + +<p> Even as he said this, Philippe the Handsome came into the room, +and at the heels of the French King were seven lords, armed +cap-à-pie. </p> + +<p> The French King was an odd man. Subtly smiling, he came forward +through the twilight, with soft, long strides, and he made no outcry +at recognition of his sister. “Take the woman away, +Victor,” he said, disinterestedly, to de Montespan. Afterward +he sat down beside the table and remained silent for a while, +intently regarding Sire Edward and the tiny woman who clung to Sire +Edward’s arm; and in the flickering gloom of the hut Philippe +smiled as an artist may smile who gazes on the perfected work and +knows it to be adroit. </p> + +<p> “You prefer to remain, my sister?” he said +presently. “Hé bien! it happens that to-night I am in a +mood for granting almost any favor. A little later and I will attend +to your merits.” The fleet disorder of his visage had lapsed +again into the meditative smile which was that of Lucifer watching a +toasted soul. “And so it ends,” he said, “and +England loses to-night the heir that Manuel the Redeemer provided. +Conqueror of Scotland, Scourge of France! O unconquerable king! and +will the worms of Ermenoueïl, then, pause to-morrow to consider +through what a glorious turmoil their dinner came to them?” +</p> + +<p> “Do you design to murder me?” Sire Edward said. </p> + +<p> The French King shrugged. “I design that within this +moment my lords shall slay you while I sit here and do not move a +finger. Is it not good to be a king, my cousin, and to sit quite +still, and to see your bitterest enemy hacked and slain,—and +all the while to sit quite still, quite unruffled, as a king should +always be? Eh, eh! I never lived until to-night!” </p> + +<p> “Now, by Heaven,” said Sire Edward, “I am your +kinsman and your guest, I am unarmed—” </p> + +<p> Philippe bowed his head. “Undoubtedly,” he assented, +“the deed is foul. But I desire Gascony very earnestly, and so +long as you live you will never permit me to retain Gascony. Hence +it is quite necessary, you conceive, that I murder you. What!” +he presently said, “will you not beg for mercy? I had +hoped,” the French King added, somewhat wistfully, “that +you might be afraid to die, O huge and righteous man! and would +entreat me to spare you. To spurn the weeping conqueror of +Llewellyn, say ... But these sins which damn one’s soul are in +actual performance very tedious affairs; and I begin to grow aweary +of the game. Hé bien! now kill this man for me, +messieurs.” </p> + +<p> The English King strode forward. “Shallow +trickster!” Sire Edward thundered. “<i>Am I not +afraid</i>? You grimacing baby, do you think to ensnare a lion with +such a flimsy rat-trap? Wise persons do not hunt lions with these +contraptions: for it is the nature of a rat-trap, fair cousin, to +ensnare not the beast which imperiously desires and takes in +daylight, but the tinier and the filthier beast that covets meanly +and attacks under the cover of darkness—as do you and your +seven skulkers!” The man was rather terrible; not a Frenchman +within the hut but had drawn back a little. </p> + +<p> “Listen!” Sire Edward said, and he came yet farther +toward the King of France and shook at him one forefinger; +“when you were in your cradle I was leading armies. When you +were yet unbreeched I was lord of half Europe. For thirty years I +have driven kings before me as did Fierabras. Am I, then, a person +to be hoodwinked by the first big-bosomed huzzy that elects to +waggle her fat shoulders and to grant an assignation in a forest +expressly designed for stabbings? You baby, is the Hammer of the +Scots the man to trust for one half moment a Capet? Ill-mannered +infant,” the King said, with bitter laughter, “it is now +necessary that I summon my attendants and remove you to a nursery +which I have prepared in England.” He set the horn to his lips +and blew three blasts. There came many armed warriors into the hut, +bearing ropes. Here was the entire retinue of the Earl of Aquitaine. +Cursing, Sire Philippe sprang upon the English King, and with a +dagger smote at the impassive big man’s heart. The blade broke +against the mail armor under the tunic. “Have I not told +you,” Sire Edward wearily said, “that one may never +trust a Capet? Now, messieurs, bind these carrion and convey them +whither I have directed you. Nay, but, Roger—” He +conversed apart with his son, the Earl of Pevensey, and what Sire +Edward commanded was done. The French King and seven lords of France +went from that hut trussed like chickens ready for the oven. </p> + +<p> And now Sire Edward turned toward Meregrett and chafed his big +hands gleefully. “At every tree-bole a tethered horse awaits +us; and a ship awaits our party at Fécamp. To-morrow we sleep +in England—and, Mort de Dieu! do you not think, madame, that +once within my very persuasive Tower of London, your brother and I +may come to some agreement over Guienne?” </p> + +<p> She had shrunk from him. “Then the trap was yours? It was +you that lured my brother to this infamy!” </p> + +<p> “In effect, I planned it many months ago at Ipswich +yonder,” Sire Edward gayly said. “Faith of a gentleman! +your brother has cheated me of Guienne, and was I to waste eternity +in begging him to give me back my province? Oh, no, for I have many +spies in France, and have for some two years known your brother and +your sister to the bottom. Granted that I came hither incognito, to +forecast your kinfolk’s immediate endeavors was none too +difficult; and I wanted Guienne—and, in consequence, the +person of your brother. Hah, death of my life! does not the seasoned +hunter adapt his snare to the qualities of his prey, and take the +elephant through his curiosity, as the snake through his notorious +treachery?” Now the King of England blustered. </p> + +<p> But the little Princess wrung her hands. “I am this night +most hideously shamed. Beau sire, I came hither to aid a brave man +infamously trapped, and instead I find an alert spider, snug in his +cunning web, and patiently waiting until the gnats of France fly +near enough. Eh, the greater fool was I to waste my labor on the +shrewd and evil thing which has no more need of me than I of it! And +now let me go hence, sire, unmolested, for the sake of chivalry. +Could I have come to the brave man I had dreamed of, I would have +come cheerily through the murkiest lane of hell; as the more artful +knave, as the more judicious trickster”—and here she +thrust him from her—“I spit upon you. Now let me go +hence.” </p> + +<p> He took her in his brawny arms. “Fit mate for me,” +he said. “Little vixen, had you done otherwise I would have +devoted you to the devil.” </p> + +<p> Still grasping her, and victoriously lifting Dame Meregrett, so +that her feet swung clear of the floor, Sire Edward said, again with +that queer touch of fanatic gravity: “My dear, you are +perfectly right. I was tempted, I grant you. But it was never +reasonable that gentlefolk should cheat at their dicing. Therefore I +whispered Roger Bulmer my final decision; and he is now loosing all +my captives in the courtyard of Mezelais, after birching the tails +of every one of them as soundly as these infants’ pranks +to-night have merited. So you perceive that I do not profit by my +trick; and that I lose Guienne, after all, in order to come to you +with hands—well! not intolerably soiled.” </p> + +<p> “Oh, now I love you!” she cried, a-thrill with +disappointment to find him so unthriftily high-minded. “Yet +you have done wrong, for Guienne is a king’s ransom.” +</p> + +<p> He smiled whimsically, and presently one arm swept beneath her +knees, so that presently he held her as one dandles a baby; and +presently his stiff and graying beard caressed her burning cheek. +Masterfully he said: “Then let Guienne serve as such and +ransom for a king his glad and common manhood. Now it appears +expedient that I leave France without any unwholesome delay, because +these children may resent being spanked. More +lately—hé, already I have in my pocket the Pope’s +dispensation permitting me to marry, in spite of our cousinship, the +sister of the King of France.” </p> + +<p> Very shyly Dame Meregrett lifted her little mouth. She said +nothing because talk was not necessary. </p> + +<p> In consequence, after a deal of political tergiversation +(Nicolas concludes), in the year of grace 1299, on the day of our +Lady’s nativity, and in the twenty-seventh year of King +Edward’s reign, came to the British realm, and landed at +Dover, not Dame Blanch, as would have been in consonance with +seasoned expectation, but Dame Meregrett, the other daughter of King +Philippe the Bold; and upon the following day proceeded to +Canterbury, whither on the next Thursday after came Edward, King of +England, into the Church of the Trinity at Canterbury, and therein +espoused the aforesaid Dame Meregrett. </p> + +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE THIRD NOVEL +</p> +<a name="IV"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +IV +</p> + +<p> +THE STORY OF THE CHOICES +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Sest fable es en aquest mon</p> + <p>Semblans al homes que i son;</p> + <p>Que el mager sen qu’om pot aver</p> + <p>So es amar Dieu et sa mer,</p> + <p>E gardar sos comendamens.”</p> +</div> + +<p class="synopsis"> +THE FOURTH NOVEL.—YSABEAU OF FRANCE, DESIROUS OF DISTRACTION, +LOOKS FOR RECREATION IN THE TORMENT OF A CERTAIN KNIGHT, WHOM SHE PROVES +TO BE NO MORE THAN HUMAN; BUT IN THE OUTCOME OF HER HOLIDAY HE CONFOUNDS +THIS QUEEN BY THE WIT OF HIS REPLY. +</p> + + + + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Choices +</p> + + +<p> In the year of grace 1327 (thus Nicolas begins) you could have +found in all England no couple more ardent in affection or in +despair more affluent than Rosamund Eastney and Sir Gregory Darrell. +She was Lord Berners’ only daughter, a brown beauty, of +extensive repute, thanks to a retinue of lovers who were +practitioners of the Gay Science, and who had scattered broadcast +innumerable Canzons in her honor; and Lord Berners was a man to +accept the world as he found it. </p> + +<p> “Dompnedex!” the Earl was wont to say; “in +sincerity I am fond of Gregory Darrell, and if he chooses to make +love to my daughter that is none of my affair. The eyes and the +brain preserve a proverbial warfare, which is the source of all +amenity, for without lady-service there would be no songs and +tourneys, no measure and no good breeding; and a man delinquent in +domnei is no more to be valued than an ear of corn without the +grain. No, I am so profoundly an admirer of Love that I can never +willingly behold him slain, of a surfeit, by Matrimony; besides, +this rapscallion Gregory could not to advantage exchange purses with +Lazarus in the parable; and, moreover, Rosamund is to marry the Earl +of Sarum a little after All Saints’ day.” </p> + +<p> “Sarum!” people echoed. “Why, the old goat has +had four wives already!” </p> + +<p> And the Earl would spread his hands. “These redundancies +are permissible to one of the wealthiest persons in England,” +he was used to submit. </p> + +<p> Thus it fell out that Sir Gregory came and went at his own +discretion as concerned Lord Berners’ fief of Ordish, all +through those choppy times of warfare between Sire Edward and Queen +Ysabeau. Lord Berners, for one, vexed himself not inordinately over +the outcome, since he protested the King’s armament to consist +of fools and the Queen’s of rascals; and had with entire +serenity declined to back either Dick or the devil. </p> + +<p> But at last the Queen got resistless aid from Count William of +Hainault (in a way to be told about hereafter), and the King was +captured by her forces, and was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle. There +they held the second Edward to reign in England, who was the +unworthy son of Dame Ellinor and of that first squinting King Edward +about whom I have told you in the two tales preceding this tale. It +was in the September of this year, a little before Michaelmas, that +they brought Sir Gregory Darrell to be judged by the Queen; +notoriously the knight had been her husband’s adherent. +“Death!” croaked Adam Orleton, who sat to the right +hand, and, “Young de Spencer’s death!” amended the +Earl of March, with wild laughter; but Ysabeau leaned back in her +great chair—a handsome woman, stoutening now from gluttony and +from too much wine,—and regarded her prisoner with lazy +amiability. </p> + +<p> “And what was your errand in Figgis Wood?” she +demanded—“or are you mad, then, Gregory Darrell, that +you dare ride past my gates alone?” </p> + +<p> He curtly said, “I rode for Ordish.” </p> + +<p> Followed silence. “Roger,” the Queen ordered, +“give me the paper which I would not sign.” </p> + +<p> The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of +London somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, like a person in shrewd +and epicurean amusement, while the Queen subscribed the parchment, +with a great scrawling flourish. </p> + +<p> “Take, in the devil’s name, the hire of your +dexterities,” said Ysabeau. She pushed this document with her +wet pen-point toward March. “So! get it over with, that +necessary business with my husband at Berkeley. And do the rest of +you withdraw, saving only my prisoner.” </p> + +<p> Followed another silence. Queen Ysabeau lolled in her carven +chair, considering the comely gentleman who stood before her, +fettered, at the point of shameful death. There was in the room a +little dog which had come to the Queen, and now licked the palm of +her left hand, and the soft lapping of its tongue was the only sound +you heard. “So at peril of your life you rode for Ordish, +then, messire?” </p> + +<p> The tense man had flushed. “You have harried us of the +King’s party out of England,—and in reason I might not +leave England without seeing the desire of my heart.” </p> + +<p> “My friend,” said Ysabeau, as if half in sorrow, +“I would have pardoned anything save that.” She rose. +Her face was dark and hot. “By God and all His saints! you +shall indeed leave England to-morrow and the world also! but not +without a final glimpse of this same Rosamund. Yet listen: I, too, +must ride with you to Ordish—as your sister, +say—Gregory, did I not hang, last April, the husband of your +sister? Yes, Ralph de Belomys, a thin man with eager eyes, the Earl +of Farrington he was. As his widow I will ride with you to Ordish, +upon condition you disclose to none at Ordish, saving only, if you +will, this quite immaculate Rosamund, any hint of our merry +carnival. And to-morrow (you will swear according to the nicest +obligations of honor) you must ride back with me to +encounter—that which I may devise. For I dare to trust your +naked word in this, and, moreover, I shall take with me a +sufficiency of retainers to leave you no choice.” </p> + +<p> Darrell knelt before her. “I can do no homage to Queen +Ysabeau; yet the prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die +to-morrow and cunningly contrives, for old time’s sake, to +hearten me with a sight of Rosamund, I cannot but kiss.” This +much he did. “And I swear in all things to obey your +will.” </p> + +<p> “O comely fool!” the Queen said, not ungently, +“I contrive, it may be, but to demonstrate that many tyrants +of antiquity were only bunglers. And, besides, I must have other +thoughts than those which I have known too long: I must this night +take holiday from thinking them, lest I go mad.” </p> + +<p> Thus did the Queen arrange her holiday. </p> + +<p> “Either I mean to torture you to-morrow,” Dame +Ysabeau said, presently, to Darrell, as these two rode side by side, +“or else I mean to free you. In sober verity I do not know. I +am in a holiday humor, and it is as the whim may take me. But do you +indeed love this Rosamund Eastney? And of course she worships +you?” </p> + +<p> “It is my belief, madame, that when I see her I tremble +visibly, and my weakness is such that a child has more intelligence +than I,—and toward such misery any lady must in common reason +be a little compassionate.” </p> + +<p> Her hands had twitched so that the astonished palfrey reared. +“I design torture,” the Queen said; “ah, I perfect +exquisite torture, for you have proven recreant, you have forgotten +the maid Ysabeau,—Le Desir du Cuer, was it not, my Gregory, +that you were wont to call her, as nowadays this Rosamund is the +desire of your heart. You lack inventiveness.” </p> + +<p> His palms clutched at heaven. “That Ysabeau is dead! and +all true joy is destroyed, and the world lies under a blight from +which God has averted an unfriendly face in displeasure! yet of all +wretched persons existent I am he who endures the most grievous +anguish, for daily I partake of life without any relish, and I would +in truth deem him austerely kind who slew me now that the maiden +Ysabeau is dead.” </p> + +<p> She shrugged wearily. “I scent the raw stuff of a +Planh,” the Queen observed; “<i>benedicite</i>! it was +ever your way, my friend, to love a woman chiefly for the verses she +inspired.” And she began to sing, as they rode through +Baverstock Thicket. </p> + +<p> +Sang Ysabeau: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2">“Man’s love hath many prompters,</p> + <p>But a woman’s love hath none;</p> + <p>And he may woo a nimble wit</p> + <p>Or hair that shames the sun,</p> + <p>Whilst she must pick of all one man</p> + <p>And ever brood thereon—</p> + <p>And for no reason,</p> + <p>And not rightly,—</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2">“Save that the plan was foreordained</p> + <p>(More old than Chalcedon,</p> + <p>Or any tower of Tarshish</p> + <p>Or of gleaming Babylon),</p> + <p>That she must love unwillingly</p> + <p>And love till life be done,—.</p> + <p>He for a season,</p> + <p>And more lightly.”</p> + +</div> +<p> So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, +with a retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory +Darrell. Lord Berners received the party with boisterous +hospitality. </p> + +<p> “Age has not blinded Father to the fact that your sister +is a very handsome woman,” was Rosamund Eastney’s +comment. The period appears to have been after supper, and the girl +sat with Gregory Darrell in not the most brilliant corner of the +main hall. </p> + +<p> The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then +with a tumbling rush of speech told of the sorry masquerade. +“The she-devil designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she +plans I know not what.” </p> + +<p> “Yet I—” said Rosamund. The girl had risen, +and she continued with an odd inconsequence: “You have told me +you were Pembroke’s squire when long ago he sailed for France +to fetch this woman into England—” </p> + +<p> “—Which you never heard!” Lord Berners shouted +at this point. “Jasper, a lute!” And then he halloaed, +“Gregory, Madame de Farrington demands that racy song you made +against Queen Ysabeau during your last visit.” Thus did the +Queen begin her holiday. </p> + +<p> It was a handsome couple which came forward, with hand quitting +hand tardily, and with blinking eyes yet rapt: these two were not +overpleased at being disturbed, and the man was troubled, as in +reason he well might be, by the task assigned him. </p> + +<p> “Is it, indeed, your will, my sister,” he said, +“that I should sing—this song?” </p> + +<p> “It is my will,” the Countess said. </p> + +<p> And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. “A +truth, once spoken, may not be disowned in any company. It is not, +look you, of my own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if Queen +Ysabeau herself were to bid me sing this song, I could not refuse, +for, Christ aid me! the song is true.” </p> + +<p> +Sang Sir Gregory: +</p> + + <div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Dame Ysabeau, la prophécie</p> + <p>Que li sage dit ne ment mie,</p> + <p>Que la royne sut ceus grever</p> + <p>Qui tantost laquais sot aymer—”<a id="footnotetag4" name="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a></p> +</div> + +<p> and so on. It was a lengthy ditty, and in its wording not +oversqueamish; the Queen’s career in England was detailed +without any stuttering, and you would have found the catalogue +unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory delivered it with an incisive gusto, +desperately countersigning his own death warrant. Her treacheries, +her adulteries and her assassinations were rendered in glowing terms +whose vigor seemed, even now, to please their contriver. Yet the +minstrel added a new peroration. </p> + +<p> +Sang Sir Gregory: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="i2">“Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gémit—</p> +<p>Peu pense à ce que la voix dit,</p> +<p>Car me membre du temps jadis</p> +<p>Et d’ung garson, d’amour surpris,</p> +<p>Et d’une fille—et la vois si—</p> +<p>Et grandement suis esbahi.” </p> +</div> + +<p> And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without +speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance +caught between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had +annoyed her. She drew the little dagger from her girdle and +meditatively cut the buzzing thing in two. She cast the fragments +from her, and resting the dagger’s point upon the arm of her +chair, one forefinger upon the summit of the hilt, considerately +twirled the brilliant weapon. </p> + +<p> “This song does not err upon the side of clemency,” +she said at last, “nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau.” +</p> + +<p> “That she-wolf!” said Lord Berners, comfortably. +“Hoo, Madame Gertrude! since the Prophet Moses wrung healing +waters from a rock there has been no such miracle recorded.” +</p> + +<p> “We read, Messire de Berners, that when the she-wolf once +acknowledges a master she will follow him as faithfully as any dog. +My brother, I do not question your sincerity, yet everybody knows +you sing with the voice of an unhonored courtier. Suppose Queen +Ysabeau had heard your song all through as I have heard it, and then +had said—for she is not as the run of +women—‘Messire, I had thought until this that there was +no thorough man in England save tall Roger Mortimer. I find him +tawdry now, and—I remember. Come you, then, and rule the +England that you love as you may love no woman, and rule me, +messire, since I find even in your cruelty—For we are no +pygmies, you and I! Yonder is squabbling Europe and all the ancient +gold of Africa, ready for our taking! and past that lies Asia, too, +and its painted houses hung with bells, and cloud-wrapt Tartary, +where we two may yet erect our equal thrones, upon which to receive +the tributary emperors! For we are no pygmies, you and I.’ She +paused. She shrugged. “Suppose Queen Ysabeau, who is not as +the run of women, had said this much, my brother?” </p> + +<p> Darrell was more pallid (as the phrase is) than a sheet, and the +lute had dropped unheeded, and his hands were clenched. </p> + +<p> “I would answer, my sister, that as she has found in +England but one man, I have found in England but one woman—the +rose of all the world.” His eyes were turned at this toward +Rosamund Eastney. “And yet,” the man stammered, +“because I, too, remember—” </p> + +<p> “Hah, in God’s name! I am answered,” the +Countess said. She rose, in dignity almost a queen. “We have +ridden far to-day, and to-morrow we must travel a deal +farther—eh, my brother? I am going to bed, Messire de +Berners.” </p> + +<p> So the men and women parted. Madame de Farrington kissed her +brother at leaving him, as was natural; and under her caress his +stalwart person shuddered, but not in repugnance; and the Queen went +away singing hushedly. </p> + +<p> +Sang Ysabeau: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="i2"> + “Were the All-Mother wise, life (shaped anotherwise)</p> + <p>Would be all high and true;</p> + <p>Could I be otherwise I had been otherwise</p> + <p>Simply because of you, ...</p> + <p>With whom I have naught to do,</p> + <p>And who are no longer you!</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Life with its pay to be bade us essay to be</p> + <p>What we became,—I believe</p> + <p>Were there a way to be what it was play to be</p> + <p>I would not greatly grieve ...</p> + <p>Hearts are not worn on the sleeve.</p> + <p>Let us neither laugh nor grieve!”</p> +</div> + +<p> Ysabeau would have slept that night within the chamber of +Rosamund Eastney had either slept. As concerns the older I say +nothing. The girl, though soon aware of frequent rustlings near at +hand, lay quiet, half-forgetful of the poisonous woman yonder. The +girl was now fulfilled with a great blaze of exultation: to-morrow +Gregory must die, and then perhaps she might find time for tears; +meanwhile, before her eyes, the man had flung away a kingdom and +life itself for love of her, and the least nook of her heart ached +to be a shade more worthy of the sacrifice. </p> + +<p> After it might have been an hour of this excruciate ecstasy the +Countess came to Rosamund’s bed. “Ay,” the woman +began, “it is indisputable that his hair is like spun gold and +that his eyes resemble sun-drenched waters in June. It is certain +that when this Gregory laughs God is more happy. Girl, I was +familiar with the routine of your meditations before you were +born.” </p> + +<p> Rosamund said, quite simply: “You have known him always. I +envy the circumstance, Madame Gertrude—you alone of all women +in the world I envy, since you, his sister, being so much older, +must have known him always.” </p> + +<p> “I know him to the core, my girl,” the Countess +answered. For a while she sat silent, one bare foot jogging +restlessly. “Yet I am two years his junior—Did you hear +nothing, Rosamund?” “No, Madame Gertrude, I heard +nothing.” </p> + +<p> “Strange!” the Countess said; “let us have +lights, since I can no longer endure this overpopulous +twilight.” She kindled, with twitching fingers, three lamps. +“It is as yet dark yonder, where the shadows quiver very +oddly, as though they would rise from the floor—do they not, +my girl?—and protest vain things. But, Rosamund, it has been +done; in the moment of death men’s souls have travelled +farther and have been visible; it has been done, I tell you. And he +would stand before me, with pleading eyes, and would reproach me in +a voice too faint to reach my ears—but I would see +him—and his groping hands would clutch at my hands as though a +dropped veil had touched me, and with the contact I would go +mad!” </p> + +<p> “Madame Gertrude!” the girl stammered, in +communicated terror. </p> + +<p> “Poor innocent fool!” the woman said, “I am +Ysabeau of France.” And when Rosamund made as though to rise, +in alarm, Queen Ysabeau caught her by the shoulder. “Bear +witness when he comes that I never hated him. Yet for my quiet it +was necessary that it suffer so cruelly, the scented, pampered body, +and no mark be left upon it! Eia! even now he suffers! No, I have +lied. I hate the man, and in such fashion as you will comprehend +when you are Sarum’s wife.” </p> + +<p> “Madame and Queen!” the girl said, “you will +not murder me!” “I am tempted!” the Queen +answered. “O little slip of girlhood, I am tempted, for it is +not reasonable you should possess everything that I have lost. +Innocence you have, and youth, and untroubled eyes, and quiet +dreams, and the fond graveness of a child, and Gregory +Darrell’s love—” Now Ysabeau sat down upon the bed +and caught up the girl’s face between two fevered hands. +“Rosamund, this Darrell perceives within the moment, as I do, +that the love he bears for you is but what he remembers of the love +he bore a certain maid long dead. Eh, you might have been her +sister, Rosamund, for you are very like her. And she, poor +wench—why, I could see her now, I think, were my eyes not +blurred, somehow, almost as though Queen Ysabeau might weep! But she +was handsomer than you, since your complexion is not overclear, +praise God!” </p> + +<p> Woman against woman they were. “He has told me of his +intercourse with you,” the girl said, and this was a lie +flatfooted. “Nay, kill me if you will, madame, since you are +the stronger, yet, with my dying breath, I protest that Gregory has +loved no woman truly in all his life except me.” </p> + +<p> The Queen laughed bitterly. “Do I not know men? He told +you nothing. And to-night he hesitated, and to-morrow, at the +lifting of my finger, he will supplicate. Since boyhood Gregory +Darrell has loved me, O white, palsied innocence! and he is mine at +a whistle. And in that time to come he will desert you, +Rosamund—bidding farewell with a pleasing Canzon,—and +they will give you to the gross Earl of Sarum, as they gave me to +the painted man who was of late our King! and in that time to come +you will know your body to be your husband’s makeshift when he +lacks leisure to seek out other recreation! and in that time to come +you will long for death, and presently your heart will be a flame +within you, my Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your +God because He made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate +hour he tricked you, and hate all men because, poor fools, they +scurry to obey your whims! and chiefly you will hate yourself +because you are so pitiable! and devastation only will you love in +that strange time which is to come. It is adjacent, my +Rosamund.” </p> + +<p> The girl kept silence. She sat erect in the tumbled bed, her +hands clasping her knees, and she appeared to deliberate what Dame +Ysabeau had said. Plentiful brown hair fell about this +Rosamund’s face, which was white and shrewd. “A part of +what you say, madame, I understand. I know that Gregory Darrell +loves me, yet I have long ago acknowledged he loves me as one pets a +child, or, let us say, a spaniel which reveres and amuses one. I +lack his wit, you comprehend, and so he never speaks to me all that +he thinks. Yet a part of it he tells me, and he loves me, and with +this I am content. Assuredly, if they give me to Sarum I shall hate +Sarum even more than I detest him now. And then, I think, Heaven +help me! that I would not greatly grieve—Oh, you are all +evil!” Rosamund said; “and you thrust into my mind +thoughts which I may not understand!” </p> + +<p> “You will comprehend them,” the Queen said, +“when you know yourself a chattel, bought and paid for.” +</p> + +<p> The Queen laughed. She rose, and her hands strained toward +heaven. “You are omnipotent, yet have You let me become that +into which I am transmuted,” she said, very low. </p> + +<p> She began to speak as though a statue spoke through lips that +seemed motionless. “Men have long urged me, Rosamund, to a +deed which by one stroke would make me mistress of these islands. +To-day I looked on Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in +love—and I had but to crush a lewd soft worm to come to him. +Eh, and I was tempted—!” </p> + +<p> The girl said: “Let us grant that Gregory loves you very +greatly, and me just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a +cushioned infamy, a colorful and brief delirium, and afterward +demolishment of soul and body; I offer him contentment and a level +life, made up of small events, it may be, and lacking both in +abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love a flame wherein the +lover’s soul must be purified; it is a flame which assays high +queens just as it does their servants: and thus, madame, to judge +between us I dare summon you.” “Child, child!” the +Queen said, tenderly, and with a smile, “you are brave; and in +your fashion you are wise; yet you will never comprehend. But once I +was in heart and soul and body all that you are to-day; and now I am +Queen Ysabeau—Did you in truth hear nothing, Rosamund?” +</p> + +<p> “Why, nothing save the wind.” </p> + +<p> “Strange!” said the Queen; “since all the +while that I have talked with you I have been seriously annoyed by +shrieks and imprecations! But I, too, grow cowardly, it may +be—Nay, I know,” she said, and in a resonant voice, +“that by this I am mistress of broad England, until my +son—my own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, +Rosamund—knows me for what I am. For I have +heard—Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!” the Queen said; +“I would have died without lamentation and I was but your +plaything!” </p> + +<p> “Madame Ysabeau—!” the girl answered vaguely, +for she was puzzled and was almost frightened by the other’s +strange talk. </p> + +<p> “To bed!” said Ysabeau; “and put out the +lights lest he come presently. Or perhaps he fears me now too much +to come to-night. Yet the night approaches, none the less, when I +must lift some arras and find him there, chalk-white, with painted +cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very terribly, or look into some +mirror and behold there not myself but him,—and in that +instant I shall die. Meantime I rule, until my son attains his +manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and so +helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly, +and save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more +fair—But I must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, +God orders matters very shrewdly, my Rosamund.” </p> + +<p> Timidly the girl touched Ysabeau’s shoulder. “In +part, I understand, madame and Queen.” </p> + +<p> “You understand nothing,” said Ysabeau; “how +should you understand whose breasts are yet so tiny? So let us put +out the light! though I dread darkness, Rosamund—For they say +that hell is poorly lighted—and they say—” Then +Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Pensively she blew out each lamp. </p> + +<p> “We know this Gregory Darrell,” the Queen said in +the darkness, “ah, to the marrow we know him, however +steadfastly we blink, and we know the present turmoil of his soul; +and in common-sense what chance have you of victory?” </p> + +<p> “None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. +For man is a being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy +orders, and his life here is one unending warfare between that which +is divine in him and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven +attends as arbiter of the tourney. Always a man’s judgment +misleads him and his faculties allure him to a truce, however brief, +with iniquity. His senses raise a mist about his goings, and there +is not an endowment of the man but in the end plays traitor to his +interest, as of God’s wisdom God intends; so that when the man +is overthrown, the Eternal Father may, in reason, be neither vexed +nor grieved if only the man takes heart to rise again. And when, +betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight out the allotted +battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors which God +Himself accorded, I think that the Saints hold festival in +heaven.” </p> + +<p> “A very pretty sermon,” said the Queen. “Yet I +do not think that our Gregory could very long endure a wife given +over to such high-minded talking. He prefers to hear himself do the +fine talking.” </p> + +<p> Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September +winds; but I believe that neither of these two slept with +profundity. </p> + +<p> About dawn one of the Queen’s attendants roused Sir +Gregory Darrell and conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, +where Ysabeau walked in tranquil converse with Lord Berners. The old +man was in high good-humor. </p> + +<p> “My lad,” said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the +shoulder, “you have, I do protest, the very phoenix of +sisters. I was never happier.” And he went away chuckling. +</p> + +<p> The Queen said in a toneless voice, “We ride for +Blackfriars now.” </p> + +<p> Darrell responded, “I am content, and ask but leave to +speak, briefly, with Dame Rosamund before I die.” </p> + +<p> Then the woman came more near to him. “I am not used to +beg, but within this hour you encounter death, and I have loved no +man in all my life saving only you, Sir Gregory Darrell. Nor have +you loved any person as you loved me once in France. Oh, to-day, I +may speak freely, for with you the doings of that boy and girl are +matters overpast. Yet were it otherwise—eh, weigh the matter +carefully! for I am mistress of England now, and England would I +give you, and such love as that slim, white innocence has never +dreamed of would I give you, Gregory Darrell—No, no! ah, +Mother of God, not you!” The Queen clapped one hand upon his +lips. </p> + +<p> “Listen,” she quickly said; “I spoke to tempt +you. But you saw, and you saw clearly, that it was the sickly whim +of a wanton, and you never dreamed of yielding, for you love this +Rosamund Eastney, and you know me to be vile. Then have a care of +me! The strange woman am I, of whom we read that her house is the +way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. Hoh, many strong +men have been slain by me, and in the gray time to come will many +others be slain by me, it may be; but never you among them, my +Gregory, who are more wary, and more merciful, and who know that I +have need to lay aside at least one comfortable thought against +eternity.” </p> + +<p> “I concede you to have been unwise—” he +hoarsely began. </p> + +<p> About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but +the air of this new day seemed raw and chill. </p> + +<p> Then Rosamund came through the opening in the hedge. “Now, +choose,” she said; “the woman offers life and high place +and wealth, and it may be, a greater love than I am capable of +giving you. I offer a dishonorable death within the moment.” +</p> + +<p> And again, with that peculiar and imperious gesture, the man +flung back his head, and he laughed. Said Gregory Darrell: </p> + +<p> “I am I! and I will so to live that I may face without +shame not only God, but also my own scrutiny.” He wheeled upon +the Queen and spoke henceforward very leisurely. “I love you; +all my life long I have loved you, Ysabeau, and even now I love you: +and you, too, dear Rosamund, I love, though with a difference. And +every fibre of my being lusts for the power that you would give me, +Ysabeau, and for the good which I would do with it in the England +which I or blustering Roger Mortimer must rule; as every fibre of my +being lusts for the man that I would be could I choose death without +debate. And I think also of the man that you would make of me, my +Rosamund. </p> + +<p> “The man! And what is this man, this Gregory Darrell, that +his welfare should be considered?—an ape who chatters to +himself of kinship with the archangels while filthily he digs for +groundnuts! This much I know, at bottom. </p> + +<p> “Yet more clearly do I perceive that this same man, like +all his fellows, is a maimed god who walks the world dependent upon +many wise and evil counsellors. He must measure, to a +hair’s-breadth, every content of the world by means of a +bloodied sponge, tucked somewhere in his skull, a sponge which is +ungeared by the first cup of wine and ruined by the touch of his own +finger. He must appraise all that he judges with no better +instruments than two bits of colored jelly, with a bungling +makeshift so maladroit that the nearest horologer’s apprentice +could have devised a more accurate device. In fine, each man is +under penalty condemned to compute eternity with false weights, to +estimate infinity with a yard-stick: and he very often does it, and +chooses his own death without debate. For though, ‘If then I +do that which I would not I consent unto the law,’ saith even +an Apostle; yet a braver Pagan answers him, ‘Perceive at last +that thou hast in thee something better and more divine than the +things which cause the various effects and, as it were, pull thee by +the strings.’ </p> + +<p> “There lies the choice which every man must +face,—whether rationally, as his reason goes, to accept his +own limitations and make the best of his allotted prison-yard? or +stupendously to play the fool and swear even to himself (while his +own judgment shrieks and proves a flat denial), that he is at will +omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my poor proud Ysabeau; and I +choose now, and differently: for poltroon that I am! being now in a +cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am not very much +afraid, and I choose death without any more debate.” </p> + +<p> It was toward Rosamund that the Queen looked, and smiled a +little pitifully. “Should Queen Ysabeau be angry or vexed or +very cruel now, my Rosamund? for at bottom she is glad.” </p> + +<p> And the Queen said also: “I give you back your plighted +word. I ride homeward to my husks, but you remain. Or rather, the +Countess of Farrington departs for the convent of Ambresbury, +disconsolate in her widowhood and desirous to have done with worldly +affairs. It is most natural she should relinquish to her beloved and +only brother all her dower-lands—or so at least Messire de +Berners acknowledges. Here, then, is the grant, my Gregory, that +conveys to you those lands of Ralph de Belomys which last year I +confiscated. And this tedious Messire de Berners is willing +now—he is eager to have you for a son-in-law.” </p> + +<p> About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but +the air of this new day seemed raw and chill, while, very calmly, +Dame Ysabeau took Sir Gregory’s hand and laid it upon the hand +of Rosamund Eastney. “Our paladin is, in the outcome, a mortal +man, and therefore I do not altogether envy you. Yet he has his +moments, and you are capable. Serve, then, not only his desires but +mine also, dear Rosamund.” </p> + +<p> There was a silence. The girl spoke as though it was a +sacrament. “I will, madame and Queen.” </p> + +<p> Thus did the Queen end her holiday. </p> + +<p> A little later the Countess of Farrington rode from Ordish with +all her train save one; and riding from that place, where love was, +she sang very softly. </p> + +<p> +Sang Ysabeau: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“As with her dupes dealt Circe</p> + <p>Life deals with hers, for she</p> + <p>Reshapes them without mercy,</p> + <p>And shapes them swinishly,</p> + <p>To wallow swinishly,</p> + <p>And for eternity;</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“Though, harder than the witch was,</p> + <p>Life, changing not the whole,</p> + <p>Transmutes the body, which was</p> + <p>Proud garment of the soul,</p> + <p>And briefly drugs the soul,</p> + <p>Whose ruin is her goal;</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“And means by this thereafter</p> + <p>A subtler mirth to get,</p> + <p>And mock with bitterer laughter</p> + <p>Her helpless dupes’ regret,</p> + <p>Their swinish dull regret</p> + <p>For what they half forget.”</p> +</div> + +<p> And within the hour came Hubert Frayne to Ordish, on a +foam-specked horse, as he rode to announce to the King’s men +the King’s barbaric murder overnight, at Berkeley Castle, by +Queen Ysabeau’s order. </p> + +<p> “Ride southward,” said Lord Berners, and panted as +they buckled on his disused armor; “but harkee, Frayne! if you +pass the Countess of Farrington’s company, speak no syllable +of your news, since it is not convenient that a lady so thoroughly +and so praise-worthily—Lord, Lord, how I have +fattened!—so intent on holy things, in fine, should have her +meditations disturbed by any such unsettling tidings. Hey, +son-in-law?” </p> + +<p> Sir Gregory Darrell laughed, very bitterly. “He that is +without blemish among you—” he said. Then they armed +completely, and went forth to battle against the murderous harlot. +</p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE FOURTH NOVEL +</p> +<a name="V"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p>V +</p> + +<p> +THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in"> + “Selh que m blasma vostr’ amor ni m defen</p> + <p>Non podon far en re mon cor mellor,</p> + <p>Ni’l dous dezir qu’ieu ai de vos major,</p> + <p>Ni l’enveya’ ni’l dezir, ni’l talen.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE FIFTH NOVEL.—PHILIPPA OF HAINAULT DARES TO LOVE UNTHRIFTILY, AND +WITH THE PRODIGALITY OF HER AFFECTION SHAMES TREACHERY, AND +COMMON-SENSE, AND HIGH ROMANCE, QUITE STOLIDLY; BUT, AS LOVING GOES, +IS OVERTOPPED BY HER MORE STOLID SQUIRE. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Housewife +</p> + + +<p> +In the year of grace 1326, upon Walburga’s Eve, some three hours after +sunset (thus Nicolas begins), had you visited a certain garden on the +outskirts of Valenciennes, you might there have stumbled upon a big, +handsome boy, prone on the turf, where by turns he groaned and vented +himself in sullen curses. His profanity had its palliation. Heir to +England though he was, you must know that this boy’s father in the +flesh had hounded him from England, as more recently had the lad’s +uncle Charles the Handsome driven him from France. Now had this boy +and his mother (the same Queen Ysabeau about whom I have told you in +the preceding tale) come as suppliants to the court of that stalwart +nobleman Sire William (Count of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand, and +Lord of Friesland), where their arrival had evoked the suggestion that +they depart at their earliest convenience. To-morrow, then, these +footsore royalties, the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales, +would be thrust out-of-doors to resume the weary beggarship, to knock +again upon the obdurate gates of this unsympathizing king or that deaf +emperor. +</p> + +<p> +Accordingly the boy aspersed his destiny. At hand a nightingale +carolled as though an exiled prince were the blithest spectacle the +moon knew. +</p> + +<p> +There came through the garden a tall girl, running, stumbling in her +haste. “Hail, King of England!” she said. +</p> + +<p> “Do not mock me, Philippa!” the boy half-sobbed. +Sulkily he rose to his feet. </p> + +<p> “No mockery here, my fair sweet friend. No, I have told my +father all which happened yesterday. I pleaded for you. He +questioned me very closely. And when I had ended, he stroked his +beard, and presently struck one hand upon the table. ‘Out of +the mouth of babes!’ he said. Then he said: ‘My dear, I +believe for certain that this lady and her son have been driven from +their kingdom wrongfully. If it be for the good of God to comfort +the afflicted, how much more is it commendable to help and succor +one who is the daughter of a king, descended from royal lineage, and +to whose blood we ourselves are related!’ And accordingly he and +your mother have their heads together yonder, planning an invasion +of England, no less, and the dethronement of your wicked father, my +Edward. And accordingly—hail, King of England!” The girl +clapped her hands gleefully. The nightingale sang. </p> + +<p> But the boy kept momentary silence. Not even in youth were the +men of his race handicapped by excessively tender hearts; yesterday +in the shrubbery the boy had kissed this daughter of Count William, +in part because she was a healthy and handsome person, and partly +because great benefit might come of an alliance with her father. +Well! the Prince had found chance-taking not unfortunate. With the +episode as foundation, Count William had already builded up the +future queenship of England. The strong Count could do—and, as +it seemed, was now in train to do—indomitable deeds to serve +his son-in-law; and now the beggar of five minutes since foresaw +himself, with this girl’s love as ladder, mounting to the high +habitations of the King of England, the Lord of Ireland, and the +Duke of Aquitaine. Thus they would herald him. </p> + +<p> So he embraced the girl. “Hail, Queen of England!” +said the Prince; and then, “If I forget—” His +voice broke awkwardly. “My dear, if ever I +forget—!” Their lips met now. The nightingale discoursed +as if on a wager. </p> + +<p> Presently was mingled with the bird’s descant another kind +of singing. Beyond the yew-hedge as these two stood silent, breast +to breast, passed young Jehan Kuypelant, one of the pages, fitting +to the accompaniment of a lute his paraphrase of the song which +Archilochus of Sicyon very anciently made in honor of Venus +Melaenis, the tender Venus of the Dark. </p> + +<p> +At a gap in the hedge the young Brabanter paused. His singing ended, +gulped. These two, who stood heart hammering against heart, saw for an +instant Jehan Kuypelant’s lean face silvered by the moonlight, his +mouth a tiny abyss. Followed the beat of lessening footfalls, while +the nightingale improvised an envoi. +</p> + +<p> +But earlier Jehan Kuypelant also had sung, as though in rivalry with +the bird. +</p> + +<p> +Sang Jehan Kuypelant: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Hearken and heed, Melaenis!</p> + <p>For all that the litany ceased</p> + <p>When Time had pilfered the victim,</p> + <p>And flouted thy pale-lipped priest,</p> + <p>And set astir in the temple</p> + <p>Where burned the fires of thy shrine</p> + <p>The owls and wolves of the desert—</p> + <p>Yet hearken, (the issue is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “For I have followed, nor faltered—</p> + <p>Adrift in a land of dreams</p> + <p>Where laughter and pity and terror</p> + <p>Commingle as confluent streams,</p> + <p>I have seen and adored the Sidonian,</p> + <p>Implacable, fair and divine—</p> + <p>And bending low, have implored thee</p> + <p>To hearken, (the issue is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!”</p> +</div> + +<p> It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of +other matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the +year of grace 1346, Master John Copeland—as men now called +Jehan Kuypelant, now secretary to the Queen of +England,—brought his mistress the unhandsome tidings that +David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty thousand Scots to back +him. The Brabanter found plump Queen Philippa with the +kingdom’s arbitress—Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom +King Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring +in France, very notoriously adored and obeyed. </p> + +<p> This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they +narrate, to release the Countess’ husband, William de +Montacute, from the French prison of the Châtelet. You may +appraise her dominion by this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had +denied all to King Edward, and in consequence he could deny her +nothing; so she sent him to fetch back her husband, whom she almost +loved. That armament had sailed from Southampton on Saint +George’s day. </p> + +<p> These two women, then, shared the Brabanter’s execrable +news. Already Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the +broken meats of King David. </p> + +<p> The Countess presently exclaimed: “Let them weep for this +that must! My place is not here.” </p> + +<p> Philippa said, half hopefully, “Do you forsake Sire +Edward, Catherine?” </p> + +<p> “Madame and Queen,” the Countess answered, “in +this world every man must scratch his own back. My lord has +entrusted to me his castle of Wark, his fiefs in Northumberland. +These, I hear, are being laid waste. Were there a thousand +men-at-arms left in England I would say fight. As it is, our men are +yonder in France and the island is defenceless. Accordingly I ride +for the north to make what terms I may with the King of +Scots.” </p> + +<p> Now you might have seen the Queen’s eye brighten. +“Undoubtedly,” said she, “in her lord’s +absence it is the wife’s part to defend his belongings. And my +lord’s fief is England. I bid you God-speed, Catherine.” +And when the Countess was gone, Philippa turned, her round face +somewhat dazed and flushed. “She betrays him! she compounds +with the Scot! Mother of Christ, let me not fail!” </p> + +<p> “A ship must be despatched to bid Sire Edward +return,” said the secretary. “Otherwise all England is +lost.” </p> + +<p> “Not so, John Copeland! We must let Sire Edward complete +his overrunning of France, if such be the Trinity’s will. You +know perfectly well that he has always had a fancy to conquer +France; and if I bade him return now he would be vexed.” </p> + +<p> “The disappointment of the King,” John Copeland +considered, “is a smaller evil than allowing all of us to be +butchered.” </p> + +<p> “Not to me, John Copeland,” the Queen said. </p> + +<p> Now came many lords into the chamber, seeking Madame Philippa. +“We must make peace with the Scottish rascal!—England is +lost!—A ship must be sent entreating succor of Sire +Edward!” So they shouted. </p> + +<p> “Messieurs,” said Queen Philippa, “who +commands here? Am I, then, some woman of the town?” </p> + +<p> Ensued a sudden silence. John Copeland, standing by the seaward +window, had picked up a lute and was fingering the instrument +half-idly. Now the Marquess of Hastings stepped from the throng. +“Pardon, Highness. But the occasion is urgent.” </p> + +<p> “The occasion is very urgent, my lord,” the Queen +assented, deep in meditation. </p> + +<p> John Copeland flung back his head and without prelude began to +carol lustily. </p> + +<p> +Sang John Copeland: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “There are taller lads than Atys,</p> + <p>And many are wiser than he,—</p> + <p>How should I heed them?—whose fate is</p> + <p>Ever to serve and to be</p> + <p>Ever the lover of Atys,</p> + <p>And die that Atys may dine,</p> + <p>Live if he need me—Then heed me,</p> + <p>And speed me, (the moment is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Fair is the form unbeholden,</p> + <p>And golden the glory of thee</p> + <p>Whose voice is the voice of a vision</p> + <p>Whose face is the foam of the sea,</p> + <p>And the fall of whose feet is the flutter</p> + <p>Of breezes in birches and pine,</p> + <p>When thou drawest near me, to hear me,</p> + <p>And cheer me, (the moment is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!”</p> +</div> + + +<p> I must tell you that the Queen shivered, as if with extreme +cold. She gazed toward John Copeland wonderingly. The secretary was +fretting at his lutestrings, with his head downcast. Then in a while +the Queen turned to Hastings. </p> + +<p> “The occasion is very urgent, my lord,” the Queen +assented. “Therefore it is my will that to-morrow one and all +your men be mustered at Blackheath. We will take the field without +delay against the King of Scots.” </p> + +<p> The riot began anew. “Madness!” they shouted; +“lunar madness! We can do nothing until our King returns with +our army!” </p> + +<p> “In his absence,” the Queen said, “I command +here.” </p> + +<p> “You are not Regent,” the Marquess answered. Then he +cried, “This is the Regent’s affair!” </p> + +<p> “Let the Regent be fetched,” Dame Philippa said, +very quietly. They brought in her son, Messire Lionel, now a boy of +eight years, and, in the King’s absence, Regent of England. +</p> + +<p> Both the Queen and the Marquess held papers. +“Highness,” Lord Hastings began, “for reasons of +state which I lack time to explain, this document requires your +signature. It is an order that a ship be despatched to ask the +King’s return. Your Highness may remember the pony you admired +yesterday?” The Marquess smiled ingratiatingly. “Just +here, your Highness—a crossmark.” </p> + +<p> “The dappled one?” said the Regent; “and all +for making a little mark?” The boy jumped for the pen. </p> + +<p> “Lionel,” said the Queen, “you are Regent of +England, but you are also my son. If you sign that paper you will +beyond doubt get the pony, but you will not, I think, care to ride +him. You will not care to sit down at all, Lionel.” </p> + +<p> The Regent considered. “Thank you very much, my +lord,” he said in the ultimate, “but I do not like +ponies any more. Do I sign here, Mother?” </p> + +<p> Philippa handed the Marquess a subscribed order to muster the +English forces at Blackheath; then another, closing the English +ports. “My lords,” the Queen said, “this boy is +the King’s vicar. In defying him, you defy the King. Yes, +Lionel, you have fairly earned a pot of jam for supper.” </p> + +<p> Then Hastings went away without speaking. That night assembled +at his lodgings, by appointment, Viscount Heringaud, Adam Frere, the +Marquess of Orme, Lord Stourton, the Earls of Neville and Gage, and +Sir Thomas Rokeby. These seven found a long table there littered +with pens and parchment; to the rear of it, with a lackey behind +him, sat the Marquess of Hastings, meditative over a cup of +Bordeaux. </p> + +<p> Presently Hastings said: “My friends, in creating our +womankind the Maker of us all was beyond doubt actuated by laudable +and cogent reasons; so that I can merely lament my inability to +fathom these reasons. I shall obey the Queen faithfully, since if I +did otherwise Sire Edward would have my head off within a day of his +return. In consequence, I do not consider it convenient to oppose +his vicar. To-morrow I shall assemble the tatters of troops which +remain to us, and to-morrow we march northward to inevitable defeat. +To-night I am sending a courier into Northumberland. He is an +obliging person, and would convey—to cite an +instance—eight letters quite as blithely as one.” </p> + +<p> +Each man glanced furtively about. England was in a panic by this, and +knew itself to lie before the Bruce defenceless. The all-powerful +Countess of Salisbury had compounded with King David; now Hastings, +too, their generalissimo, compounded. What the devil! loyalty was a +sonorous word, and so was patriotism, but, after all, one had estates +in the north. +</p> + +<p> +The seven wrote in silence. I must tell you that when they had ended, +Hastings gathered the letters into a heap, and without glancing at the +superscriptures, handed all these letters to the attendant lackey. +“For the courier,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +The fellow left the apartment. Presently you heard a departing clatter +of hoofs, and Hastings rose. He was a gaunt, terrible old man, +gray-bearded, and having high eyebrows that twitched and jerked. +</p> + +<p> “We have saved our precious skins,” said he. +“Hey, you fidgeters, you ferments of sour offal! I commend +your common-sense, messieurs, and I request you to withdraw. Even a +damned rogue such as I has need of a cleaner atmosphere in order to +breathe comfortably.” The seven went away without further +speech. </p> + +<p> They narrate that next day the troops marched for Durham, where +the Queen took up her quarters. The Bruce had pillaged and burned +his way to a place called Beaurepair, within three miles of the +city. He sent word to the Queen that if her men were willing to come +forth from the town he would abide and give them battle. </p> + +<p> +She replied that she accepted his offer, and that the barons would +gladly risk their lives for the realm of their lord the King. The +Bruce grinned and kept silence, since he had in his pocket letters +from most of them protesting they would do nothing of the sort. +</p> + +<p> Here is comedy. On one side you have a horde of half-naked +savages, a shrewd master holding them in leash till the moment be +auspicious; on the other, a housewife at the head of a tiny force +lieutenanted by perjurers, by men already purchased. God knows what +dreams she had of miraculous victories, while her barons trafficked +in secret with the Bruce. It is recorded that, on the Saturday +before Michaelmas, when the opposing armies marshalled in the +Bishop’s Park, at Auckland, not a captain on either side +believed the day to be pregnant with battle. There would be a decent +counterfeit of resistance; afterward the little English army would +vanish pell-mell, and the Bruce would be master of the island. The +farce was prearranged, the actors therein were letter-perfect. </p> + +<p> That morning at daybreak John Copeland came to the Queen’s +tent, and informed her quite explicitly how matters stood. He had +been drinking overnight with Adam Frere and the Earl of Gage, and +after the third bottle had found them candid. “Madame and +Queen, we are betrayed. The Marquess of Hastings, our commander, is +inexplicably smitten with a fever. He will not fight to-day. Not one +of your lords will fight to-day.” Master Copeland laid bare +such part of the scheme as yesterday’s conviviality had made +familiar. “Therefore I counsel retreat. Let the King be +summoned out of France.” </p> + +<p> Queen Philippa shook her head, as she cut up squares of toast +and dipped them in milk for the Regent’s breakfast. +“Sire Edward would be vexed. He has always wanted to conquer +France. I shall visit the Marquess as soon as Lionel is +fed,—do you know, John Copeland, I am anxious about Lionel; he +is irritable and coughed five times during the night,—and then +I will attend to this affair.” </p> + +<p> She found the Marquess in bed, groaning, the coverlet pulled up +to his chin. “Pardon, Highness,” said Lord Hastings, +“but I am an ill man. I cannot rise from this couch.” +</p> + +<p> “I do not question the gravity of your disorder,” +the Queen retorted, “since it is well known that the same +illness brought about the death of Iscariot. Nevertheless, I bid you +get up and lead our troops against the Scot.” </p> + +<p> Now the hand of the Marquess veiled his countenance. “I am +an ill man,” he muttered, doggedly. “I cannot rise from +this couch.” </p> + +<p> There was a silence. </p> + +<p> “My lord,” the Queen presently began, “without +is an army prepared—yes, and quite able—to defend our +England. The one requirement of this army is a leader. Afford them +that, my lord—ah, I know that our peers are sold to the Bruce, +yet our yeomen at least are honest. Give them, then, a leader, and +they cannot but conquer, since God also is honest and incorruptible. +Pardieu! a woman might lead these men, and lead them to +victory!” </p> + +<p> Hastings answered: “I am ill. I cannot rise from this +couch.” </p> + +<p> “There is no man left in England,” said the Queen, +“since Sire Edward went into France. Praise God, I am his +wife!” She went away without flurry. </p> + +<p> Through the tent-flap Hastings beheld all that which followed. +The English force was marshalled in four divisions, each commanded +by a bishop and a baron. You could see the men fidgeting, puzzled by +the delay; as a wind goes about a corn-field, vague rumors were +going about those wavering spears. Toward them rode Philippa, upon a +white palfrey, alone and perfectly tranquil. Her eight lieutenants +were now gathered about her in voluble protestation, and she heard +them out. Afterward she spoke, without any particular violence, as +one might order a strange cur from his room. Then the Queen rode on, +as though these eight declaiming persons had ceased to be of +interest. She reined up before her standard-bearer, and took the +standard in her hand. She began again to speak, and immediately the +army was in an uproar; the barons were clustering behind her, in +stealthy groups of two or three whisperers each; all were in the +greatest amazement and knew not what to do; but the army was +shouting the Queen’s name. </p> + +<p> “Now is England shamed,” said Hastings, “since +a woman alone dares to encounter the Scot. She will lead them into +battle—and by God! there is no braver person under heaven than +yonder Dutch Frau! Friend David, I perceive that your venture is +lost, for those men would follow her to storm hell if she desired +it.” </p> + +<p> He meditated, and shrugged. “And so would I,” said +Hastings. </p> + +<p> A little afterward a gaunt and haggard old man, bareheaded and +very hastily dressed, reined his horse by the Queen’s side. +“Madame and Queen,” said Hastings, “I rejoice that +my recent illness is departed. I shall, by God’s grace, on +this day drive the Bruce from England.” </p> + +<p> Philippa was not given to verbiage. Doubtless she had her +emotions, but none was visible upon the honest face. She rested one +plump hand upon the big-veined hand of Hastings. That was all. +“I welcome back the gallant gentleman of yesterday. I was +about to lead your army, my friend, since there was no one else to +do it, but I was hideously afraid. At bottom every woman is a +coward.” </p> + +<p> “You were afraid to do it,” said the Marquess, +“but you were going to do it, because there was no one else to +do it! Ho, madame! had I an army of such cowards I would drive the +Scot not past the Border but beyond the Orkneys.” </p> + +<p> The Queen then said, “But you are unarmed.” </p> + +<p> “Highness,” he replied, “it is surely apparent +that I, who have played the traitor to two monarchs within the same +day, cannot with either decency or comfort survive that day.” +He turned upon the lords and bishops twittering about his +horse’s tail. “You merchandise, get back to your +stations, and if there was ever an honest woman in any of your +families, the which I doubt, contrive to get yourselves killed this +day, as I mean to do, in the cause of the honestest and bravest +woman our time has known.” Immediately the English forces +marched toward Merrington. </p> + +<p> Philippa returned to her pavilion and inquired for John +Copeland. She was informed that he had ridden off, armed, in company +with five of her immediate retainers. She considered this strange, +but made no comment. </p> + +<p> You picture her, perhaps, as spending the morning in prayer, in +beatings upon her breast, and in lamentations. Philippa did nothing +of the sort. She considered her cause to be so clamantly just that +to expatiate to the Holy Father upon its merits would be an +impertinence; it was not conceivable that He would fail her; and in +any event, she had in hand a deal of sewing which required immediate +attention. Accordingly she settled down to her needlework, while the +Regent of England leaned his head against her knee, and his mother +told him that ageless tale of Lord Huon, who in a wood near Babylon +encountered the King of Faëry, and subsequently bereaved an +atrocious Emir of his beard and daughter. All this the industrious +woman narrated in a low and pleasant voice, while the wide-eyed +Regent attended and at the proper intervals gulped his +cough-mixture. </p> + +<p> You must know that about noon Master John Copeland came into the +tent. “We have conquered,” he said. “Now, by the +Face!”—thus, scoffingly, he used her husband’s +favorite oath,—“now, by the Face! there was never a +victory more complete! The Scottish army is fled, it is as utterly +dispersed from man’s seeing as are the sands which dried the +letters King Ahasuerus gave the admirable Esther!” </p> + +<p> “I rejoice,” the Queen said, looking up from her +sewing, “that we have conquered, though in nature I expected +nothing else—Oh, horrible!” She sprang to her feet with +a cry of anguish. Here in little you have the entire woman; the +victory of her armament was to her a thing of course, since her +cause was just, whereas the loss of two front teeth by John Copeland +was a calamity. </p> + +<p> He drew her toward the tent-flap, which he opened. Without was a +mounted knight, in full panoply, his arms bound behind him, +surrounded by the Queen’s five retainers. “In the rout I +took him,” said John Copeland; “though, as my mouth +witnesses, I did not find this David Bruce a tractable +prisoner.” </p> + +<p> “Is that, then, the King of Scots?” Philippa +demanded, as she mixed salt and water for a mouthwash. “Sire +Edward should be pleased, I think. Will he not love me a little now, +John Copeland?” </p> + +<p> John Copeland lifted both plump hands toward his lips. “He +could not choose,” John Copeland said; “madame, he could +no more choose but love you than I could choose.” </p> + +<p> Philippa sighed. Afterward she bade John Copeland rinse his gums +and then take his prisoner to Hastings. He told her the Marquess was +dead, slain by the Knight of Liddesdale. “That is a +pity,” the Queen said. She reflected a while, reached her +decision. “There is left alive in England but one man to whom +I dare entrust the keeping of the King of Scots. My barons are sold +to him; if I retain Messire David by me, one or another lord will +engineer his escape within the week, and Sire Edward will be vexed. +Yet listen, John—” She unfolded her plan. </p> + +<p> “I have long known,” he said, when she had done, +“that in all the world there was no lady more lovable. Twenty +years I have loved you, my Queen, and yet it is only to-day I +perceive that in all the world there is no lady more wise than +you.” </p> + +<p> Philippa touched his cheek, maternally. “Foolish boy! You +tell me the King of Scots has an arrow-wound in his nose? I think a +bread poultice would be best.” She told him how to make this +poultice, and gave other instructions. Then John Copeland left the +tent and presently rode away with his company. </p> + +<p> Philippa saw that the Regent had his dinner, and afterward +mounted her white palfrey and set out for the battle-field. There +the Earl of Neville, as second in command, received her with great +courtesy. God had shown to her Majesty’s servants most +singular favor: despite the calculations of reasonable men,—to +which, she might remember, he had that morning taken the liberty to +assent,—some fifteen thousand Scots were slain. True, her +gallant general was no longer extant, though this was scarcely +astounding when one considered the fact that he had voluntarily +entered the mêlée quite unarmed. A touch of age, +perhaps; Hastings was always an eccentric man: in any event, as +epilogue, this Neville congratulated the Queen that—by blind +luck, he was forced to concede,—her worthy secretary had made +a prisoner of the Scottish King. Doubtless, Master Copeland was an +estimable scribe, and yet—Ah, yes, Lord Neville quite followed +her Majesty—beyond doubt, the wardage of a king was an honor +not lightly to be conferred. Oh, yes, he understood; her Majesty +desired that the office should be given some person of rank. And +pardie! her Majesty was in the right. Eh? said the Earl of Neville. +</p> + +<p> Intently gazing into the man’s shallow eyes, Philippa +assented. Master Copeland had acted unwarrantably in riding off with +his captive. Let him be sought at once. She dictated to +Neville’s secretary a letter, which informed John Copeland +that he had done what was not agreeable in purloining her prisoner. +Let him without delay deliver the King to her good friend the Earl +of Neville. </p> + +<p> To Neville this was satisfactory, since he intended that once in +his possession David Bruce should escape forthwith. The letter, I +repeat, suited this smirking gentleman in its tiniest syllable, and +the single difficulty was to convey it to John Copeland, for as to +his whereabouts neither Neville nor any one else had the least +notion. </p> + +<p> This was immaterial, however, for they narrate that next day a +letter signed with John Copeland’s name was found pinned to +the front of Neville’s tent. I cite a passage therefrom: +“I will not give up my royal prisoner to a woman or a child, +but only to my own lord, Sire Edward, for to him I have sworn +allegiance, and not to any woman. Yet you may tell the Queen she may +depend on my taking excellent care of King David. I have poulticed +his nose, as she directed.” </p> + +<p> Here was a nonplus, not without its comical side. Two great +realms had met in battle, and the king of one of them had vanished +like a soap-bubble. Philippa was in a rage,—you could see that +both by her demeanor and by the indignant letters she dictated; +true, none of these letters could be delivered, since they were all +addressed to John Copeland. Meanwhile, Scotland was in despair, +whereas the traitor English barons were in a frenzy, because they +did not know what had become of their fatal letters to the Bruce, or +of him either. The circumstances were unique, and they remained +unchanged for three feverish weeks. </p> + +<p> We will now return to affairs in France, where on the day of the +Nativity, as night gathered about Calais, John Copeland came +unheralded to the quarters of King Edward, then besieging that city. +Master Copeland entreated audience, and got it readily enough, since +there was no man alive whom Sire Edward more cordially desired to +lay his fingers upon. </p> + +<p> A page brought Master Copeland to the King, that stupendous, +blond and incredibly big person. With Sire Edward were that careful +Italian, Almerigo di Pavia, who afterward betrayed Sire Edward, and +a lean soldier whom Master Copeland recognized as John Chandos. +These three were drawing up an account of the recent victory at +Créçi, to be forwarded to all mayors and sheriffs in +England, with a cogent postscript as to the King’s incidental +and immediate need of money. </p> + +<p> Now King Edward sat leaning far back in his chair, a hand on +either hip, and with his eyes narrowing as he regarded Master +Copeland. Had the Brabanter flinched, the King would probably have +hanged him within the next ten minutes; finding his gaze unwavering, +the King was pleased. Here was a novelty; most people blinked quite +honestly under the scrutiny of those fierce big eyes, which were +blue and cold and of an astounding lustre. The lid of the left eye +drooped a little: this was Count Manuel’s legacy, they +whispered. </p> + +<p> The King rose with a jerk and took John Copeland’s hand. +“Ha!” he grunted, “I welcome the squire who by his +valor has captured the King of Scots. And now, my man, what have you +done with Davie?” </p> + +<p> John Copeland answered: “Highness, you may find him at +your convenience safely locked in Bamborough Castle. Meanwhile, I +entreat you, sire, do not take it amiss if I did not surrender King +David to the orders of my lady Queen, for I hold my lands of you, +and not of her, and my oath is to you, and not to her, unless indeed +by choice.” </p> + +<p> “John,” the King sternly replied, “the loyal +service you have done us is considerable, whereas your excuse for +kidnapping Davie is a farce. Hey, Almerigo, do you and Chandos avoid +the chamber! I have something in private with this fellow.” +When they had gone, the King sat down and composedly said, +“Now tell me the truth, John Copeland.” </p> + +<p> “Sire,” Copeland began, “it is necessary you +first understand I bear a letter from Madame Philippa—” +</p> + +<p> “Then read it,” said the King. “Heart of God! +have I an eternity to waste on you slow-dealing Brabanters!” +</p> + +<p> John Copeland read aloud, while the King trifled with a pen, +half negligent, and in part attendant. </p> + +<p> Read John Copeland: </p> +<blockquote> +<p> “My DEAR LORD,—<i>recommend me to your +lordship with soul and body and all my poor might, and with all this +I thank you, as my dear lord, dearest and best beloved of all +earthly lords I protest to me, and thank you, my dear lord, with all +this as I say before. Your comfortable letter came to me on Saint +Gregory’s day, and I was never so glad as when I heard by your +letter that ye were strong enough in Ponthieu by the grace of God +for to keep you from your enemies. Among them I estimate Madame +Catherine de Salisbury, who would have betrayed you to the Scot. +And, dear lord, if it be pleasing to your high lordship that as soon +as ye may that I might hear of your gracious speed, which may God +Almighty continue and increase, I shall be glad, and also if ye do +continue each night to chafe your feet with a rag of woollen stuff, +as your physician directed. And, my dear lord, if it like you for to +know of my fare, John Copeland will acquaint you concerning the +Bruce his capture, and the syrup he brings for our son Lord +Edward’s cough, and the great malice-workers in these shires +which would have so despitefully wrought to you, and of the manner +of taking it after each meal. I am lately informed that Madame +Catherine is now at Stirling with Robert Stewart and has lost all +her good looks through a fever. God is invariably gracious to His +servants. Farewell, my dear lord, and may the Holy Trinity keep you +from your adversaries and ever send me comfortable tidings of you. +Written at York, in the Castle, on Saint Gregory’s day last +past, by your own poor</i></p> +<p align="right"> +“PHILIPPA.</p> + +<p> “<i>To my true lord</i>.” </p> +</blockquote> + +<p> “H’m!” said the King; “and now give me +the entire story.” </p> + +<p> John Copeland obeyed. I must tell you that early in the +narrative King Edward arose and strode toward a window. +“Catherine!” he said. He remained motionless while +Master Copeland went on without any manifest emotion. When he had +ended, King Edward said, “And where is Madame de Salisbury +now?” </p> + +<p> At this the Brabanter went mad. As a leopard springs he leaped +upon the King, and grasping him by each shoulder, shook that monarch +as one punishing a child. </p> + +<p> “Now by the splendor of God—!” King Edward +began, very terrible in his wrath. He saw that John Copeland held a +dagger to his breast, and he shrugged. “Well, my man, you +perceive I am defenceless.” </p> + +<p> “First you will hear me out,” John Copeland said. +</p> + +<p> “It would appear,” the King retorted, “that I +have little choice.” </p> + +<p> At this time John Copeland began: “Sire, you are the +mightiest monarch your race has known. England is yours, France is +yours, conquered Scotland lies prostrate at your feet. To-day there +is no other man in all the world who possesses a tithe of your +glory; yet twenty years ago Madame Philippa first beheld you and +loved you, an outcast, an exiled, empty-pocketed prince. Twenty +years ago the love of Madame Philippa, great Count William’s +daughter, got for you the armament with which England was regained. +Twenty years ago but for Madame Philippa you had died naked in some +ditch.” </p> + +<p> “Go on,” the King said presently. </p> + +<p> “Afterward you took a fancy to reign in France. You +learned then that we Brabanters are a frugal people: Madame Philippa +was wealthy when she married you, and twenty years had quadrupled +her private fortune. She gave you every penny of it that you might +fit out this expedition; now her very crown is in pawn at Ghent. In +fine, the love of Madame Philippa gave you France as lightly as one +might bestow a toy upon a child who whined for it.” </p> + +<p> The King fiercely said, “Go on.” </p> + +<p> “Eh, sire, I intend to. You left England undefended that +you might posture a little in the eyes of Europe. And meanwhile a +woman preserves England, a woman gives you Scotland as a gift, and +in return asks nothing—God have mercy on us!—save that +you nightly chafe your feet with a bit of woollen. You hear of +it—and inquire, ‘<i>Where is Madame de +Salisbury</i>?’ Here beyond doubt is the cock of Aesop’s +fable,” snarled John Copeland, “who unearthed a gem and +grumbled that his diamond was not a grain of corn.” </p> + +<p> “You shall be hanged at dawn,” the King replied. +“Meanwhile spit out your venom.” </p> + +<p> “I say to you, then,” John Copeland continued, +“that to-day you are master of Europe. I say to you that, but +for this woman whom for twenty years you have neglected, you would +to-day be mouldering in some pauper’s grave. Eh, without +question, you most magnanimously loved that shrew of Salisbury! +because you fancied the color of her eyes, Sire Edward, and admired +the angle between her nose and her forehead. Minstrels unborn will +sing of this great love of yours. Meantime I say to +you”—now the man’s rage was +monstrous—“I say to you, go home to your too-tedious +wife, the source of all your glory! sit at her feet! and let her +teach you what love is!” He flung away the dagger. +“There you have the truth. Now summon your attendants, my +très beau sire, and have me hanged.” </p> + +<p> The King made no movement. “You have been +bold—” he said at last. </p> + +<p> “But you have been far bolder, sire. For twenty years you +have dared to flout that love which is God’s noblest heritage +to His children.” </p> + +<p> King Edward sat in meditation for a long while. The squinting of +his left eye was now very noticeable. “I consider my +wife’s clerk,” he drily said, “to discourse of +love in somewhat too much the tone of a lover.” And a flush +was his reward. </p> + +<p> But when this Copeland spoke he was like one transfigured. His +voice was grave and very tender, and he said: </p> + +<p> “As the fish have their life in the waters, so I have and +always shall have mine in love. Love made me choose and dare to +emulate a lady, long ago, through whom I live contented, without +expecting any other good. Her purity is so inestimable that I cannot +say whether I derive more pride or sorrow from its preeminence. She +does not love me, and she will never love me. She would condemn me +to be hewed in fragments sooner than permit her husband’s +finger to be injured. Yet she surpasses all others so utterly that I +would rather hunger in her presence than enjoy from another all +which a lover can devise.” </p> + +<p> Sire Edward stroked the table through this while, with an +inverted pen. He cleared his throat. He said, half-fretfully: </p> + +<p> “Now, by the Face! it is not given every man to love +precisely in this troubadourish fashion. Even the most generous +person cannot render to love any more than that person happens to +possess. I have read in an old tale how the devil sat upon a +cathedral spire and white doves flew about him. Monks came and told +him to begone. ‘Do not the spires show you, O son of +darkness’ they clamored, ‘that the place is holy?’ +And Satan (in this old tale) replied that these spires were capable +of various interpretations. I speak of symbols, John. Yet I also +have loved, in my own fashion,—and, it would seem, I win the +same reward as you.” </p> + +<p> The King said more lately: “And so she is at Stirling now? +hobnob with my armed enemies, and cajoling that red lecher Robert +Stewart?” He laughed, not overpleasantly. “Eh, yes, it +needed a bold person to bring all your tidings! But you Brabanters +are a very thorough-going people.” </p> + +<p> The King rose and flung back his high head. “John, the +loyal service you have done us and our esteem for your valor are so +great that they may well serve you as an excuse. May shame fall on +those who bear you any ill-will! You will now return home, and take +your prisoner, the King of Scotland, and deliver him to my wife, to +do with as she may elect. You will convey to her my +entreaty—not my orders, John,—that she come to me here +at Calais. As remuneration for this evening’s insolence, I +assign lands as near your house as you can choose them to the value +of £500 a year for you and for your heirs.” </p> + +<p> You must know that John Copeland fell upon his knees before King +Edward. “Sire—” he stammered. </p> + +<p> But the King raised him. “No, no,” he said, +“you are the better man. Were there any equity in fate, John +Copeland, your lady had loved you, not me. As it is, I must strive +to prove not altogether unworthy of my fortune. But I make no large +promises,” he added, squinting horribly, “because the +most generous person cannot render to love any more than that person +happens to possess. So be off with you, John Copeland,—go, my +squire, and bring me back my Queen!” </p> + +<p> Presently he heard John Copeland singing without. And through +that instant, they say, his youth returned to Edward Plantagenet, +and all the scents and shadows and faint sounds of Valenciennes on +that ancient night when a tall girl came to him, running, stumbling +in her haste to bring him kingship. “She waddles now,” +he thought forlornly. “Still, I am blessed.” But +Copeland sang, and the Brabanter’s heart was big with joy. +</p> + +<p> +Sang John Copeland: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Long I besought thee, nor vainly,</p> + <p>Daughter of Water and Air—</p> + <p>Charis! Idalia! Hortensis!</p> + <p>Hast thou not heard the prayer,</p> + <p>When the blood stood still with loving,</p> + <p>And the blood in me leapt like wine,</p> + <p>And I cried on thy name, Melaenis?—</p> + <p>That heard me, (the glory is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Falsely they tell of thy dying,</p> + <p>Thou that art older than Death,</p> + <p>And never the Hörselberg hid thee,</p> + <p>Whatever the slanderer saith,</p> + <p>For the stars are as heralds forerunning,</p> + <p>When laughter and love combine</p> + <p>At twilight, in thy light, Melaenis—</p> + <p>That heard me, (the glory is thine!)</p> + <p>And let the heart of Atys,</p> + <p>At last, at last, be mine!”</p> +</div> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE FIFTH NOVEL +</p> +<a name="VI"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +VI +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Je suis voix au désert criant</p> + <p> Que chascun soyt rectifiant</p> + <p>La voye de Sauveur; non suis,</p> + <p>Et accomplir je ne le puis.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE SIXTH NOVEL.—ANNE OF BOHEMIA HAS ONE SOLE FRIEND, AND BY HIM +PLAYS THE FRIEND’S PART; AND IN DOING SO ACHIEVES THEIR COMMON +ANGUISH, AS WELL AS THE CONFUSION OF STATECRAFT AND THE POULTICING OF +A GREAT DISEASE. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Satraps +</p> + +<p> +In the year of grace 1381 (Nicolas begins) was Dame Anne magnificently +fetched from remote Bohemia, and at Westminster married to Sire +Richard, the second monarch of that name to reign in England. This +king, I must tell you, had succeeded while he was yet an infant, to +the throne of his grandfather, the third King Edward, about whom I +have told you in the story preceding this. +</p> + +<p> +Queen Anne had presently noted a certain priest who went forbiddingly +about her court, where he was accorded a provisional courtesy, and who +went also into many hovels, where pitiable wrecks of humankind +received his alms and ministrations. +</p> + +<p> Queen Anne made inquiries. This young cleric was amanuensis to +the Duke of Gloucester, she learned, and was notoriously a by-blow +of the Duke’s brother, dead Lionel of Clarence. She sent for +this Edward Maudelain. When he came her first perception was, +“How wonderful is his likeness to the King!” while the +thought’s commentary ran, unacknowledged, “Yes, as an +eagle resembles a falcon!” For here, to the observant eye, was +a more zealous person, already passion-wasted, and a far more +dictatorial and stiff-necked person than the lazy and amiable King; +also, this Maudelain’s face and nose were somewhat too long +and high: the priest was, in a word, the less comely of the pair by +a very little, and to an immeasurable extent the more kinglike. </p> + +<p> “You are my cousin now, messire,” the Queen told +him, and innocently offered to his lips her own. </p> + +<p> He never moved; but their glances crossed, and for that instant +she saw the face of a man who has just stepped into a quicksand. She +grew red, without knowing why. Then he spoke, composedly, of trivial +matters. </p> + +<p> Thus began the Queen’s acquaintance with Edward Maudelain. +She was by this time the loneliest woman in the island. Her husband +granted her a bright and fresh perfection of form and color, but +desiderated any appetizing tang, and lamented, in his phrase, a +certain kinship to the impeccable loveliness of some female saint in +a jaunty tapestry; bright as ice in sunshine, just so her beauty +chilled you, he complained: moreover, this daughter of the Caesars +had been fetched into England, chiefly, to breed him children, and +this she had never done. Undoubtedly he had made a bad +bargain,—he was too easy-going, people presumed upon it. His +barons snatched their cue and esteemed Dame Anne to be negligible; +whereas the clergy, finding that she obstinately read the Scriptures +in the vulgar tongue, under the irrelevant plea of not comprehending +Latin, began to denounce her from their pulpits as a heretic and as +the evil woman prophesied by Ezekiel. </p> + +<p> It was the nature of this desolate child to crave affection, as +a necessary, and pitifully she tried to purchase it through +almsgiving. In the attempt she could have found no coadjutor more +ready than Edward Maudelain. Giving was with these two a sort of +obsession, though always he gave in a half scorn of his fellow +creatures which was not more than half concealed. This bastard was +charitable and pious because he knew his soul, conceived in double +sin, to be doubly evil, and therefore doubly in need of redemption +through good works. </p> + +<p> Now in and about the Queen’s lonely rooms the woman and +the priest met daily to discuss now this or that point of theology, +or now (to cite a single instance) Gammer Tudway’s obstinate +sciatica. Considerate persons found something of the pathetic in +their preoccupation by these matters while, so clamantly, the +dissension between the young King and his uncles gathered to a head. +The King’s uncles meant to continue governing England, with +the King as their ward, as long as they could; he meant to relieve +himself of this guardianship, and them of their heads, as soon as he +was able. War seemed inevitable, the air was thick with portents; +and was this, then, an appropriate time, the judicious demanded of +high Heaven, for the Queen of imperilled England to concern herself +about a peasant’s toothache? </p> + +<p> +Long afterward was Edward Maudelain to remember this quiet and amiable +period of his life, and to wonder over the man that he had been +through this queer while. Embittered and suspicious she had found him, +noted for the carping tongue he lacked both power and inclination to +bridle; and she had, against his nature, made Maudelain see that every +person is at bottom lovable, and that human vices are but the stains +of a traveller midway in a dusty journey; and had incited the priest +no longer to do good for his soul’s health, but simply for his +fellow’s benefit. +</p> + +<p> +In place of that monstrous passion which had at first view of her +possessed the priest, now, like a sheltered taper, glowed an adoration +which made him yearn, in defiance of common-sense, to suffer somehow +for this beautiful and gracious comrade; though very often pity for +her loneliness and knowledge that she dared trust no one save him +would throttle Maudelain like two assassins, and would move the +hot-blooded young man to a rapture of self-contempt and exultation. +</p> + +<p> +Now Maudelain made excellent songs, it was a matter of common report. +Yet but once in their close friendship did the Queen command him to +make a song for her. This had been at Dover, about vespers, in the +starved and tiny garden overlooking the English Channel, upon which +her apartments faced; and the priest had fingered his lute for an +appreciable while before he sang, more harshly than was his custom. +</p> + +<p> +Sang Maudelain: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “Ave Maria! now cry we so</p> + <p>That see night wake and daylight go.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Mother and Maid, in nothing incomplete,</p> + <p>This night that gathers is more light and fleet</p> + <p>Than twilight trod alway with stumbling feet,</p> + <p>Agentes semper uno animo.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Ever we touch the prize we dare not take!</p> + <p>Ever we know that thirst we dare not slake!</p> + <p>Yet ever to a dreamed-of goal we make—</p> + <p>Est tui coeli in palatio!</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Long, long the road, and set with many a snare;</p> + <p>And to how small sure knowledge are we heir</p> + <p>That blindly tread, with twilight everywhere!</p> + <p>Volo in toto; sed non valeo!</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Long, long the road, and very frail are we</p> + <p>That may not lightly curb mortality,</p> + <p>Nor lightly tread together steadfastly,</p> + <p>Et parvum carmen unum facio:</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Mater, ora filium,</p> + <p>Ut post hoc exilium</p> + <p>Nobis donet gaudium</p> + <p>Beatorum omnium!”</p> +</div> + +<p> Dame Anne had risen. She said nothing. She stayed in this +posture for a lengthy while, one hand yet clasping each breast. Then +she laughed, and began to speak of Long Simon’s recent fever. +Was there no method of establishing him in another cottage? No, the +priest said, the peasants, like the cattle, were always deeded with +the land, and Simon could not lawfully be taken away from his owner. +</p> + +<p> One day, about the hour of prime, in that season of the year +when fields smell of young grass, the Duke of Gloucester sent for +Edward Maudelain. The court was then at Windsor. The priest came +quickly to his patron. He found the Duke in company with the +King’s other uncle Edmund of York and bland Harry of Derby, +who was John of Gaunt’s oldest son, and in consequence the +King’s cousin. Each was a proud and handsome man: Derby alone +(who was afterward King of England) had inherited the squint that +distinguished this family. To-day Gloucester was gnawing at his +finger nails, big York seemed half-asleep, and the Earl of Derby +appeared patiently to await something as yet ineffably remote. </p> + +<p> “Sit down!” snarled Gloucester. His lean and evil +countenance was that of a tired devil. The priest obeyed, wondering +that so high an honor should be accorded him in the view of three +great noblemen. Then Gloucester said, in his sharp way: +“Edward, you know, as England knows, the King’s +intention toward us three and our adherents. It has come to our +demolishment or his. I confess a preference in the matter. I have +consulted with the Pope concerning the advisability of taking the +crown into my own hands. Edmund here does not want it, and my +brother John is already achieving one in Spain. Eh, in imagination I +was already King of England, and I had dreamed—Well! to-day +the prosaic courier arrived. Urban—the Neapolitan +swine!—dares give me no assistance. It is decreed I shall +never reign in these islands. And I had dreamed—Meanwhile, de +Vere and de la Pole are at the King day and night, urging revolt. As +matters go, within a week or two, the three heads before you will be +embellishing Temple Bar. You, of course, they will only hang.” +</p> + +<p> “We must avoid England, then, my noble patron,” the +priest considered. </p> + +<p> Angrily the Duke struck a clenched fist upon the table. +“By the Cross! we remain in England, you and I and all of us. +Others avoid. The Pope and the Emperor will have none of me. They +plead for the Black Prince’s heir, for the legitimate heir. +Dompnedex! they shall have him!” </p> + +<p> Maudelain recoiled, for he thought this twitching man insane. +</p> + +<p> “Besides, the King intends to take from me my fief at +Sudbury,” said the Duke of York, “in order to give it to +de Vere. That is both absurd and monstrous and abominable.” +</p> + +<p> Openly Gloucester sneered. “Listen!” he rapped out +toward Maudelain; “when they were drawing up the Great Peace +at Brétigny, it happened, as is notorious, that the Black +Prince, my brother, wooed in this town the Demoiselle Alixe Riczi, +whom in the outcome he abducted. It is not so generally known, +however, that, finding this sister of the Vicomte de Montbrison a +girl of obdurate virtue, my brother had prefaced the action by +marriage.” </p> + +<p> “And what have I to do with all this?” said Edward +Maudelain. </p> + +<p> Gloucester retorted: “More than you think. For this Alixe +was conveyed to Chertsey, here in England, where at the year’s +end she died in childbirth. A little before this time had Sir Thomas +Holland seen his last day,—the husband of that Joane of Kent +whom throughout life my brother loved most marvellously. The +disposition of the late Queen-Mother is tolerably well known. I make +no comment save that to her moulding my brother was as so much wax. +In fine, the two lovers were presently married, and their son reigns +to-day in England. The abandoned son of Alixe Riczi was reared by +the Cistercians at Chertsey, where some years ago I found +you.” </p> + +<p> He spoke with a stifled voice, wrenching forth each sentence; +and now with a stiff forefinger flipped a paper across the table. +“<i>In extremis</i> my brother did more than confess. He +signed,—your Majesty,” said Gloucester. The Duke on a +sudden flung out his hands, like a wizard whose necromancy fails, +and the palms were bloodied where his nails had cut the flesh. </p> + +<p> “Moreover, my daughter was born at Sudbury,” said +the Duke of York. </p> + +<p> And of Maudelain’s face I cannot tell you. He made +pretence to read the paper carefully, but his eyes roved, and he +knew that he stood among wolves. The room was oddly shaped, with +eight equal sides: the ceiling was of a light and brilliant blue, +powdered with many golden stars, and the walls were hung with smart +tapestries which commemorated the exploits of Theseus. “Then I +am King,” this Maudelain said aloud, “of France and +England, and Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine! I perceive that +Heaven loves a jest.” He wheeled upon Gloucester and spoke +with singular irrelevance, “And what is to be done with the +present Queen?” </p> + +<p> Again the Duke shrugged. “I had not thought of the dumb +wench. We have many convents.” </p> + +<p> Now Maudelain twisted the paper between his long, wet fingers +and appeared to meditate. </p> + +<p> “It would be advisable, your Grace,” observed the +Earl of Derby, suavely, and breaking his silence for the first time, +“that you yourself should wed Dame Anne, once the Apostolic +See has granted the necessary dispensation. Treading too close upon +the fighting requisite to bring about the dethronement and death of +our nominal lord the so-called King, a war with Bohemia, which would +be only too apt to follow this noble lady’s assassination, +would be highly inconvenient, and, lacking that, we would have to +pay back her dowry.” </p> + +<p> Then these three princes rose and knelt before the priest; they +were clad in long bright garments, and they glittered with gold and +many jewels. He standing among them shuddered in his sombre robe. +“Hail, King of England!” cried these three. </p> + +<p> “Hail, ye that are my kinsmen!” he answered; +“hail, ye that spring of an accursed race, as I! And woe to +England for that hour wherein Manuel of Poictesme held traffic with +the Sorceress of Provence, and the devil’s son begot an heir +for England! Of ice and of lust and of hell-fire are all we sprung; +old records attest it; and fickle and cold and ravenous and without +shame are all our race until the end. Of your brother’s +dishonor ye make merchandise to-day, and to-day fratricide whispers +me, and leers, and, Heaven help me! I attend. O God of Gods! wilt +Thou dare bid a man live stainless, having aforetime filled his +veins with such a venom? Then haro, will I cry from Thy deepest +hell.... Oh, now let the adulterous Redeemer of Poictesme rejoice in +his tall fires, to note that his descendants know of what wood to +make a crutch! You are very wise, my kinsmen. Take your measures, +messieurs who are my kinsmen! Though were I of any other race, with +what expedition would I now kill you, I that recognize within me the +strength to do it! Then would I slay you! without any animosity, +would I slay you then, just as I would kill as many splendid +snakes!” </p> + +<p> He went away, laughing horribly. Gloucester drummed upon the +table, his brows contracted. But the lean Duke said nothing; big +York seemed to drowse; and Henry of Derby smiled as he sounded a +gong for that scribe who would draw up the necessary letters. The +Earl’s time was not yet come, but it was nearing. </p> + +<p> In the antechamber the priest encountered two men-at-arms +dragging a dead body from the castle. The Duke of Kent, Maudelain +was informed, had taken a fancy to a peasant girl, and in +remonstrance her misguided father had actually tugged at his +Grace’s sleeve. </p> + +<p> Maudelain went into the park of Windsor, where he walked for a +long while alone. It was a fine day in the middle spring; and now he +seemed to understand for the first time how fair was his England. +For all England was his fief, held in vassalage to God and to no man +alive, his heart now sang; allwhither his empire spread, opulent in +grain and metal and every revenue of the earth, and in stalwart men +(his chattels), and in strong orderly cities, where the windows +would be adorned with scarlet hangings, and women (with golden hair +and red lax lips) would presently admire as King Edward rode slowly +by at the head of a resplendent retinue. And always the King would +bow, graciously and without haste, to his shouting people.... He +laughed to find himself already at rehearsal of the gesture. </p> + +<p> It was strange, though, that in this glorious fief of his so +many persons should, as yet, live day by day as cattle live, +suspicious of all other moving things (with reason), and roused from +their incurious and filthy apathy only when some glittering baron, +like a resistless eagle, swept uncomfortably near as he passed on +some by-errand of the more bright and windy upper-world. East and +north they had gone yearly, for so many centuries, these dumb +peasants, to fight out their master’s uncomprehended quarrel, +and to manure with their carcasses the soil of France and of +Scotland. Give these serfs a king, now, who (being absolute), might +dare to deal in perfect equity with rich and poor, who with his +advent would bring Peace into England as his bride, as Trygaeus did +very anciently in Athens—“And then,” the priest +paraphrased, “may England recover all the blessings she has +lost, and everywhere the glitter of active steel will cease.” +For everywhere men would crack a rustic jest or two, unhurriedly. +Virid fields would heave brownly under their ploughs; they would +find that with practice it was almost as easy to chuckle as it was +to cringe. </p> + +<p> Meanwhile on every side the nobles tyrannized in their degree, +well clothed and nourished, but at bottom equally comfortless in +condition. As illuminate by lightning Maudelain saw the many +factions of his barons squabbling for gross pleasures, like wolves +over a corpse, and blindly dealing death to one another to secure at +least one more delicious gulp before that inevitable mangling by the +teeth of some burlier colleague. The complete misery of England +showed before Maudelain like a winter landscape. The thing was +questionless. He must tread henceforward without fear among frenzied +beasts, and to their ultimate welfare. On a sudden Maudelain knew +himself to be invincible and fine, and hesitancy ebbed. </p> + +<p> True, Richard, poor fool, must die. Squarely the priest faced +that stark and hideous circumstance; to spare Richard was beyond his +power, and the boy was his brother; yes, this oncoming King Edward +would be a fratricide, and after death would be irrevocably damned. +To burn, and eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the +torment was eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of +Richard’s ignoble life and of Edward’s inconsiderable +soul, to win so many men to manhood was not a bargain to be refused. +</p> + +<p> The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden +which adjoined Dame Anne’s apartments. He found the Queen +there, alone, as nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused +to wonder at her bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd was +this beauty, he reflected, too; how alien in its effect to that of +any other woman in sturdy England, and how associable it was, +somehow, with every wild and gracious denizen of the woods which +blossomed yonder. </p> + +<p> In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but +undiluted. They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short +to ripple, which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and +left, birds sang as if in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint +and radiant blue throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the +zenith, so that the Queen’s brows cast honey-colored shadows +upon either cheek. The priest was greatly troubled by the proud and +heatless brilliancies, the shrill joys, of every object within the +radius of his senses. </p> + +<p> She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, +tinted like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and wore over +all a gown of white, cut open on each side as far as the hips. This +garment was embroidered with golden leopards and was trimmed with +ermine. About her yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein +emeralds glowed. Her blue eyes were as large and shining and +changeable (he thought) as two oceans in midsummer; and Maudelain +stood motionless and seemed to himself but to revere, as the Earl +Ixion did, some bright unstable wisp of cloud, while somehow all +elation departed from him as water does from a wetted sponge +compressed. He laughed discordantly. </p> + +<p> “Wait—! O my only friend—!” said +Maudelain. Then in a level voice he told her all, unhurriedly and +without any apparent emotion. </p> + +<p> She had breathed once, with a deep inhalation. She had screened +her countenance from his gaze the while you might have counted +fifty. Presently she said: “This means more war, for de Vere +and Tressilian and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons +know that the King’s fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands +die to-morrow.” </p> + +<p> He answered, “It means a war which will make me King of +England, and will make you my wife.” </p> + +<p> “In that war the nobles will ride abroad with banners and +gay surcoats, and will kill and ravish in the pauses of their songs; +while daily in that war the naked peasants will kill the one the +other, without knowing why.” </p> + +<p> His thought had forerun hers. “Yes, some must die, so that +in the end I may be King, and the general happiness may rest at my +disposal. The adventure of this world is wonderful, and it goes +otherwise than under the strict tutelage of reason.” </p> + +<p> “It would not be yours, but Gloucester’s and his +barons’. Friend, they would set you on the throne to be their +puppet and to move only as they pulled the strings. Thwart them in +their maraudings and they will fling you aside, as the barons have +pulled down every king that dared oppose them. No, they desire to +live pleasantly, to have fish on Fridays, and white bread and the +finest wine the whole year through, and there is not enough for all, +say they. Can you alone contend against them? and conquer them? for +not unless you can do this may I dare bid you reign.” </p> + +<p> The sun had grown too bright, too merciless, but as always she +drew the truth from him. “I could not venture to oppose in +anything the barons who supported my cause: for if I did, I would +not endure a fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor I nor any one +may transform through any personal force this bitter world, this +piercing, cruel place of frost and sun. Charity and Truth are +excommunicate, and a king is only an adorned and fearful person who +leads wolves toward their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and +devour him. Everywhere the powerful labor to put one another out of +worship, and each to stand the higher with the other’s corpse +as his pedestal; and Lechery and Greed and Hatred sway these proud +and inconsiderate fools as winds blow at will the gay leaves of +autumn. We walk among shining vapors, we aspire to overpass a +mountain of unstable sparkling sand! We two alone in all the +scuffling world! Oh, it is horrible, and I think that Satan plans +the jest! We dream for a while of refashioning this bright +desolation, and know that we alone can do it! we are as demigods, +you and I, in those gallant dreams! and at the end we can but +poultice some dirty rascal!” </p> + +<p> The Queen answered sadly: “Once and only once did God +tread this tangible world, for a very little while, and, look you, +to what trivial matters He devoted that brief space! Only to chat +with fishermen, and to talk with light women, and to consort with +rascals, and at last to die between two cutpurses, ignominiously! If +Christ Himself achieved so little that seemed great and admirable, +how should we two hope to do any more?” </p> + +<p> He answered: “It is true. Of anise and of cumin the Master +gets His tithe—” Maudelain broke off with a yapping +laugh. “Puf! Heaven is wiser than we. I am King of England. It +is my heritage.” </p> + +<p> “It means war. Many will die, thousands will die, and to +no betterment of affairs.” </p> + +<p> “I am King of England. I am Heaven’s satrap here, +and answerable to Heaven alone. It is my heritage.” And now +his large and cruel eyes were aflame as he regarded her. </p> + +<p> And visibly beneath their glare the woman changed. “My +friend, must I not love you any longer? You would be content with +happiness? Then I am jealous of that happiness! for you are the one +friend that I have had, and so dear to me—Look you!” she +said, with a light, wistful laugh, “there have been times when +I was afraid of everything you touched, and I hated everything you +looked at. I would not have you stained; I desired to pass my whole +life between the four walls of some dingy and eternal gaol, forever +alone with you, lest you become like other men. I would in that +period have been the very bread you eat, the least perfume which +delights you, the clod you touch in crushing it, and I have often +loathed some pleasure I derived from life because I might not +transfer it to you undiminished. For I wanted somehow to make you +happy to my own anguish.... It was wicked, I suppose, for the +imagining of it made me happy, too.” </p> + +<p> Now while he listened to this dear and tranquil speaking, Edward +Maudelain’s raised hands had fallen like so much lead, and +remembering his own nature, he longed for annihilation, before she +had appraised his vileness. He said: </p> + +<p> “With reason Augustine crieth out against the lust of the +eyes. ‘For pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, +fragrant, savory, and soft; but this disease those contrary as well, +not for the sake of suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of +making trial of them!’ Ah! ah! too curiously I planned my own +damnation, too presumptuously I had esteemed my soul a worthy +scapegoat, and I had gilded my enormity with many lies. Yet indeed, +indeed, I had believed brave things, I had planned a not ignoble +bargain—! Ey, say, is it not laughable, madame?—as my +birth-right Heaven accords me a penny, and with that only penny I +must presently be seeking to bribe Heaven.” </p> + +<p> Then he said: “Yet are we indeed God’s satraps, as +but now I cried in my vainglory, and we hold within our palms the +destiny of many peoples. Depardieux! God is wiser than we are. +Still, Satan offers no unhandsome bribes—bribes that are +tangible and sure. For Satan, too, is wiser than we are.” </p> + +<p> They stood like effigies, lit by the broad, unsparing splendor +of the morning, but again their kindling eyes had met, and again the +man shuddered. “Decide! oh, decide very quickly, my only +friend!” he said, “for throughout I am all filth!” +</p> + +<p> Closer she drew to him, and laid one hand upon each shoulder. +“O my only friend!” she breathed, with red lax lips +which were very near to his, “through these six years I have +ranked your friendship as the chief of all my honors! and I pray God +with an entire heart that I may die so soon as I have done what I +must do to-day!” </p> + +<p> Now Maudelain was trying to smile, but he could not quite manage +it. “God save King Richard!” said the priest. “For +by the cowardice and greed and ignorance of little men is Salomon +himself confounded, and by them is Hercules lightly unhorsed. Were I +Leviathan, whose bones were long ago picked clean by pismires, I +could perform nothing against the will of many human pismires. +Therefore do you pronounce my doom.” </p> + +<p> “O King,” then said Dame Anne, “I bid you go +forever from the court and live forever a landless man, friendless, +and without even any name. Otherwise, you can in no way escape being +made an instrument to bring about the misery and death of many +thousands. This doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are +royal and God’s satraps, you and I.” </p> + +<p> Twice or thrice his dry lips moved before he spoke. He was aware +of innumerable birds that carolled with a piercing and intolerable +sweetness. “O Queen!” he hoarsely said, “O fellow +satrap! Heaven has many fiefs. A fair province is wasted and accords +to Heaven no revenue. So wastes beauty, and a shrewd wit, and an +illimitable charity, which of their pride go in fetters and achieve +no increase. To-day the young King junkets with his flatterers, and +but rarely thinks of England. You have that beauty by which men are +lightly conquered, and the mere sight of which may well cause a +man’s voice to tremble as my voice trembles now, and through +desire of which—But I tread afield! Of that beauty you have +made no profit. O daughter of the Caesars, I bid you now gird either +loin for an unlovely traffic. Old Legion must be fought with fire. +True that the age is sick, true that we may not cure, we can but +salve the hurt—” His hand had torn open his sombre gown, +and the man’s bared breast shone in the sunlight, and on his +breast heaved sleek and glittering beads of sweat. Twice he cried +the Queen’s name. In a while he said: “I bid you weave +incessantly such snares of brain and body as may lure King Richard +to be swayed by you, until against his will you daily guide this +shallow-hearted fool to some commendable action. I bid you live as +other folk do hereabouts. Coax! beg! cheat! wheedle! lie!” he +barked like a teased dog, “and play the prostitute for him +that wears my crown, till you achieve in part the task which is +denied me. This doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are +royal and God’s satraps, you and I.” </p> + +<p> She answered with a tiny, wordless sound. But presently, +“I take my doom,” the Queen proudly said. “I shall +be lonely now, my only friend, and yet—it does not +matter,” the Queen said, with a little shiver. “No, +nothing will ever greatly matter now, I think, now that I may not +ever see you any more, my dearest.” </p> + +<p> Her eyes had filled with tears; she was unhappy, and, as always, +this knowledge roused in Maudelain a sort of frenzied pity and a +hatred, quite illogical, of all other things existent. She was +unhappy, that only he comprehended: and for her to be made unhappy +was unjust. </p> + +<p> So he stood thus for an appreciable silence, staying motionless +save that behind his back his fingers were bruising one another. +Everywhere was this or that bright color and an incessant melody. It +was unbearable. Then it was over; the ordered progress of all +happenings was apparent, simple, and natural; and contentment came +into his heart like a flight of linnets over level fields at dawn. +He left her, and as he went he sang. </p> + +<p> Sang Maudelain: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> +<p class="i2"> + “Christ save us all, as well He can, </p> + <p>A solis ortus cardine! </p> + <p>For He is both God and man, </p> + <p>Qui natus est de virgine, </p> + <p>And we but part of His wide plan </p> + <p>That sing, and heartily sing we, </p> + <p>‘Gloria Tibi, Domine!’ </p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + “Between a heifer and an ass </p> + <p>Enixa est puerpera; </p> + <p>In ragged woollen clad He was </p> + <p>Qui régnât super aethera, </p> + <p>And patiently may we then pass </p> + <p>That sing, and heartily sing we, </p> + <p>‘Gloria Tibi, Domine!’” </p> +</div> + +<p> The Queen shivered in the glad sunlight. “I am, it must +be, pitiably weak,” she said at last, “because I cannot +sing as he does. And, since I am not very wise, were he to return +even now—But he will not return. He will never return,” +the Queen repeated, carefully. “It is strange I cannot +comprehend that he will never return! Ah, Mother of God!” she +cried, with a steadier voice, “grant that I may weep! nay, of +thy infinite mercy let me presently find the heart to weep!” +And about the Queen of England many birds sang joyously. </p> + +<p> She sent for the King that evening, after supper, and they may +well have talked of many matters, for he did not return to his own +apartments that night. Next day the English barons held a council, +and in the midst of it King Richard demanded to be told his age. +</p> + +<p> “Your Grace is in your twenty-second year,” said the +uneasy Gloucester, who was now with reason troubled, since he had +been vainly seeking everywhere for the evanished Maudelain. </p> + +<p> “Then I have been under tutors and governors longer than +any other ward in my dominion. My lords, I thank you for your past +services, but I need them no more.” They had no check handy, +and Gloucester in particular foreread his death-warrant, but of +necessity he shouted with the others, “Hail, King of +England!” </p> + +<p> That afternoon the King’s assumption of all royal +responsibility was commemorated by a tournament, over which Dame +Anne presided. Sixty of her ladies led as many knights by silver +chains into the tilting-grounds at Smithfield, and it was remarked +that the Queen appeared unusually mirthful. The King was in high +good humor, a pattern of conjugal devotion; and the royal pair +retired at dusk to the Bishop of London’s palace at Saint +Paul’s, where was held a merry banquet, with dancing both +before and after supper. </p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE SIXTH NOVEL +</p> +<a name="VII"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +VII +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> +<p class="in">“Pour vous je suis en prison mise,</p> + <p>En ceste chambre à voulte grise,</p> + <p>Et traineray ma triste vie</p> + <p>Sans que jamais mon cueur varie,</p> + <p>Car toujours seray vostre amye.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE SEVENTH NOVEL.—ISABEL OF VALOIS, BEING FORSAKEN BY ALL +OTHERS, IS BEFRIENDED BY A PRIEST, WHO IN CHIEF THROUGH A +CHILD’S INNOCENCE, CONTRIVES AND EXECUTES A LAUDABLE +IMPOSTURE, AND WINS THEREBY TO DEATH. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Heritage +</p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1399 (Nicolas begins) dwelt in a hut near +Caer Dathyl in Arvon, as he had dwelt for some five years, a gaunt +hermit, notoriously consecrate, whom neighboring Welshmen revered as +the Blessed Evrawc. There had been a time when people called him +Edward Maudelain, but this period he dared not often remember. </p> + +<p> For though in macerations of the flesh, in fasting, and in +hour-long prayers he spent his days, this holy man was much troubled +by devils. He got little rest because of them. Sometimes would come +into his hut Belphegor in the likeness of a butler, and whisper, +“Sire, had you been King, as was your right, you had drunk +to-day not water but the wines of Spain and Hungary.” Or +Asmodeus saying, “Sire, had you been King, as was your right, +you had lain now not upon the bare earth but on cushions of +silk.” </p> + +<p> One day in early spring, they say, the spirit called Orvendile +sent the likeness of a fair woman with yellow hair and large blue +eyes. She wore a massive crown which seemed too heavy for her +frailness to sustain. Soft tranquil eyes had lifted from her book. +“You are my cousin now, messire,” this phantom had +appeared to say. </p> + +<p> That was the worst, and Maudelain began to fear he was a little +mad because even this he had resisted with many aves. </p> + +<p> There came also to his hut, through a sullen snowstorm, upon the +afternoon of All Soul’s day, a horseman in a long cloak of +black. He tethered his black horse and he came noiselessly through +the doorway of the hut, and upon his breast and shoulders the snow +was white as the bleached bones of those women that died in +Merlin’s youth. </p> + +<p> “Greetings in God’s name, Messire Edward +Maudelain,” the stranger said. </p> + +<p> Since the new-comer spoke intrepidly of holy things a cheerier +Maudelain knew that this at least was no demon. +“Greetings!” he answered. “But I am Evrawc. You +name a man long dead.” </p> + +<p> “But it is from a certain Bohemian woman I come. What +matter, then, if the dead receive me?” And thus speaking, the +stranger dropped his cloak. </p> + +<p> He was clad, as you now saw, in flame-colored satin, which +shimmered with each movement like a high flame. He had the +appearance of a tall, lean youngster, with crisp, curling, very dark +red hair. He now regarded Maudelain. He displayed peculiarly +wide-set brown eyes; and their gaze was tender, and the tears +somehow had come to Maudelain’s eyes because of his great love +for this tall stranger. “Eh, from the dead to the dead I +travel, as ever,” said the new-comer, “with a message +and a token. My message runs, <i>Time is, O fellow satrap!</i> and +my token is this.” </p> + +<p> In this packet, wrapped with white parchment and tied with a +golden cord, was only a lock of hair. It lay like a little yellow +serpent in Maudelain’s palm. “And yet five years +ago,” he mused, “this hair was turned to dust. God keep +us all!” Then he saw the tall lean emissary puffed out like a +candle-flame; and upon the floor he saw the huddled cloak waver and +spread like ink, and he saw the white parchment slowly dwindle, as +snow melts under the open sun. But in his hand remained the lock of +yellow hair. </p> + +<p> “O my only friend,” said Maudelain, “I may not +comprehend, but I know that by no unhallowed art have you won back +to me.” Hair by hair he scattered upon the floor that which he +held. “<i>Time is!</i> and I have not need of any token to +spur my memory.” He prized up a corner of the hearthstone, +took out a small leather bag, and that day purchased a horse and a +sword. </p> + +<p> At dawn the Blessed Evrawc rode eastward in secular apparel. Two +weeks later he came to Sunninghill; and it happened that the same +morning the Earl of Salisbury, who had excellent reason to consider +... </p> + +<blockquote> +<p> <i>Follows a lacuna of fourteen pages. Maudelain’s +successful imposture of his half-brother, Richard the Second, so +strangely favored by their physical resemblance, and the subsequent +fiasco at Circencester, are now, however, tolerably well known to +students of history.</i> </p> + +<p> <i>In one way or another, Maudelain contrived to take the place +of his now dethroned brother, and therewith also the punishment +designed for Richard. It would seem evident, from the Argument of +the story in hand, that Nicolas de Caen attributes a large part of +this mysterious business to the co-operancy of Isabel of Valois, +King Richard’s eleven year old wife. And (should one have a +taste for the deductive) the foregoing name of Orvendile, when +compared with “THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD,” would +certainly hint that Owain Glyndwyr had a finger in the affair.</i> +</p> + +<p> <i>It is impossible to divine by what method, according to +Nicolas, this Edward Maudelain was substituted for his younger +brother. Nicolas, if you are to believe his “EPILOGUE,” +had the best of reasons for knowing that the prisoner locked up in +Pontefract Castle in the February of 1400, after Harry of Derby had +seized the crown of England, was not Richard Plantagenet: as is +attested, also, by the remaining fragment of this same</i> +“STORY OF THE HERITAGE.” </p> +</blockquote> + +<p> ... and eight men-at-arms followed him. </p> + +<p> Quickly Maudelain rose from the table, pushing his tall chair +aside, and as he did this, one of the soldiers closed the door +securely. “Nay, eat your fill, Sire Richard,” said Piers +Exton, “since you will not ever eat again.” </p> + +<p> “Is it so?” the trapped man answered quietly. +“Then indeed you come in a good hour.” Once only he +smote upon his breast. “<i>Mea culpa!</i> O Eternal Father, do +Thou shrive me very quickly of all those sins I have committed, both +in thought and deed, for now the time is very short.” </p> + +<p> And Exton spat upon the dusty floor. “Foh, they had told +me I would find a king here. I discover only a cat that +whines.” </p> + +<p> “Then ’ware his claws!” As a viper leaps +Maudelain sprang upon the nearest fellow and wrested away his +halberd. “Then ’ware his claws, my men! For I come of an +accursed race. And now let some of you lament that hour wherein the +devil’s son begot an heir for England! For of ice and of lust +and of hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and +fickle and cold and ravenous and without fear are all our race until +the end. Hah, until the end! O God of Gods!” this Maudelain +cried, with a great voice, “wilt Thou dare bid a man die +patiently, having aforetime filled his veins with such a venom? For +I lack the grace to die as all Thy saints have died, without one +carnal blow struck in my own defence. I lack the grace, my Father, +for even at the last the devil’s blood You gave me is not +quelled. I dare atone for that old sin done by my father in the +flesh, but yet I must atone as befits the race of Oriander!” +</p> + +<p> Then it was he and not they who pressed to the attack. Their +meeting was a bloody business, for in that dark and crowded room +Maudelain raged among his nine antagonists like an angered lion +among wolves. </p> + +<p> They struck at random and cursed shrilly, for they were now +half-afraid of this prey they had entrapped; so that presently he +was all hacked and bleeding, though as yet he had no mortal wound. +Four of these men he had killed by this time, and Piers Exton also +lay at his feet. </p> + +<p> Then the other four drew back a little. “Are ye tired so +soon?” said Maudelain, and he laughed terribly. “What, +even you! Why, look ye, my bold veterans, I never killed before +to-day, and I am not breathed as yet.” </p> + +<p> Thus he boasted, exultant in his strength. But the other men saw +that behind him Piers Exton had crawled into the chair from which +(they thought) King Richard had just risen, and they saw Exton +standing erect in this chair, with both arms raised. They saw this +Exton strike the King with his pole-axe, from behind, once only, and +they knew no more was needed. </p> + +<p> “By God!” said one of them in the ensuing stillness, +and it was he who bled the most, “that was a felon’s +blow.” </p> + +<p> But the dying man who lay before them made as though to smile. +“I charge you all to witness,” he faintly said, +“how willingly I render to Caesar’s daughter that which +was ever hers.” </p> + +<p> Then Exton fretted, as if with a little trace of shame: +“Who would have thought the rascal had remembered that first +wife of his so long? Caesar’s daughter, saith he! and dares in +extremis to pervert Holy Scripture like any Wycliffite! Well, he is +as dead as that first Caesar now, and our gracious King, I think, +will sleep the better for it. And yet—God only knows! for they +are an odd race, even as he said—these men that have old +Manuel’s blood in them.” </p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE SEVENTH NOVEL +</p> + +<a name="VIII"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +VIII +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Ainsi il avait trouvé sa mie</p> + <p>Si belle qu’on put souhaiter.</p> + <p>N’avoit cure d’ailleurs plaider,</p> + <p>Fors qu’avec lui manoir et estre.</p> + <p>Bien est Amour puissant et maistre.” </p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE EIGHTH NOVEL.—BRANWEN OF WALES GETS A KING’S +LOVE UNWITTINGLY, AND IN ALL INNOCENCE CONVINCES HIM OF THE +LITTLENESS OF HIS KINGDOM; SO THAT HE BESIEGES AND IN DUE COURSE +OCCUPIES ANOTHER REALM AS YET UNMAPPED. +</div> + + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Scabbard +</p> + + +<p> In the year of grace 1400 (Nicolas begins) King Richard, the +second monarch of that name to rule in England, wrenched his own +existence, and nothing more, from the close wiles of his cousin, +Harry of Derby, who was now sometimes called Henry of Lancaster, and +sometimes Bolingbroke. The circumstances of this evasion having been +recorded in the preceding tale, it suffices here to record that this +Henry was presently crowned King of England in Richard’s +place. All persons, saving only Owain Glyndwyr and Henry of +Lancaster, believed King Richard dead at that period when Richard +attended his own funeral, as a proceeding taking to the fancy, and, +among many others, saw the body of Edward Maudelain interred with +every regal ceremony in the chapel at Langley Bower. Then alone Sire +Richard crossed the seas, and at thirty-three set out to inspect a +transformed and gratefully untrammelling world wherein not a foot of +land belonged to him. </p> + +<p> Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his +half-brothers; and to detail his Asian wanderings would be tedious +and unprofitable. But at the end of each four months would come to +him a certain messenger from Glyndwyr, supposed by Richard to be the +imp Orvendile, who notoriously ran every day around the world upon +the Welshman’s business. It was in the Isle of Taprobane, +where the pismires are as great as hounds, and mine and store the +gold of which the inhabitants afterward rob them through a very +cunning device, that this emissary brought the letter which read +simply, “Now is England fit pasture for the White Hart.” +Presently Richard Holland was in Wales, and then he rode to +Sycharth. </p> + +<p> There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long +stewardship. It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless +machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the +barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their +squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester, +Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open +revolt. “By the God I do not altogether serve,” Owain +ended, “you have but to declare yourself, sire, and within the +moment England is yours.” </p> + +<p> Richard spoke with narrowed eyes. “You forget that while +Henry of Lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign +tranquilly in these islands. Come then! the hour strikes; and we +will coax the devil for once in a way to serve God.” </p> + +<p> “Oh, but there is a boundary appointed,” Glyndwyr +moodily returned. “You, too, forget that in cold blood this +Henry stabbed my best-loved son. But I do not forget this, and I +have tried divers methods which we need not speak of,—I who +can at will corrupt the air, and cause sickness and storms, raise +heavy mists, and create plagues and fires and shipwrecks; yet the +life itself I cannot take. For there is a boundary appointed, sire, +and beyond that frontier the Master of our Sabbaths cannot serve us +even though he would.” </p> + +<p> Richard crossed himself. “You horribly mistake my meaning. +Your practices are your own affair, and in them I decline to dabble. +I merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait. For you +have a fief at Caer Idion, I think?—Very well! I intend to +herd your sheep there, for a week or two, after the honorable +example of Apollo. It is your part to see that Henry knows I am +living disguised and defenceless at Caer Idion.” </p> + +<p> The gaunt Welshman chuckled. “Yes, squinting Henry of +Lancaster would cross the world, much less the Severn, to make quite +sure of Richard’s death. He would come in his own person with +at most some twenty trustworthy followers. I will have a hundred +there; and certain aging scores will then be settled in that +place.” Glyndwyr meditated afterward, very evilly. +“Sire,” he said without prelude, “I do not +recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have garnered much in +travelling!” </p> + +<p> “Why, look you,” Richard returned, “I have +garnered so much that I do not greatly care whether this scheme +succeed or no. With age I begin to contend even more indomitably +that a wise man will consider nothing very seriously. You barons +here believe it an affair of importance who may chance to be the +King of England, say, this time next year; you take sides between +Henry and me. I tell you frankly that neither of us, that no man in +the world, by reason of innate limitations, can ever rule otherwise +than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything save discord. Nor +can I see how this matters either, since the discomfort of an +ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking disaster. No, +Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, depend upon +it, to the burden of <i>Fools All</i>. For I am as liberally endowed +as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my performances, +my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would appraise those of +another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive that common-sense, +much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself about the actions +of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least, +impossible.” </p> + +<p> “I have known the thought,” said +Owain,—“though rarely since I found the Englishwoman +that was afterward my wife, and never since my son, my Gruffyd, was +murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than the others, +people said.... You are as yet the empty scabbard, powerless alike +for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword, sire, that +informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we are as +gods.” </p> + +<p> “Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen +kingdoms.” </p> + +<p> “We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves +par amours the second time he may safely assume that he has never +been in love at all.” </p> + +<p> “—And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the +devil.” </p> + +<p> “I greatly fear,” said Owain with a sigh, +“lest it may be your irreparable malady to hate nothing, not +even that which you dislike. No, you consider things with both eyes +open, with an unmanly rationality: whereas Sire Henry views all +matters with that heroic squint which came into your family from +Poictesme.” </p> + +<p> “Be off with your dusty scandals!” said Richard, +laughing. </p> + +<p> So then Glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of +Caerdyf, while at Caer Idion Richard Holland abode tranquilly for +some three weeks. There was in this place only Caradawc (the former +shepherd), his wife Alundyne, and their sole daughter Branwen. They +gladly perceived Sire Richard was no more a peasant than he was a +curmudgeon; as Caradawc observed: “It is perfectly apparent +that the robe of Padarn Beisrudd, which refuses to adjust itself to +any save highborn persons, would fit him as a glove does the hand; +but we will ask no questions, since it is not wholesome to dispute +the orderings of Owain Glyndwyr.” </p> + +<p> Now day by day would Richard Holland drive the flocks to pasture +near the Severn, and loll there in the shade, and make songs to his +lute. He grew to love this leisured life of bright and open spaces; +and its long solitudes, grateful with the warm odors of growing +things and with poignant bird-noises; and the tranquillity of these +meadows, that were always void of hurry, bedrugged the man through +many fruitless and contented hours. </p> + +<p> Each day at noon Branwen would bring his dinner, and she would +sometimes chat with him while he ate. After supper he would +discourse to Branwen of remote kingdoms, through which, as aimlessly +as a wind veers, he had ridden at adventure, among sedate and alien +peoples who adjudged him a madman; and she, in turn, would tell him +curious tales from the <i>Red Book of Hergest</i>,—telling of +Gwalchmai, and Peredur, and Geraint, in each one of which fine +heroes she had presently discerned an inadequate forerunnership of +Richard’s existence. </p> + +<p> This Branwen was a fair wench, slender and hardy. She had the +bold demeanor of a child who is ignorant of evil and in consequence +of suspicion. Happily, though, had she been named for that unhappy +lady of old, the wife of King Matholwch, for this Branwen, too, had +a white, thin, wistful face, like that of an empress on a silver +coin which is a little worn. Her eyes were large and brilliant, +colored like clear emeralds, and her abundant hair was so much +cornfloss, only it was more brightly yellow and was of immeasurably +finer texture. In full sunlight her cheeks were frosted like the +surface of a peach, but the underlying cool pink of them was rather +that of a cloud just after sunset, Richard decided. In all, a taking +morsel! though her shapely hands were hard with labor, and she +rarely laughed; for, as if in recompense, her heart was tender, and +she rarely ceased to smile as though she were thinking of some +peculiar and wonderful secret which she intended, in due time, to +share with you and with nobody else. Branwen had many lovers, and +preferred among them young Gwyllem ap Llyr, a portly lad, who was +handsome enough, though he had tiny and piggish eyes, and who sang +divinely. </p> + +<p> One day this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. +“Saxon,” he said, “you appear a stout man. Take +your pick of these, then, and have at you.” </p> + +<p> “Such are not the weapons I would have named,” +Richard answered: “yet in reason, Messire Gwyllem, I can deny +you nothing that means nothing to me.” </p> + +<p> With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In +these unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had +anticipated, but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and +he managed somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he +contrived this he never ascertained. </p> + +<p> “I have forgotten what we are fighting about,” he +observed, after ten minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; +“or, to be perfectly exact, I never knew. But we will fight no +more in this place. Come and go with me to Welshpool, Messire +Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a conclusion over good sack and +claret.” </p> + +<p> “Content!” cried Gwyllem; “but only if you +yield me Branwen.” </p> + +<p> “Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling +over a woman?” Richard demanded; “like two children in a +worldwide toyshop over any one particular toy? Then devil take me if +I am not heartily ashamed of my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I +would speak naught save commendation of these delicate and +livelily-tinted creatures so long as one is able to approach them in +a becoming spirit of levity: it is only their not infrequent misuse +which I would condemn; and in my opinion the person who elects to +build a shrine for any one of them has only himself to blame if his +chosen goddess will accept no burnt-offering except his honor and +happiness. Yet since time’s youth have many fine men been +addicted to this insane practice, as, for example, were Hercules and +Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and, indeed, the more I +reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of other venerable +and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I ashamed of my +sex.” </p> + +<p> Gwyllem said: “This lazy gabbling of yours is all very +fine. Perhaps it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not +reason.” </p> + +<p> “I was endeavoring to prove that,” said Richard +gently. Then they went to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem’s +horse. Tongue loosened by the claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of +Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to each rapture Richard affably +assented. In his heart he likened the boy to Dionysos at Naxos, and +could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover, the room was comfortably +dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the windows, rustling and +tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content. </p> + +<p> “She does not love me?” Gwyllem cried. “It is +well enough. I do not come to her as one merchant to another, since +love was never bartered. Listen, Saxon!” He caught up +Richard’s lute. The strings shrieked beneath Gwyllem’s +fingers as he fashioned his rude song. </p> + +<p> +Sang Gwyllem: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2">“Love me or love me not, it is enough</p> + <p>That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is</p> + <p>Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,—</p> + <p>My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred</p> + <p>With tavern-catches, which that pity of his</p> + <p>Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word,</p> + <p>O Branwen!</p> + + <p class="stanzai2">“I have accorded you incessant praise</p> + <p>And song and service, dear, because of this;</p> + <p>And always I have dreamed incessantly</p> + <p>Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days</p> + <p>This man or that shall love you, and at last</p> + <p>This man or that shall win you, it must be</p> + <p>That, loving him, you will have pity on me</p> + <p>When happiness engenders memory</p> + <p>And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past,</p> + <p>O Branwen!</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2">“Of this I know not surely, who am sure</p> + <p>That I shall always love you while I live,</p> + <p>And that, when I am dead, with naught to give</p> + <p>Of song or service, Love will yet endure,</p> + <p>And yet retain his last prerogative,</p> + <p>When I lie still, and sleep out centuries,</p> + <p>With dreams of you and the exceeding love</p> + <p>I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,</p> + <p>And give God thanks for all, and so find peace,</p> + <p>O Branwen!”</p> + +</div> +<p> “Now, were I to get as tipsy as that,” Richard +enviously thought, midway in a return to his stolid sheep, “I +would simply go to sleep and wake up with a headache. And were I to +fall as many fathoms deep in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, +rather, as he hurls himself with a splurge, I would perform—I +wonder, now, what miracle?” </p> + +<p> For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so +young, so earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so +untroubled by forethought: each least desire controlled him, as +varying winds sport with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to +superior vagaries the boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a +fashion Gwyllem was superb. “And heigho!” said Richard, +“I am attestedly a greater fool than he, but I begin to weary +of a folly so thin-blooded.” </p> + +<p> The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He +declared himself a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who +perfectly recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker +crossed over into England. </p> + +<p> Richard whistled. “Now my cousin will be quite sure, and +now my anxious cousin will come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux. +And now, by every saint in the calendar! I am as good as King of +England.” </p> + +<p> He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades +of grass between his fingers while he meditated. Undoubtedly he +would kill this squinting Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience +and even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort +of vermin, but, hand upon heart, Richard was unable to avow any +particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel’s death. Thus +crudely to demolish the knave’s adroit and year-long schemings +savored actually of grossness. The spider was venomous, and his +destruction laudable; granted, but in crushing him you ruined his +web, a miracle of patient machination, which, despite yourself, +compelled hearty admiring and envy. True, the process would recrown +a certain Richard, but then, as Richard recalled it, being King was +rather tedious. Richard was not now quite sure that he wanted to be +King, and, in consequence, be daily plagued by a host of vexatious +and ever-squabbling barons. “I shall miss the little huzzy, +too,” he thought. </p> + +<p> “Heigho!” said Richard, “I shall console +myself with purchasing all beautiful things that can be touched and +handled. Life is a flimsy vapor which passes and is not any more: +presently Branwen will be married to this Gwyllem and will be grown +fat and old, and I shall be remarried to little Dame Isabel, and +shall be King of England: and a trifle later all four of us shall be +dead. Pending this deplorable consummation a wise man will endeavor +to amuse himself.” </p> + +<p> Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the +latter send the promised implements to Caer Idion. Richard, +returning to the hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, +and grovelling at the threshold. Her forehead was bloodied when she +raised it and through tearless sobs told of what had happened. A +half-hour earlier, while she and Branwen were intent upon their +milking, Gwyllem had ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. +Branwen had called him sot, had bidden him go home. “That I +will do,” said Gwyllem and suddenly caught up the girl. +Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist Gwyllem struck her +twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away with Branwen. </p> + +<p> Richard made no observation. In silence he fetched his horse, +and did not pause to saddle it. Quickly he rode to Gwyllem’s +house, and broke in the door. Against the farther wall stood lithe +Branwen fighting silently: her breasts and shoulders were naked, +where Gwyllem had torn away her garments. He wheedled, laughed, +swore, and hiccoughed, turn by turn, but she was silent. </p> + +<p> “On guard!” Richard barked. Gwyllem wheeled. His +head twisted toward his left shoulder, and one corner of his mouth +convulsively snapped upward, so that his teeth were bared. There was +a knife at Richard’s girdle, which he now unsheathed and flung +away. He stepped eagerly toward the snarling Welshman, and with both +hands seized the thick and hairy throat. What followed was brutal. +</p> + +<p> For many minutes Branwen stood with averted face, shuddering. +She very dimly heard the sound of Gwyllem’s impotent fists as +they beat against the countenance and body of Richard, and heard the +thin splitting vicious noise of torn cloth as Gwyllem clutched at +Richard’s tunic and tore it many times. Richard did not utter +any articulate word, and Gwyllem could not. There was entire silence +for a heart-beat, and the thudding fall of something ponderous and +limp. </p> + +<p> “Come!” Richard said then. Through the hut’s +twilight he came, as glorious in her eyes as Michael fresh from that +primal battle with old Satan. Tall Richard came to her, his face all +blood, and lifted her in his arms lest Branwen’s skirt be +soiled by the demolished thing which sprawled across their path. She +never spoke. She could not speak. In his arms she rode homeward, +passive, and content. The horse trod with deliberation. In the east +the young moon was taking heart as the darkness thickened, and +innumerable stars awoke. Branwen noted these things incuriously. +</p> + +<p> Richard was horribly afraid. He it had been, in sober verity it +had been Richard of Bordeaux, that some monstrous force had seized, +and had lifted, and had curtly utilized as its handiest implement. +He had been, and in the moment had known himself to be, the thrown +spear as yet in air, about to kill and quite powerless to refrain +from killing. It was a full three minutes before he had got the +better of his bewilderment and laughed, very softly, lest he disturb +this Branwen, who was so near his heart.... </p> + +<p> Next day she came to him at noon, bearing as always the little +basket. It contained to-day a napkin, some garlic, a ham, and a +small soft cheese; some shalots, salt, nuts, wild apples, lettuce, +onions, and mushrooms. “Behold a feast!” said Richard. +He noted then that she carried also a blue pitcher filled with thin +wine, and two cups of oak-bark. She thanked him for last +night’s performance, and drank a mouthful of wine to his +health. </p> + +<p> “Decidedly, I shall be sorry to have done with +shepherding,” said Richard as he ate. </p> + +<p> Branwen answered, “I too shall be sorry, lord, when the +masquerade is ended.” And it seemed to Richard that she +sighed, and he was the happier. </p> + +<p> But he only shrugged. “I am the wisest person unhanged, +since I comprehend my own folly. Yet I grant you that he was wise, +too, the minstrel of old time that sang: ‘Over wild lands and +tumbling seas flits Love, at will, and maddens the heart and +beguiles the senses of all whom he attacks, whether his quarry be +some monster of the ocean or some fierce denizen of the forest, or +man; for thine, O Love, thine alone is the power to make playthings +of us all.’” </p> + +<p> “Your bard was wise, no doubt, yet it was not in such +terms that Gwyllem sang of this passion. Lord,” she demanded +shyly, “how would you sing of love?” </p> + +<p> Richard was replete and contented with the world. He took up the +lute, in full consciousness that his compliance was in large part +cenatory. “In courtesy, thus—” </p> + +<p> +Sang Richard: +</p> +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2"> + “The gods in honor of fair Branwen’s worth</p> + <p>Bore gifts to her:—and Jove, Olympus’ lord,</p> + <p>Co-rule of Earth and Heaven did accord,</p> + <p>And Hermes brought that lyre he framed at birth,</p> + <p>And Venus her famed girdle (to engirth</p> + <p>A fairer beauty now), and Mars his sword,</p> + <p>And wrinkled Plutus half the secret hoard </p> + <p>And immemorial treasure of mid-earth;—</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “And while the careful gods were pondering</p> + <p>Which of these goodly gifts the goodliest was, </p> + <p>Young Cupid came among them carolling </p> + <p>And proffered unto her a looking-glass, </p> + <p>Wherein she gazed, and saw the goodliest thing</p> + <p>That Earth had borne, and Heaven might not surpass.” </p> +</div> + +<p> “Three sounds are rarely heard,” said Branwen; +“and these are the song of the birds of Rhiannon, an +invitation to feast with a miser, and a speech of wisdom from the +mouth of a Saxon. The song you have made of courtesy is tinsel. Sing +now in verity.” </p> + +<p> Richard laughed, though he was sensibly nettled and perhaps a +shade abashed. Presently he sang again. </p> + +<p> +Sang Richard: +</p> + + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2">“Catullus might have made of words that seek</p> + <p>With rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways,</p> + <p>The perfect song, or in remoter days</p> + <p>Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek;</p> + <p>But I am not as they,—and dare not speak</p> + <p>Of you unworthily, and dare not praise</p> + <p>Perfection with imperfect roundelays,</p> + <p>And desecrate the prize I dare to seek.</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2">“I do not woo you, then, by fashioning</p> + <p>Vext analogues ’twixt you and Guenevere,</p> + <p>Nor do I come with agile lips that bring</p> + <p>The sugared periods of a sonneteer,</p> + <p>And bring no more—but just with, lips that cling</p> + <p>To yours, in murmuring, ‘I love you, dear!’”</p> +</div> + +<p> Richard had resolved that Branwen should believe him. Tinsel, +indeed! then here was yet more tinsel which she must receive as +gold. He was very angry, because his vanity was hurt, and the +pin-prick spurred him to a counterfeit so specious that consciously +he gloried in it. He was superb, and she believed him now; there was +no questioning the fact, he saw it plainly, and with exultant +cruelty; then curt as lightning came the knowledge that what Branwen +believed was the truth. </p> + +<p> Richard had taken just two strides toward this fair girl. +Branwen stayed motionless, her lips a little parted. The affairs of +earth and heaven were motionless throughout the moment, attendant, +it seemed to him; and to him his whole life was like a wave that +trembled now at full height, and he was aware of a new world all +made of beauty and of pity. Then the lute fell from his spread out +hands, and Richard sighed, and shrugged. </p> + +<p> “There is a task set me,” he said—“it is +God’s work, I think. But I do not know—I only know that +you are very beautiful, Branwen,” he said, and in the name he +found a new and piercing loveliness. </p> + +<p> And he said also: “Go! For I have loved many women, and, +God help me! I know that I have but to wheedle you and you, too, +will yield! Yonder is God’s work to be done, and within me +rages a commonwealth of devils. Child! child!” he cried, +“I am, and ever was, a coward, too timid to face life without +reserve, and always I laughed because I was afraid to concede that +anything is serious!” </p> + +<p> For a long while Richard lay at his ease in the lengthening +shadows of the afternoon. </p> + +<p> “I love her. She thinks me an elderly imbecile with a flat +and reedy singing-voice, and she is perfectly right. She has never +even entertained the notion of loving me. That is well, for +to-morrow, or, it may be, the day after, we must part forever. I +would not have the parting make her sorrowful—or not, at +least, too unalterably sorrowful. It is very well that Branwen does +not love me. </p> + +<p> “Why should she? I am almost twice her age, an aging +fellow now, battered and selfish and too indolent to love +her—say, as Gwyllem loved her. I did well to kill that +Gwyllem. I am profoundly glad I killed him, and I thoroughly enjoyed +doing it; but, after all, the man loved her in his fashion, and to +the uttermost reach of his gross nature. I love her in a rather more +decorous and acceptable fashion, it is true, but only a half of me +loves her. The other half of me remembers that I am aging, that +Caradawc’s hut is leaky, that, in fine, bodily comfort is the +single luxury of which one never tires. I am a very contemptible +creature, the empty scabbard of a man, precisely as Owain +said.” This settled, Richard whistled to his dog. </p> + +<p> The sun had set. There were no shadows anywhere as Richard and +his sheep went homeward, but on every side the colors of the world +were more sombre. Twice his flock roused a covey of partridges which +had settled for the night. The screech-owl had come out of his hole, +and bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. +There was as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and +this was very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical +that he trudged away from this star. </p> + +<p> Next morning the Welshmen came, and now the trap was ready for +Henry of Lancaster. </p> + +<p> It befell just two days later, about noon, that while Richard +idly talked with Branwen a party of soldiers, some fifteen in +number, rode down the river’s bank from the ford above. Their +leader paused, then gave an order. The men drew rein. He cantered +forward. </p> + +<p> “God give you joy, fair sir,” said Richard, when the +cavalier was near him. </p> + +<p> The new-comer raised his visor. “God give you eternal joy, +my fair cousin,” he said, “and very soon. Now send away +this woman before that happens which must happen.” </p> + +<p> “Do you plan,” said Richard, “to disfigure the +stage of our quiet pastorals with murder?” </p> + +<p> “I design my own preservation,” King Henry answered, +“for while you live my rule is insecure.” </p> + +<p> “I am sorry,” Richard said, “that in part my +blood is yours.” </p> + +<p> Twice he sounded his horn, and everywhere from rustling +underwoods arose the half-naked Welshmen. Said Richard: “You +should read history more carefully, Cousin Henry. You might have +profited, as I have done, by considering the trick which our +grandfather, old Edward Longshanks, played on the French King at +Mezelais. As matters stand, your men are one to ten. You are +impotent. Now, now we balance our accounts! These persons here will +first deal with your followers. Then they will conduct you to +Glyndwyr, who has long desired to deal with you himself, in privacy, +since that Whit-Monday when you murdered his son.” </p> + +<p> The King began, “In mercy, sire—!” and Richard +laughed a little, saying: </p> + +<p> “That virtue is not overabundant among us of +Oriander’s blood, as we both know. No, cousin, Fate and Time +are merry jesters. See, now, their latest mockery! You the King of +England ride to Sycharth to your death, and I the tender of sheep +depart into London, without any hindrance, to reign henceforward +over these islands. To-morrow you are worm’s-meat, Cousin +Henry: to-morrow, as yesterday, I am King of England.” </p> + +<p> Then Branwen gave one sharp, brief cry, and Richard forgot all +things saving this girl, and strode to her. He had caught up her +hard, lithe hands; against his lips he strained them close and very +close. </p> + +<p> “Branwen—!” he said. His eyes devoured her. +</p> + +<p> “Yes, King,” she answered. “O King of England! +O fool that I have been to think you less!” </p> + +<p> In a while Richard said: “Well, I at least am not fool +enough to think of making you a king’s whore. So I must choose +between a peasant wench and England. Now I choose, and how gladly! +Branwen, help me to be more than King of England!” </p> + +<p> Low and very low he spoke, and long and very long he gazed at +her, and neither seemed to breathe. Of what she thought I cannot +tell you; but in Richard there was no power of thought, only a great +wonderment. Why, between this woman’s love and aught else +there was no choice for him, he knew upon a sudden. Perhaps he would +thus worship her always, he reflected: and then again, perhaps he +would be tired of her before long, just as all other persons seemed +to abate in these infatuations: meanwhile it was certain that he was +very happy. No, he could not go back to the throne and to the little +French girl who was in law his wife. </p> + +<p> And, as if from an immense distance, came to Richard the dogged +voice of Henry of Lancaster. “It is of common report in these +islands that I have a better right to the throne than you. As much +was told our grandfather, King Edward of happy memory, when he +educated you and had you acknowledged heir to the crown, but his +love was so strong for his son the Prince of Wales that nothing +could alter his purpose. And indeed if you had followed even the +example of the Black Prince you might still have been our King; but +you have always acted so contrarily to his admirable precedents as +to occasion the rumor to be generally believed throughout England +that you were not, after all, his son—” </p> + +<p> Richard had turned impatiently. “For the love of Heaven, +truncate your abominable periods. Be off with you. Yonder across +that river is the throne of England, which you appear, through some +lunacy, to consider a desirable possession. Take it, then; for, +praise God! the sword has found its sheath.” </p> + +<p> The King answered: “I do not ask you to reconsider your +dismissal, assuredly—Richard,” he cried, a little +shaken, “I perceive that until your death you will win +contempt and love from every person.” </p> + +<p> “Yes, yes, for many years I have been the playmate of the +world,” said Richard; “but to-day I wash my hands, and +set about another and more laudable business. I had dreamed certain +dreams, indeed—but what had I to do with all this strife +between the devil and the tiger? No, Glyndwyr will set up Mortimer +against you now, and you two must fight it out. I am no more his +tool, and no more your enemy, my cousin—Henry,” he said +with quickening voice, “there was a time when we were boys and +played together, and there was no hatred between us, and I regret +that time!” </p> + +<p> “As God lives, I too regret that time!” the bluff, +squinting King replied. He stared at Richard for a while wherein +each understood. “Dear fool,” Sire Henry said, +“there is no man in all the world but hates me saving only +you.” Then the proud King clapped spurs to his proud horse and +rode away. </p> + +<p> More lately Richard dismissed his wondering marauders. Now he +and Branwen were alone and a little troubled, since each was afraid +of that oncoming moment when their eyes must meet. </p> + +<p> So Richard laughed. “Praise God!” he wildly cried, +“I am the greatest fool unhanged!” </p> + +<p> She answered: “I am the happier for your folly. I am the +happiest of God’s creatures.” </p> + +<p> And Richard meditated. “Faith of a gentleman!” he +declared; “but you are nothing of the sort, and of this fact I +happen to be quite certain.” Their lips met then and afterward +their eyes; and each of these ragged peasants was too glad for +laughter. </p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE EIGHTH NOVEL +</p> +<a name="IX"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +IX +</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“J’ay en mon cueur joyeusement</p> + <p> Escript, afin que ne l’oublie,</p> + <p>Ce refrain qu’ayme chierement,</p> + <p>C’estes vous de qui suis amye.”</p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE NINTH NOVEL.—JEHANE OF NAVARRE, AFTER A WITHSTANDING OF +ALL OTHER ASSAULTS, IS IN A LONG DUEL, WHEREIN TIME AND COMMON-SENSE +ARE FLOUTED, AND KINGDOMS ARE SHAKEN, DETHRONED AND RECOMPENSED BY +AN ENDURING LUNACY. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Navarrese +</p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1386, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew +(thus Nicolas begins), came to the Spanish coast Messire Peyre de +Lesnerac, in a war-ship sumptuously furnished and manned by many +persons of dignity and wealth, in order suitably to escort the +Princess Jehane into Brittany, where she was to marry the Duke of +that province. There were now rejoicings throughout Navarre, in +which the Princess took but a nominal part and young Antoine Riczi +none at all. </p> + +<p> This Antoine Riczi came to Jehane that August twilight in the +hedged garden. “King’s daughter!” he sadly greeted +her. “Duchess of Brittany! Countess of Rougemont! Lady of +Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of Toufon and Guerche!” +</p> + +<p> She answered, “No, my dearest,—I am that Jehane, +whose only title is the Constant Lover.” And in the green +twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging star alone, their lips and +desperate young bodies clung, now, it might be, for the last time. +</p> + +<p> Presently the girl spoke. Her soft mouth was lax and tremulous, +and her gray eyes were more brilliant than the star yonder. The +boy’s arms were about her, so that neither could be quite +unhappy, yet. </p> + +<p> “Friend,” said Jehane, “I have no choice. I +must wed with this de Montfort. I think I shall die presently. I +have prayed God that I may die before they bring me to the +dotard’s bed.” </p> + +<p> Young Riczi held her now in an embrace more brutal. “Mine! +mine!” he snarled toward the obscuring heavens. </p> + +<p> “Yet it may be I must live. Friend, the man is very old. +Is it wicked to think of that? For I cannot but think of his great +age.” </p> + +<p> Then Riczi answered: “My desires—may God forgive +me!—have clutched like starving persons at that sorry +sustenance. Friend! ah, fair, sweet friend! the man is human and +must die, but love, we read, is immortal. I am wishful to kill +myself, Jehane. But, oh, Jehane! dare you to bid me live?” +</p> + +<p> “Friend, as you love me, I entreat you to live. Friend, I +crave of the Eternal Father that if I falter in my love for you I +may be denied even the one bleak night of ease which Judas +knows.” The girl did not weep; dry-eyed she winged a perfectly +sincere prayer toward incorruptible saints. Riczi was to remember +the fact, and through long years of severance. </p> + +<p> For even now, as Riczi went away from Jehane, a shrill +singing-girl was rehearsing, yonder behind the yew-hedge, the song +which she was to sing at Jehane’s bridal feast. </p> + +<p> Sang this joculatrix: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2">“When the Morning broke before us </p> + <p>Came the wayward Three astraying, </p> + <p>Chattering in babbling chorus, </p> + <p>(Obloquies of Aether saying),— </p> + <p>Hoidens that, at pegtop playing, </p> + <p>Flung their Top where yet it whirls </p> + <p>Through the coil of clouds unstaying, </p> + <p>For the Fates are captious girls!” </p> +</div> + +<p> And upon the next day de Lesnerac bore young Jehane from +Pampeluna and presently to Saillé, where old Jehan the Brave +took her to wife. She lived as a queen, but she was a woman of +infrequent laughter. </p> + +<p> She had Duke Jehan’s adoration, and his barons’ +obeisancy, and his villagers applauded her passage with stentorian +shouts. She passed interminable days amid bright curious arrasses +and trod listlessly over pavements strewn with flowers. She had +fiery-hearted jewels, and shimmering purple cloths, and much +furniture adroitly carven, and many tapestries of Samarcand and +Baldach upon which were embroidered, by brown fingers that time had +turned long ago to Asian dust, innumerable asps and deer and +phoenixes and dragons and all the motley inhabitants of air and of +the thicket; but her memories, too, she had, and for a dreary while +she got no comfort because of them. Then ambition quickened. </p> + +<p> Young Antoine Riczi likewise nursed his wound as best he might; +but at the end of the second year after Jehane’s wedding his +uncle, the Vicomte de Montbrison—a gaunt man, with preoccupied +and troubled eyes—had summoned Antoine into Lyonnois and, +after appropriate salutation, had informed the lad that, as the +Vicomte’s heir, he was to marry the Demoiselle Gerberge de +Nérac upon the ensuing Michaelmas. </p> + +<p> “That I may not do,” said Riczi; and since a +chronicler that would tempt fortune should never stretch the fabric +of his wares too thin (unlike Sir Hengist), I merely tell you these +two dwelt together at Montbrison for a decade: and the Vicomte swore +at his nephew and predicted this or that disastrous destination as +often as Antoine declined to marry the latest of his uncle’s +candidates,—in whom the Vicomte was of an astonishing +fertility. </p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1401 came the belated news that Duke Jehan +had closed his final day. “You will be leaving me!” the +Vicomte growled; “now, in my decrepitude, you will be leaving +me! It is abominable, and I shall in all likelihood disinherit you +this very night.” </p> + +<p> “Yet it is necessary,” Riczi answered; and, filled +with no unhallowed joy, he rode for Vannes, in Brittany, where the +Duchess-Regent held her court. Dame Jehane had within that fortnight +put aside her mourning. She sat beneath a green canopy, gold-fringed +and powdered with many golden stars, when Riczi came again to her, +and the rising saps of spring were exercising their august and +formidable influence. She sat alone, by prearrangement, to one end +of the high-ceiled and radiant apartment; midway in the hall her +lords and divers ladies were gathered about a saltatrice and a +jongleur, who were diverting the courtiers, to the mincing +accompaniment of a lute; but Jehane sat apart from these, frail, and +splendid with many jewels, and a little sad. </p> + +<p> And Antoine Riczi found no power of speech within him at the +first. Silent he stood before her, still as an effigy, while +meltingly the jongleur sang. </p> + +<p> “Jehane!” said Antoine Riczi, in a while, +“have you, then, forgotten, O Jehane?” </p> + +<p> The resplendent woman had not moved at all. It was as though she +were some tinted and lavishly adorned statue of barbaric heathenry, +and he her postulant; and her large eyes appeared to judge an +immeasurable path, beyond him. Now her lips fluttered somewhat. +“I am the Duchess of Brittany,” she said, in the phantom +of a voice. “I am the Countess of Rougemont. The Lady of +Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of Toufon and Guerche!... Jehane +is dead.” </p> + +<p> The man had drawn one audible breath. “You are that +Jehane, whose only title is the Constant Lover!” </p> + +<p> “Friend, the world smirches us,” she said +half-pleadingly, “I have tasted too deep of wealth and power. +I am drunk with a deadly wine, and ever I thirst—I +thirst—” </p> + +<p> “Jehane, do you remember that May morning in Pampeluna +when first I kissed you, and about us sang many birds? Then as now +you wore a gown of green, Jehane.” </p> + +<p> “Friend, I have swayed kingdoms since.” </p> + +<p> “Jehane, do you remember that August twilight in Pampeluna +when last I kissed you? Then as now you wore a gown of green, +Jehane.” </p> + +<p> “But I wore no such chain as this about my neck,” +the woman answered, and lifted a huge golden collar garnished with +emeralds and sapphires and with many pearls. “Friend, the +chain is heavy, yet I lack the will to cast it off. I lack the will, +Antoine.” And now with a sudden shout of mirth her courtiers +applauded the evolutions of the saltatrice. </p> + +<p> “King’s daughter!” said Riczi then; “O +perilous merchandise! a god came to me and a sword had pierced his +breast. He touched the gold hilt of it and said, ‘Take back +your weapon.’ I answered, ‘I do not know you.’ +‘I am Youth’ he said; ‘take back your +weapon.’” </p> + +<p> “It is true,” she responded, “it is lamentably +true that after to-night we are as different persons, you and +I.” </p> + +<p> He said: “Jehane, do you not love me any longer? Remember +old years and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God +abhors nothing so much as unfaith. For your own sake, +Jehane,—ah, no, not for your sake nor for mine, but for the +sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, so you tell me, time has +slain!” </p> + +<p> Once or twice she blinked, as if dazzled by a light of +intolerable splendor, but otherwise she stayed rigid. “You +have dared, messire, to confront me with the golden-hearted, +clean-eyed Navarrese that once was I! and I requite.” The +austere woman rose. “Messire, you swore to me, long since, +eternal service. I claim my right in domnei. +Yonder—gray-bearded, the man in black and silver—is the +Earl of Worcester, the King of England’s ambassador, in common +with whom the wealthy dowager of Brittany has signed a certain +contract. Go you, then, with Worcester into England, as my proxy, +and in that island, as my proxy, become the wife of the King of +England. Messire, your audience is done.” </p> + +<p> Riczi said this: “Can you hurt me any more, +Jehane?—no, even in hell they cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at +least, keep faith, and in your face I fling faith like a +glove—old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,—and I will +go, Jehane.” </p> + +<p> Her heart raged. “Poor, glorious fool!” she thought; +“had you but the wit even now to use me brutally, even now to +drag me from this daïs—!” Instead he went away from +her smilingly, treading through the hall with many affable +salutations, while the jongleur sang. </p> + +<p> Sang the jongleur: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2">“There is a land those hereabout</p> + <p>Ignore ... Its gates are barred</p> + <p>By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt.</p> + <p>These mercifully guard</p> + <p>That land we seek—the land so fair!—</p> + <p>And all the fields thereof,</p> + <p>Where daffodils flaunt everywhere</p> + <p>And ouzels chant of love,—</p> + <p>Lest we attain the Middle-Land,</p> + <p>Whence clouded well-springs rise,</p> + <p>And vipers from a slimy strand</p> + <p >Lift glittering cold eyes.</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2">“Now, the parable all may understand,</p> + <p>And surely you know the name of the land!</p> + <p>Ah, never a guide or ever a chart</p> + <p>May safely lead you about this land,—</p> + <p>The Land of the Human Heart!” </p> +</div> + +<p> And the following morning, being duly empowered, Antoine Riczi +sailed for England in company with the Earl of Worcester; and upon +Saint Richard’s day the next ensuing was, at Eltham, as proxy +of Jehane, married in his own person to the bloat King Henry, the +fourth of that name to reign. This king was that same squinting +Harry of Derby (called also Henry of Lancaster and Bolingbroke) who +stole his cousin’s crown, and about whom I have told you in +the preceding story. First Sire Henry placed the ring on +Riczi’s finger, and then spoke Antoine Riczi, very loud and +clear: </p> + +<p> “I, Antoine Riczi,—in the name of my worshipful +lady, Dame Jehane, the daughter of Messire Charles until lately King +of Navarre, the Duchess of Brittany and the Countess of +Rougemont,—do take you, Sire Henry of Lancaster, King of +England and in title of France, and Lord of Ireland, to be my +husband; and thereto I, Antoine Riczi, in the spirit of my said +lady”—the speaker paused here to regard the gross hulk +of masculinity before him, and then smiled very +sadly—“in precisely the spirit of my said lady, I plight +you my troth.” </p> + +<p> Afterward the King made him presents of some rich garments of +scarlet trimmed with costly furs, and of four silk belts studded +with silver and gold, and with valuable clasps, of which the owner +might well be proud, and Riczi returned to Lyonnois. +“Depardieux!” his uncle said; “so you return +alone!” </p> + +<p> “I return as did Prince Troilus,” said +Riczi—“to boast to you of liberal entertainment in the +tent of Diomede.” </p> + +<p> “You are certainly an inveterate fool,” the Vicomte +considered after a prolonged appraisal of his face, “since +there is always a deal of other pink-and-white flesh as yet +unmortgaged—Boy with my brother’s eyes!” the +Vicomte said, in another voice; “I have heard of the task put +upon you: and I would that I were God to punish as is fitting! But +you are welcome home, my lad.” </p> + +<p> So these two abode together at Montbrison for a long time, and +in the purlieus of that place hunted and hawked, and made sonnets +once in a while, and read aloud from old romances some five days out +of the seven. The verses of Riczi were in the year of grace 1410 +made public, not without acclamation; and thereafter the stripling +Comte de Charolais, future heir to all Burgundy and a zealous patron +of rhyme, was much at Montbrison, and there conceived for Antoine +Riczi such admiration as was possible to a very young man only. </p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1412 the Vicomte, being then bedridden, +died without any disease and of no malady save the inherencies of +his age. “I entreat of you, my nephew,” he said at last, +“that always you use as touchstone the brave deed you did at +Eltham. It is necessary for a gentleman to serve his lady according +to her commandments, but you performed the most absurd and the most +cruel task which any woman ever imposed upon her lover and servitor +in domnei. I laugh at you, and I envy you.” Thus he died, +about Martinmas. </p> + +<p> Now was Antoine Riczi a powerful baron, but he got no comfort of +his lordship, because that old incendiary, the King of Darkness, +daily added fuel to a smouldering sorrow until grief quickened into +vaulting flames of wrath and of disgust. </p> + +<p> “What now avail my riches?” said the Vicomte. +“How much wealthier was I when I was loved, and was myself an +eager lover! I relish no other pleasures than those of love. I am +Love’s sot, drunk with a deadly wine, poor fool, and ever I +thirst. All my chattels and my acres appear to me to be bright +vapors, and the more my dominion and my power increase, the more +rancorously does my heart sustain its bitterness over having been +robbed of that fair merchandise which is the King of +England’s. To hate her is scant comfort and to despise her +none at all, since it follows that I who am unable to forget the +wanton am even more to be despised than she. I will go into England +and execute what mischief I may against her.” </p> + +<p> The new Vicomte de Montbrison set forth for Paris, first to do +homage for his fief, and secondly to be accredited for some +plausible mission into England. But in Paris he got disquieting +news. Jehane’s husband was dead, and her stepson Henry, the +fifth monarch of that name to reign in Britain, had invaded France +to support preposterous claims which the man advanced to the crown +of that latter kingdom; and as the earth is altered by the advent of +winter, so was the appearance of France transformed by King +Henry’s coming, and everywhere the nobles were stirred up to +arms, the castles were closed, the huddled cities were fortified, +and on every side arose entrenchments. </p> + +<p> Thus through this sudden turn was the new Vicomte, the dreamer +and the recluse, caught up by the career of events, as a straw is +borne away by a torrent, when the French lords marched with their +vassals to Harfleur, where they were soundly drubbed by the King of +England; as afterward at Agincourt. </p> + +<p> But in the year of grace 1417 there was a breathing space for +discredited France, and presently the Vicomte de Montbrison was sent +into England, as ambassador. He got in London a fruitless audience +of King Henry, whose demands were such as rendered a renewal of the +war inevitable; and afterward got, in the month of April, about the +day of Palm Sunday, at the Queen’s dower-palace of +Havering-Bower, an interview with Queen Jehane.<a id="footnotetag5" name="footnotetag5"></a><a href="#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> </p> + +<p> A curled pert page took the Vicomte to where she sat alone, by +prearrangement, in a chamber with painted walls, profusely lighted +by the sun, and made pretence to weave a tapestry. When the page had +gone she rose and cast aside the shuttle, and then with a glad and +wordless cry stumbled toward the Vicomte. “Madame and +Queen—!” he coldly said. </p> + +<p> His judgment found in her a quite ordinary, frightened woman, +aging now, but still very handsome in these black and shimmering +gold robes; but all his other faculties found her desirable: and +with a contained hatred he had perceived, as if by the terse +illumination of a thunderbolt, that he could never love any woman +save the woman whom he most despised. </p> + +<p> She said: “I had forgotten. I had remembered only you, +Antoine, and Navarre, and the clean-eyed Navarrese—” Now +for a little, Jehane paced the gleaming and sun-drenched apartment +as a bright leopardess might tread her cage. Then she wheeled. +“Friend, I think that God Himself has deigned to avenge you. +All misery my reign has been. First Hotspur, then prim Worcester +harried us. Came Glyndwyr afterward to prick us with his +devils’ horns. Followed the dreary years that linked me to the +rotting corpse which God’s leprosy devoured while the poor +furtive thing yet moved, and endured its share in the punishment of +Manuel’s poisonous blood. All misery, Antoine! And now I live +beneath a sword.” </p> + +<p> “You have earned no more,” he said. “You have +earned no more, O Jehane! whose only title is the Constant +Lover!” He spat it out. </p> + +<p> She came uncertainly toward him, as though he had been some not +implacable knave with a bludgeon. “For the King hates +me,” she plaintively said, “and I live beneath a sword. +The big, fierce-eyed boy has hated me from the first, for all his +lip-courtesy. And now he lacks the money to pay his troops, and I am +the wealthiest person within his realm. I am a woman and alone in a +foreign land. So I must wait, and wait, and wait, Antoine, till he +devises some trumped-up accusation. Friend, I live as did Saint +Damoclus, beneath a sword. Antoine!” she wailed—for now +the pride of Queen Jehane was shattered utterly—“I am +held as a prisoner for all that my chains are of gold.” </p> + +<p> “Yet it was not until of late,” he observed, +“that you disliked the metal which is the substance of all +crowns.” </p> + +<p> And now the woman lifted toward him her massive golden necklace, +garnished with emeralds and sapphires and with many pearls, and in +the sunlight the gems were tawdry things. “Friend, the chain +is heavy, and I lack the power to cast it off. The Navarrese we know +of wore no such perilous fetters. Ah, you should have mastered me at +Vannes. You could have done so, very easily. But you only +talked—oh, Mary pity us! you only talked!—and I could +find only a servant where I had sore need to find a master. Let all +women pity me!” </p> + +<p> But now came many armed soldiers into the apartment. With spirit +Queen Jehane turned to meet them, and you saw that she was of royal +blood, for now the pride of many emperors blazed and informed her +body as light occupies a lantern. “At last you come for me, +messieurs?” </p> + +<p> “Whereas,” the leader of these soldiers read from a +parchment—“whereas the King’s stepmother, Queen +Jehane, is accused by certain persons of an act of witch-craft that +with diabolical and subtile methods wrought privily to destroy the +King, the said Dame Jehane is by the King committed (all her +attendants being removed) to the custody of Sir John Pelham, who +will, at the King’s pleasure, confine her within Pevensey +Castle, there to be kept under Sir John’s control: the lands +and other properties of the said Dame Jehane being hereby forfeit to +the King, whom God preserve!” </p> + +<p> “Harry of Monmouth!” said Jehane,—“ah, +my tall stepson, could I but come to you, very quietly, with a +knife—!” She shrugged her shoulders, and the gold about +her person glittered in the sunlight. “Witchcraft! +ohimé, one never disproves that. Friend, now are you avenged +the more abundantly.” </p> + +<p> “Young Riczi is avenged,” the Vicomte said; +“and I came hither desiring vengeance.” </p> + +<p> She wheeled, a lithe flame (he thought) of splendid fury. +“And in the gutter Jehane dares say what Queen Jehane upon the +throne might never say. Had I reigned all these years as mistress +not of England but of Europe,—had nations wheedled me in the +place of barons,—young Riczi had been none the less avenged. +Bah! what do these so-little persons matter? Take now your petty +vengeance! drink deep of it! and know that always within my heart +the Navarrese has lived to shame me! Know that to-day you despise +Jehane, the purchased woman! and that Jehane loves you! and that the +love of proud Jehane creeps like a beaten cur toward your feet, in +the sight of common men! and know that Riczi is avenged,—you +milliner!” </p> + +<p> “Into England I came desiring vengeance—Apples of +Sodom! O bitter fruit!” the Vicomte thought; “O fitting +harvest of a fool’s assiduous husbandry!” </p> + +<p> They took her from him: and that afternoon, after long +meditation, the Vicomte de Montbrison entreated a second private +audience of King Henry, and readily obtained it. “Unhardy is +unseely,” the Vicomte said at this interview’s +conclusion. The tale tells that the Vicomte returned to France and +within this realm assembled all such lords as the abuses of the +Queen-Regent Isabeau had more notoriously dissatisfied. </p> + +<p> The Vicomte had upon occasion an invaluable power of speech; and +now, so great was the devotion of love’s dupe, so heartily, so +hastily, did he design to remove the discomforts of Queen Jehane, +that now his eloquence was twin to Belial’s insidious talking +when that fiend tempts us to some proud iniquity. </p> + +<p> Then presently these lords had sided with King Henry, as did the +Vicomte de Montbrison, in open field. Next, as luck would have it, +Jehan Sans-Peur was slain at Montereau; and a little later the new +Duke of Burgundy, who loved the Vicomte as he loved no other man, +had shifted his coat, forsaking France. These treacheries brought +down the wavering scales of warfare, suddenly, with an aweful +clangor; and now in France clean-hearted persons spoke of the +Vicomte de Montbrison as they would speak of Ganelon or of Iscariot, +and in every market-place was King Henry proclaimed as governor of +the realm. </p> + +<p> Meantime Queen Jehane had been conveyed to prison and lodged +therein. She had the liberty of a tiny garden, high-walled, and of +two scantily furnished chambers. The brace of hard-featured females +whom Pelham had provided for the Queen’s attendance might +speak to her of nothing that occurred without the gates of Pevensey, +and she saw no other persons save her confessor, a triple-chinned +Dominican; had men already lain Jehane within the massive and gilded +coffin of a queen the outer world would have made as great a +turbulence in her ears. </p> + +<p> But in the year of grace 1422, upon the feast of Saint +Bartholomew, and about vespers—for thus it wonderfully fell +out,—one of those grim attendants brought to her the first +man, save the fat confessor, whom the Queen had seen within five +years. The proud, frail woman looked and what she saw was the +inhabitant of all her dreams. </p> + +<p> Said Jehane: “This is ill done. Time has avenged you. Be +contented with that knowledge, and, for Heaven’s sake, do not +endeavor to moralize over the ruin which Heaven has made, and justly +made, of Queen Jehane, as I perceive you mean to do.” She +leaned backward in the chair, very coarsely clad in brown, but +knowing that her coloring was excellent, that she had miraculously +preserved her figure, and that she did not look her real age by a +good ten years. Such reflections beget spiritual comfort even in a +prison. </p> + +<p> “Friend,” the lean-faced man now said, “I do +not come with such intent, as my mission will readily attest, nor to +any ruin, as your mirror will attest. Instead, madame, I come as the +emissary of King Henry, now dying at Vincennes, and with letters to +the lords and bishops of his council. Dying, the man restores to you +your liberty and your dower-lands, your bed and all your movables, +and six gowns of such fashion and such color as you may +elect.” </p> + +<p> Then with hurried speech he told her of five years’ +events: of how within that period King Henry had conquered France, +and had married the French King’s daughter, and had begotten a +boy who would presently inherit the united realms of France and +England, since in the supreme hour of triumph King Henry had been +stricken with a mortal sickness, and now lay dying, or perhaps +already dead, at Vincennes; and of how with his penultimate breath +the prostrate conqueror had restored to Queen Jehane all properties +and all honors which she formerly enjoyed. </p> + +<p> “I shall once more be Regent,” the woman said when +the Vicomte had made an end; “Antoine, I shall presently be +Regent both of France and of England, since Dame Katharine is but a +child.” Jehane stood motionless save for the fine hands that +plucked the air. “Mistress of Europe! absolute mistress, and +with an infant ward! now, may God have mercy on my unfriends, for +they will soon perceive great need of it!” </p> + +<p> “Yet was mercy ever the prerogative of royal +persons,” the Vicomte suavely said, “and the Navarrese +we know of was both royal and very merciful, O Constant +Lover.” </p> + +<p> The speech was as a whip-lash. Abruptly suspicion kindled in her +shrewd gray eyes. “Harry of Monmouth feared neither man nor +God. It needed more than any death-bed repentance to frighten him +into restoring my liberty.” There was a silence. “You, a +Frenchman, come as the emissary of King Henry who has devastated +France! are there no English lords, then, left alive of his, +army?” </p> + +<p> The Vicomte de Montbrison said; “There is at all events no +person better fitted to patch up this dishonorable business of your +captivity, in which no clean man would care to meddle.” </p> + +<p> She appraised this, and said with entire irrelevance: “The +world has smirched you, somehow. At last you have done something +save consider how badly I treated you. I praise God, Antoine, for it +brings you nearer.” </p> + +<p> He told her all. King Henry, it appeared, had dealt with him at +Havering in perfect frankness. The King needed money for his wars in +France, and failing the seizure of Jehane’s enormous wealth, +had exhausted every resource. “And France I mean to +have,” the King said. “Now the world knows you enjoy the +favor of the Comte de Charolais; so get me an alliance with Burgundy +against my imbecile brother of France, and Dame Jehane shall +repossess her liberty. There you have my price.” </p> + +<p> “And this price I paid,” the Vicomte sternly said, +“for ‘Unhardy is unseely,’ Satan whispered, and I +knew that Duke Philippe trusted me. Yea, all Burgundy I marshalled +under your stepson’s banner, and for three years I fought +beneath his loathed banner, until at Troyes we had trapped and slain +the last loyal Frenchman. And to-day in France my lands are +confiscate, and there is not an honest Frenchman but spits upon my +name. All infamy I come to you for this last time, Jehane! as a man +already dead I come to you, Jehane, for in France they thirst to +murder me, and England has no further need of Montbrison, her +blunted and her filthy instrument!” </p> + +<p> The woman nodded here. “You have set my thankless service +above your life, above your honor. I find the rhymester glorious and +very vile.” </p> + +<p> “All vile,” he answered; “and outworn! +King’s daughter, I swore to you, long since, eternal service. +Of love I freely gave you yonder in Navarre, as yonder at Eltham I +crucified my innermost heart for your delectation. Yet I, at least, +keep faith, and in your face I fling faith like a +glove—outworn, it may be, and God knows, unclean! Yet I, at +least, keep faith! Lands and wealth have I given, up for you, O +king’s daughter, and life itself have I given you, and +lifelong service have I given you, and all that I had save honor; +and at the last I give you honor, too. Now let the naked fool +depart, Jehane, for he has nothing more to give.” </p> + +<p> While the Vicomte de Montbrison spoke thus, she had leaned upon +the sill of an open casement. “Indeed, it had been +better,” she said, still with her face averted, and gazing +downward at the tree-tops beneath, “it had been far better had +we never met. For this love of ours has proven a tyrannous and evil +lord. I have had everything, and upon each feast of will and sense +the world afforded me this love has swept down, like a +harpy—was it not a harpy you called the bird in that old poem +of yours?—to rob me of delight. And you have had nothing, for +he has pilfered you of life, giving only dreams in exchange, my poor +Antoine, and he has led you at the last to infamy. We are as God +made us, and—I may not understand why He permits this +despotism.” </p> + +<p> Thereafter, somewhere below, a peasant sang as he passed +supperward through the green twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging +star alone. </p> + +<p> Sang the peasant: </p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2"> + “King Jesus hung upon the Cross,</p> + <p>‘And have ye sinned?’ quo’ He,—.</p> + <p>‘Nay, Dysmas, ’tis no honest loss</p> + <p>When Satan cogs the dice ye toss,</p> + <p>And thou shall sup with Me,—</p> + <p>Sedebis apud angelos,</p> + <p>Quia amavisti!’</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “At Heaven’s Gate was Heaven’s Queen,</p> + <p>‘And have ye sinned?’ quo’ She,—</p> + <p>‘And would I hold him worth a bean</p> + <p>That durst not seek, because unclean,</p> + <p>My cleansing charity?—</p> + <p>Speak thou that wast the Magdalene,</p> + <p>Quia amavisti!’”</p> +</div> + +<p> “It may be that in some sort the jingle answers me!” +then said Jehane; and she began with an odd breathlessness, +“Friend, when King Henry dies—and even now he +dies—shall I not as Regent possess such power as no woman has +ever wielded in Europe? can aught prevent this?” </p> + +<p> “It is true,” he answered. “You leave this +prison to rule over England again, and over conquered France as +well, and naught can prevent it.” </p> + +<p> “Unless, friend, I were wedded to a Frenchman. Then would +the stern English lords never permit that I have any finger in the +government.” She came to him with conspicuous deliberation and +rested her hands upon his breast. “Friend, I am weary of these +tinsel splendors. What are this England and this France to me, who +crave the real kingdom?” </p> + +<p> Her mouth was tremulous and lax, and her gray eyes were more +brilliant than the star yonder. The man’s arms were about her, +and of the man’s face I cannot tell you. “King’s +daughter! mistress of half Europe! I am a beggar, an outcast, as a +leper among honorable persons.” </p> + +<p> But it was as though he had not spoken. “Friend, it was +for this I have outlived these garish, fevered years, it was this +which made me glad when I was a child and laughed without knowing +why. That I might to-day give up this so-great power for love of +you, my all-incapable and soiled Antoine, was, as I now know, the +end to which the Eternal Father created me. For, look you,” +she pleaded, “to surrender absolute dominion over half Europe +is a sacrifice. Assure me that it is a sacrifice, Antoine! O +glorious fool, delude me into the belief that I surrender much in +choosing you! Nay, I know it is as nothing beside what you have +given up for me, but it is all I have—it is all I have, +Antoine!” </p> + +<p> He drew a deep and big-lunged breath that seemed to inform his +being with an indomitable vigor; and grief and doubtfulness went +quite away from him. “Love leads us,” he said, +“and through the sunlight of the world Love leads us, and +through the filth of it Love leads us, but always in the end, if we +but follow without swerving, Love leads upward. Yet, O God upon the +Cross! Thou that in the article of death didst pardon Dysmas! as +what maimed warriors of life, as what bemired travellers in muddied +byways, must we presently come to Thee!” </p> + +<p> “Ah, but we will come hand in hand,” she answered; +“and He will comprehend.” </p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +THE END OF THE NINTH NOVEL +</p> +<a name="X"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p>X</p> +<p> +THE STORY OF THE FOX-BRUSH +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + <p class="in">“Dame serez de mon cueur, sans debat,</p> + <p>Entierement, jusques mort me consume.</p> + <p>Laurier souëf qui pour mon droit combat,</p> + <p>Olivier franc, m’ostant toute amertume.” </p> + +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +THE TENTH NOVEL.—KATHARINE OF VALOIS IS LOVED BY A HUNTSMAN, +AND LOVES HIM GREATLY; THEN FINDS HIM, TO HER HORROR, AN IMPOSTOR; +AND FOR A SUFFICIENT REASON CONSENTS TO MARRY QUITE ANOTHER PERSON, +NOT ALL UNWILLINGLY. +</div> + +<p class="subhead"> +The Story of the Fox-Brush +</p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1417, about Martinmas (thus Nicolas +begins), Queen Isabeau fled with her daughter the Lady Katharine to +Chartres. There the Queen was met by the Duke of Burgundy, and these +two laid their heads together to such good effect that presently +they got back into Paris, and in its public places massacred some +three thousand Armagnacs. That, however, is a matter which touches +history; the root of our concernment is that, when the Queen and the +Duke rode off to attend to this butcher’s business, the Lady +Katharine was left behind in the Convent of Saint Scholastica, which +then stood upon the outskirts of Chartres, in the bend of the Eure +just south of that city. She dwelt for a year in this well-ordered +place. </p> + +<p> There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint +John the Baptist, the fine August morning that starts the tale. +Katharine the Fair, men called her, with considerable show of +reason. She was very tall, and slim as a rush. Her eyes were large +and black, having an extreme lustre, like the gleam of undried +ink,—a lustre at some times uncanny. Her abundant hair, too, +was black, and to-day seemed doubly sombre by contrast with the gold +netting which confined it. Her mouth was scarlet, all curves, and +her complexion was famous for its brilliancy; only a precisian would +have objected that she possessed the Valois nose, long and thin and +somewhat unduly overhanging the mouth. </p> + +<p> To-day as she came through the orchard, crimson garbed, she +paused with lifted eyebrows. Beyond the orchard wall there was a +hodgepodge of noises, among which a nice ear might distinguish the +clatter of hoofs, a yelping and scurrying, and a contention of soft +bodies, and above all a man’s voice commanding the turmoil. +She was seventeen, so she climbed into the crotch of an apple-tree +and peered over the wall. </p> + +<p> He was in rusty brown and not unshabby; but her regard swept +over this to his face, and there noted how his eyes shone like blue +winter stars under the tumbled yellow hair, and noted the flash of +his big teeth as he swore between them. He held a dead fox by the +brush, which he was cutting off; two hounds, lank and wolfish, were +scaling his huge body in frantic attempts to get at the carrion. A +horse grazed close at hand. </p> + +<p> So for a heart-beat she saw him. Then he flung the tailless body +to the hounds, and in the act spied two black eyes peeping through +the apple-leaves. He laughed, all mirth to the heels of him. +“Mademoiselle, I fear we have disturbed your devotions. But I +had not heard that it was a Benedictine custom to rehearse aves in +tree-tops.” Then, as she leaned forward, both elbows resting +more comfortably upon the wall, and thereby disclosing her slim body +among the foliage like a crimson flower green-calyxed, he said, +“You are not a nun—Blood of God! you are the Princess +Katharine!” </p> + +<p> The nuns, her present guardians, would have declared the ensuing +action horrific, for Katharine smiled frankly at him and asked how +could he thus recognise her at one glance. </p> + +<p> He answered slowly: “I have seen your portrait. Hah, your +portrait!” he jeered, head flung back and big teeth glinting +in the sunlight. “There is a painter who merits +crucifixion.” </p> + +<p> She considered this indicative of a cruel disposition, but also +of a fine taste in the liberal arts. Aloud she stated: </p> + +<p> “You are not a Frenchman, messire. I do not understand how +you can have seen my portrait.” </p> + +<p> The man stood for a moment twiddling the fox-brush. “I am +a harper, my Princess. I have visited the courts of many kings, +though never that of France. I perceive I have been woefully +unwise.” </p> + +<p> This trenched upon insolence—the look of his eyes, indeed, +carried it well past the frontier,—but she found the statement +interesting. Straightway she touched the kernel of those +fear-blurred legends whispered about Dom Manuel’s reputed +descendants. </p> + +<p> “You have, then, seen the King of England?” </p> + +<p> “Yes, Highness.” </p> + +<p> “Is it true that in him, the devil blood of Oriander has +gone mad, and that he eats children—like Agrapard and +Angoulaffre of the Broken Teeth?” </p> + +<p> His gaze widened. “I have heard a deal of scandal +concerning the man. But certainly I never heard that.” </p> + +<p> Katharine settled back, luxuriously, in the crotch of the +apple-tree. “Tell me about him.” </p> + +<p> Composedly he sat down upon the grass and began to acquaint her +with his knowledge and opinions concerning Henry, the fifth of that +name to reign in England, and the son of that squinting Harry of +Derby about whom I have told you so much before. </p> + +<p> Katharine punctuated the harper’s discourse with eager +questionings, which are not absolutely to our purpose. In the main, +this harper thought the man now buffeting France a just king, and he +had heard, when the crown was laid aside, Sire Henry was +sufficiently jovial, and even prankish. The harper educed anecdotes. +He considered that the King would manifestly take Rouen, which the +insatiable man was now besieging. Was the King in treaty for the +hand of the Infanta of Aragon? Yes, he undoubtedly was. </p> + +<p> Katharine sighed her pity for this ill-starred woman. “And +now tell me about yourself.” </p> + +<p> He was, it appeared, Alain Maquedonnieux, a harper by vocation, +and by birth a native of Ireland. Beyond the fact that it was a +savage kingdom adjoining Cataia, Katharine knew nothing of Ireland. +The harper assured her that in this she was misinformed, since the +kings of England claimed Ireland as an appanage, though the Irish +themselves were of two minds as to the justice of these pretensions; +all in all, he considered that Ireland belonged to Saint Patrick, +and that the holy man had never accredited a vicar. </p> + +<p> “Doubtless, by the advice of God,” Alain said: +“for I have read in Master Roger de Wendover’s +Chronicles of how at the dread day of judgment all the Irish are to +muster before the high and pious Patrick, as their liege lord and +father in the spirit, and by him be conducted into the presence of +God; and of how, by virtue of Saint Patrick’s request, all the +Irish will die seven years to an hour before the second coming of +Christ, in order to give the blessed saint sufficient time to +marshal his company, which is considerable.” Katharine +admitted the convenience of this arrangement, as well as the neglect +of her education. Alain gazed up at her for a long while, as if in +reflection, and presently said: “Doubtless the Lady Heleine of +Argos also was thus starry-eyed and found in books less diverting +reading than in the faces of men.” It flooded +Katharine’s cheeks with a livelier hue, but did not vex her +irretrievably; if she chose to read this man’s face, the +meaning was plain enough. </p> + +<p> I give you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is +trivial. But it was a day when one entered love’s wardship +with a plunge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by +bit, as though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a +long while, with laughter mutually provoked and shared, with divers +eloquent and dangerous pauses. The harper squatted upon the ground, +the Princess leaned over the wall; but to all intent they sat +together upon the loftiest turret of Paradise, and it was a full two +hours before Katharine hinted at departure. </p> + +<p> Alain rose, approaching the wall. “To-morrow I ride for +Milan to take service with Duke Filippo. I had broken my journey +these three days past at Châteauneuf yonder, where this fox +has been harrying my host’s chickens. To-day I went out to +slay him, and he led me, his murderer, to the fairest lady earth may +boast. Do you not think that, in returning good for evil, this fox +was a true Christian, my Princess?” </p> + +<p> Katharine said: “I lament his destruction. Farewell, +Messire Alain! And since chance brought you hither—” +</p> + +<p> “Destiny brought me hither,” Alain affirmed, a +mastering hunger in his eyes. “Destiny has been kind; I shall +make a prayer to her that she continue so.” But when Katharine +demanded what this prayer would be, Alain shook his tawny head. +“Presently you shall know, Highness, but not now. I return to +Châteauneuf on certain necessary businesses; to-morrow I set +out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti’s livery. +Farewell!” He mounted and rode away in the golden August +sunlight, the hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened +in his hat. Thus Tristran de Léonois may have ridden +a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, thus statelily and composedly, +Katharine thought, gazing after him. She went to her apartments, +singing an inane song about the amorous and joyful time of spring +when everything and everybody is happy,— </p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2"> + “El tems amoreus plein de joie,</p> + <p>El tems où tote riens s’esgaie,—”</p> +</div> + +<p> and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were born every +day, she reflected, such hosts of women-children, who were not +princesses, and therefore compelled to marry detestable kings. </p> + +<p> Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a +cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant +trees. In the slaty twilight the garden’s verdure was +lustreless, the grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where +dewdrops showed like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there +absolute shadow, nowhere a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way +between horizon and zenith, two belts of coppery light flared +against the gray sky like embers swaddled by ashes. The birds were +waking; there were occasional scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts +of peevish twittering to attest as much; and presently came a +singing, less musical than that of many a bird perhaps, but far more +grateful to the girl who heard it, heart in mouth. A lute +accompanied the song demurely. </p> + +<p> +Sang Alain: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + <p class="i2"> + “O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,</p> + <p>Be not too obdurate to us who pray</p> + <p>That this our transient grant of youth be spent</p> + <p>In laughter as befits a holiday,</p> + <p>From which the evening summons us away,</p> + <p>From which to-morrow wakens us to strife</p> + <p>And toil and grief and wisdom,—and to-day</p> + <p>Grudge us not life!</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,</p> + <p>Why need our elders trouble us at play?</p> + <p>We know that very soon we shall repent</p> + <p>The idle follies of our holiday,</p> + <p>And being old, shall be as wise as they:</p> + <p>But now we are not wise, and lute and fife</p> + <p>Plead sweetlier than axioms,—so to-day</p> + <p>Grudge us not life! </p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,</p> + <p>You have given us youth—and must we cast away</p> + <p>The cup undrained and our one coin unspent</p> + <p>Because our elders’ beards and hearts are gray?</p> + <p>They have forgotten that if we delay</p> + <p>Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife</p> + <p>Or cord or fever flouts the prayer we pray—</p> + <p>‘Grudge us not life!’</p> + + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Madam, recall that in the sun we play</p> + <p>But for an hour, then have the worm for wife,</p> + <p>The tomb for habitation—and to-day</p> + <p>Grudge us not life!” </p> + +</div> + +<p> Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the +crotch of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but +the Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort. </p> + +<p> “You came!” this harper said, transfigured; and then +again, “You came!” </p> + +<p> She breathed, “Yes.” </p> + +<p> So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found +adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man’s +mind not a grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to +leer at his unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man +and woman, meeting, knew no sweeter terror. </p> + +<p> It was by the minstrel that a familiar earth and the grating +speech of earth were earlier regained. “The affair is of the +suddenest,” Alain observed, and he now swung the lute behind +him. He indicated no intention of touching her, though he might +easily have done so as he sat there exalted by the height of his +horse. “A meteor arrives with more prelude. But Love is an +arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has seized it, and accordingly +I would now brave hell to come to you, and finding you there, would +esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already made my prayer to +Destiny that she concede me love. Now of God, our Father and Master, +I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For, God willing, I +shall come to you again, even if in order to do this I have to split +the world like a rotten orange.” </p> + +<p> “Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!” Katharine said. +“You are a minstrel and I am a king’s daughter.” +</p> + +<p> “Is it madness? Why, then, I think sane persons are to be +commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this some design. Across half +the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Hey, God’s face!” +Alain swore; “the foxes which Samson, that old sinewy captain, +loosed among the corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as +this fox has set afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and +olives spoilt, a bushel or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms +topple on the brink of ruin. There will be martial argument shortly +if you bid me come again.” </p> + +<p> “I bid you come,” said Katharine; and after they had +stared at each other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It +was through a dank and tear-flawed world that she stumbled +conventward, while out of the east the sun came bathed in mists, a +watery sun no brighter than a silver coin. </p> + +<p> And for a month the world seemed no less dreary, but about +Michaelmas the Queen-Regent sent for her. At the Hôtel de +Saint-Pol matters were much the same. Katharine found her mother in +foul-mouthed rage over the failure of a third attempt to poison the +Dauphin of Vienne, as Queen Isabeau had previously poisoned her two +elder sons; I might here trace out a curious similitude between the +Valois and that dragon-spawned race which Jason very anciently slew +at Colchis, since the world was never at peace so long as any two of +them existed. But King Charles greeted his daughter with ampler +deference, esteeming her to be the wife of Presbyter John, the +tyrant of Aethiopia. However, ingenuity had just suggested +card-playing for King Charles’ amusement, and he paid little +attention nowadays to any one save his opponent at this new game. +</p> + +<p> So the French King chirped his senile jests over the card-table, +while the King of England was besieging the French city of Rouen +sedulously and without mercy. In late autumn an armament from +Ireland joined Henry’s forces. The Irish fought naked, it was +said, with long knives. Katharine heard discreditable tales of these +Irish, and reflected how gross are the exaggerations of rumor. </p> + +<p> In the year of grace 1419, in January, the burgesses of Rouen, +having consumed their horses, and finding frogs and rats +unpalatable, yielded the town. It was the Queen-Regent who brought +the news to Katharine. </p> + +<p> “God is asleep,” the Queen said; “and while He +nods, the Butcher of Agincourt has stolen our good city of +Rouen.” She sat down and breathed heavily. “Never was +any poor woman so pestered as I! The puddings to-day were quite +uneatable, as you saw for yourself, and on Sunday the Englishman +entered Rouen in great splendor, attended by his chief nobles; but +the Butcher rode alone, and before him went a page carrying a +fox-brush on the point of his lance. I put it to you, is that the +contrivance of a sane man? Euh! euh!” Dame Isabeau squealed on +a sudden; “you are bruising me.” </p> + +<p> Katharine had gripped her by the shoulder. “The King of +England—a tall, fair man? with big teeth? a tiny wen upon his +neck—here—and with his left cheek scarred? with blue +eyes, very bright, bright as tapers?” She poured out her +questions in a torrent, and awaited the answer, seeming not to +breathe at all. </p> + +<p> “I believe so,” the Queen said, “and they say, +too, that he has the damned squint of old Manuel the Redeemer.” </p> + +<p> “O God!” said Katharine. </p> + +<p> “Ay, our only hope now. And may God show him no more mercy +than has this misbegotten English butcher shown us!” the good +lady desired, with fervor. “The hog, having won our Normandy, +is now advancing on Paris itself. He repudiated the Aragonish +alliance last August; and until last August he was content with +Normandy, they tell us, but now he swears to win all France. The man +is a madman, and Scythian Tamburlaine was more lenient. And I do not +believe that in all France there is a cook who understands his +business.” She went away whimpering, and proceeded to get +tipsy. </p> + +<p> The Princess remained quite still, as Dame Isabeau had left her; +you may see a hare crouch so at sight of the hounds. Finally the +girl spoke aloud. “Until last August!” Katharine said. +“Until last August! <i>Poised kingdoms topple on the brink of +ruin, now that you bid me come to you again</i>. And I bade this +devil’s grandson come to me, as my lover!” Presently she +went into her oratory and began to pray. </p> + +<p> In the midst of her invocation she wailed: “Fool, fool! +How could I have thought him less than a king!” </p> + +<p> You are to imagine her breast thus adrum with remorse and hatred +of herself, the while that town by town fell before the invader like +card-houses. Every rumor of defeat—and the news of some fresh +defeat came daily—was her arraignment; impotently she cowered +at God’s knees, knowing herself a murderess, whose infamy was +still afoot, outpacing her prayers, whose victims were battalions. +Tarpeia and Pisidicé and Rahab were her sisters; she hungered +in her abasement for Judith’s nobler guilt. </p> + +<p> In May he came to her. A truce was patched up, and French and +English met amicably in a great plain near Meulan. A square space +was staked out and on three sides boarded in, the fourth side being +the river Seine. This enclosure the Queen-Regent, Jehan of Burgundy, +and Katharine entered from the French side. Simultaneously the +English King appeared, accompanied by his brothers the Dukes of +Clarence and Gloucester, and followed by the Earl of Warwick. +Katharine raised her eyes with I know not what lingering hope; but +it was he, a young Zeus now, triumphant and uneager. In his helmet +in place of a plume he wore a fox-brush spangled with jewels. </p> + +<p> These six entered the tent pitched for the conference—the +hanging of blue velvet embroidered with fleurs-de-lys of gold +blurred before the girl’s eyes,—and there the Earl of +Warwick embarked upon a sea of rhetoric. His French was indifferent, +his periods were interminable, and his demands exorbitant; in brief, +the King of England wanted Katharine and most of France, with a +reversion at the French King’s death of the entire kingdom. +Meanwhile Sire Henry sat in silence, his eyes glowing. </p> + +<p> “I have come,” he said, under cover of +Warwick’s oratory—“I have come again, my +lady.” </p> + +<p> Katharine’s gaze flickered over him. “Liar!” +she said, very softly. “Has God no thunders remaining in His +armory that this vile thief still goes unblasted? Would you steal +love as well as kingdoms?” </p> + +<p> His ruddy face was now white. “I love you, +Katharine.” </p> + +<p> “Yes,” she answered, “for I am your pretext. I +can well believe, messire, that you love your pretext for theft and +murder.” </p> + +<p> Neither spoke after this, and presently the Earl of Warwick +having come to his peroration, the matter was adjourned till the +next day. The party separated. It was not long before Katharine had +informed her mother that, God willing, she would never again look +upon the King of England’s face uncoffined. Isabeau found her +a madwoman. The girl swept opposition before her with gusts of +demoniacal fury, wept, shrieked, tore at her hair, and eventually +fell into a sort of epileptic seizure; between rage and terror she +became a horrid, frenzied beast. I do not dwell upon this, for it is +not a condition in which the comeliest maid shows to advantage. But, +for the Valois, insanity always lurked at the next corner, and they +knew it; to save the girl’s reason the Queen was forced to +break off all discussion of the match. Accordingly, the Duke of +Burgundy went next day to the conference alone. Jehan began with +“ifs,” and over these flimsy barriers Henry, already +fretted by Katharine’s scorn, presently vaulted to a towering +fury. </p> + +<p> “Fair cousin,” the King said, after a deal of +vehement bickering, “we wish you to know that we will have the +daughter of your King, and that we will drive both him and you out +of this kingdom.” </p> + +<p> The Duke answered, not without spirit, “Sire, you are +pleased to say so; but before you have succeeded in ousting my lord +and me from this realm, I am of the opinion that you will be very +heartily tired.” </p> + +<p> At this the King turned on his heel; over his shoulder he flung: +“I am tireless; also, I am agile as a fox in the pursuit of my +desires. Say that to your Princess.” Then he went away in a +rage. </p> + +<p> It had seemed an approvable business to win love incognito, +according to the example of many ancient emperors, but in practice +he had tripped over an ugly outgrowth from the legendary custom. The +girl hated him, there was no doubt about it; and it was equally +certain he loved her. Particularly caustic was the reflection that a +twitch of his finger would get him Katharine as his wife, for before +long the Queen-Regent was again attempting secret negotiations to +bring this about. Yes, he could get the girl’s body by a +couple of pen-strokes, and had he been older that might have +contented him: as it was, what he wanted was to rouse the look her +eyes had borne in Chartres orchard that tranquil morning, and this +one could not readily secure by fiddling with seals and parchments. +You see his position: this high-spirited young man now loved the +Princess too utterly to take her on lip-consent, and this marriage +was now his one possible excuse for ceasing from victorious warfare. +So he blustered, and the fighting recommenced; and he slew in a +despairing rage, knowing that by every movement of his arm he became +to her so much the more detestable. </p> + +<p> Then the Vicomte de Montbrison, as you have heard, betrayed +France, and King Henry began to strip the French realm of provinces +as you peel the layers from an onion. By the May of the year of +grace 1420 France was, and knew herself to be, not beaten but +demolished. Only a fag-end of the French army lay entrenched at +Troyes, where King Charles and his court awaited Henry’s +decision as to the morrow’s action. If he chose to destroy +them root and branch, he could; and they knew such mercy as was in +the man to be quite untarnished by previous using. Sire Henry drew +up a small force before the city and made no overtures toward either +peace or throat-cutting. </p> + +<p> This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday +after Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in +his apartments at the Hôtel de Ville. The King was pursing his +lips over an alternative play, when somebody began singing below in +the courtyard. </p> + +<p> +Sang the voice: +</p> + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2">“I can find no meaning in life,</p> + <p>That have weighed the world,—and it was</p> + <p>Abundant with folly, and rife</p> + <p>With sorrows brittle as glass,</p> + <p>And with joys that flicker and pass</p> + <p>Like dreams through a fevered head;</p> + <p>And like the dripping of rain</p> + <p>In gardens naked and dead</p> + <p>Is the obdurate thin refrain</p> + <p>Of our youth which is presently dead.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “And she whom alone I have loved</p> + <p>Looks ever with loathing on me,</p> + <p>As one she hath seen disproved</p> + <p>And stained with such smirches as be</p> + <p>Not ever cleansed utterly;</p> + <p>And is both to remember the days</p> + <p>When Destiny fixed her name</p> + <p>As the theme and the goal of my praise;</p> + <p>And my love engenders shame,</p> + <p>And I stain what I strive for and praise.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “O love, most perfect of all,</p> + <p>Just to have known you is well!</p> + <p>And it heartens me now to recall</p> + <p>That just to have known you is well,</p> + <p>And naught else is desirable</p> + <p>Save only to do as you willed</p> + <p>And to love you my whole life long;—</p> + <p>But this heart in me is filled</p> + <p>With hunger cruel and strong,</p> + <p>And with hunger unfulfilled.</p> + + <p class="stanzai2"> + “Fond heart, though thy hunger be</p> + <p>As a flame that wanders unstilled,</p> + <p>There is none more perfect than she!” </p> +</div> + +<p>Malise now came into the room, and, without speaking, laid a fox-brush before the Princess.</p> + +<p> Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered +table. “So you are in his pay, Malise? I am sorry. But you +know that your employer is master here. Who am I to forbid him +entrance?” The girl went away silently, abashed, and the +Princess sat quite still, tapping the brush against the table. </p> + +<p> “They do not want me to sign another treaty, do +they?” her father asked timidly. “It appears to me they +are always signing treaties, and I cannot see that any good comes of +it. And I would have won the last game, Katharine, if Malise had not +interrupted us. You know I would have won.” </p> + +<p> “Yes, Father, you would have won. Oh, he must not see +you!” Katharine cried, a great tide of love mounting in her +breast, the love that draws a mother fiercely to shield her backward +boy. “Father, will you not go into your chamber? I have a new +book for you, Father—all pictures, dear. Come—” +She was coaxing him when Sire Henry appeared in the doorway. </p> + +<p> “But I do not wish to look at pictures,” Charles +said, peevishly; “I wish to play cards. You are an ungrateful +daughter, Katharine. You are never willing to amuse me.” He +sat down with a whimper and began to pluck at his dribbling lips. +</p> + +<p> Katharine had moved a little toward the door. Her face was +white. “Now welcome, sire!” she said. “Welcome, O +great conqueror, who in your hour of triumph can find no nobler +recreation than to shame a maid with her past folly! It was +valorously done, sire. See, Father; here is the King of England come +to observe how low we sit that yesterday were lords of +France.” </p> + +<p> “The King of England!” echoed Charles, and he rose +now to his feet. “I thought we were at war with him. But my +memory is treacherous. You perceive, brother of England, I am +planning a new mouse-trap, and my mind is somewhat preëmpted. I +recall now that you are in treaty for my daughter’s hand. +Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but I +suppose—” He paused, as if to regard and hear some +invisible counsellor, and then briskly resumed: “Yes, I +suppose policy demands that she should marry you. We trammelled +kings can never go free of policy—ey, my compère of +England? No; it was through policy I wedded her mother; and we have +been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in your ear, son-in-law: +Madame Isabeau’s soul formerly inhabited a sow, as Pythagoras +teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the influence +of the moon drew it hither.” </p> + +<p> Henry did not say anything. Steadily his calm blue eyes +appraised Dame Katharine. And King Charles went on, very knowingly: +</p> + +<p> “Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, +though by ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy +again, son-in-law: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the +great hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten +flies— very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of +parricides,—and afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the +Mediterranean hath its sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at +cards. Cheats, sir!—and I her father!” The incessant +peering, the stealthy cunning with which Charles whispered this, the +confidence with which he clung to his destroyer’s hand, was +that of a conspiring child. </p> + + +<p> “Come, Father,” Katharine said. “Come away to +bed, dear.” </p> + +<p> “Hideous basilisk!” he spat at her; “dare you +rebel against me? Am I not King of France, and is it not blasphemy +for a King of France to be mocked? Frail moths that flutter about my +splendor,” he shrieked, in an unheralded frenzy, “beware +of me, beware! for I am omnipotent! I am King of France, +Heaven’s regent. At my command the winds go about the earth, +and nightly the stars are kindled for my recreation. Perhaps I am +mightier than God, but I do not remember now. The reason is written +down and lies somewhere under a bench. Now I sail for England. Eia! +eia! I go to ravage England, terrible and merciless. But I must have +my mouse-traps, Goodman Devil, for in England the cats of the +middle-sea wait unfed.” He went out of the room, giggling, and +in the corridor began to sing: </p> + + + <div class="poem"> + <p class="i6"> + “A hundred thousand times good-bye!</p> + <p>I go to seek the Evangelist,</p> + <p>For here all persons cheat and lie ...” </p> +</div> + +<p> All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon +Katharine. Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the +boulder, and they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But +she turned and met his gaze squarely. She noted now for the first +time how oddly his left eyebrow drooped. Katharine said: “And +that is the king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable +conquest to overcome so wise a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? +There are cut-throats in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would +scorn the action. Now shall I fetch my mother, sire? the commander +of that great army which you overcame? As the hour is late, she is +by this time tipsy, but she will come. Or perhaps she is with some +paid lover, but if this conqueror, this second Alexander, wills it +she will come. O God!” the girl wailed, on a sudden; “O +just and all-seeing God! are not we of Valois so contemptible that +in conquering us it is the victor who is shamed?” </p> + +<p> “Flower of the marsh!” he said, and his voice pulsed +with tender cadences—“flower of the marsh! it is not the +King of England who now comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry +Plantagenet God has led hither by the hand to punish the sins of +this realm, and to reign in it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet +will cast out the Valois from the throne they have defiled, as +Darius cast out Belshazzar, for such is the desire and the intent of +God. But to you comes Alain the harper, not as a conqueror but as a +suppliant,—Alain who has loved you whole-heartedly these two +years past, and who now kneels before you entreating grace.” +</p> + +<p> Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he +had fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood +that he believed France to be his by Divine favor and Heaven’s +peculiar intervention. He thought himself God’s factor, not +His rebel. He was rather stupid, this huge, handsome, squinting boy; +and as she comprehended this, her hand went to his shoulder, half +maternally. </p> + +<p> “It is nobly done, sire. But I understand. You must marry +me in order to uphold your claim to France. You sell, and I with my +body purchase, peace for France. There is no need of a lover’s +posture when hucksters meet.” </p> + +<p> “So changed!” he said, and he was silent for an +interval, still kneeling. Then he began: “You force me to +point out that I do not need any pretext for holding France. France +lies before me prostrate. By God’s singular grace I reign in +this fair kingdom, mine by right of conquest, and an alliance with +the house of Valois will neither make nor mar me.” She was +unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact. “But I love +you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you not +understand that there can be between us no question of expediency? +Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know +of; now in Troyes they meet again,—not as princess and king, +but as man and maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your +heart, I think. And now in all the world there is one thing I +covet—to gain for the poor king some portion of that love you +would have squandered on the harper.” His hand closed upon her +hand. </p> + +<p> At his touch the girl’s composure vanished. “My +lord, you woo too timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced +advocates. I am daughter to the King of France, and next to my +soul’s salvation I esteem the welfare of France. Can I, then, +fail to love the King of England, who chooses the blood of my +countrymen as a judicious garb to come a-wooing in? How else, since +you have ravaged my native land, since you have besmirched the name +I bear, since yonder afield every wound in my dead and yet unburied +Frenchmen is to me a mouth which shrieks your infamy?” </p> + +<p> He rose. “And yet, for all that, you love me.” </p> + +<p> She could not at the first effort find words with which to +answer him, but presently she said, quite simply, “To see you +lying in your coffin I would willingly give up my hope of heaven, +for heaven can afford no sight more desirable.” </p> + +<p> “You loved Alain.” </p> + +<p> “I loved the husk of a man. You can never comprehend how +utterly I loved him.” </p> + +<p> “You are stubborn. I shall have trouble with you. But this +notion of yours is plainly a mistaken notion. That you love me is +indisputable, and this I propose to demonstrate. You will observe +that I am quite unarmed except for this dagger, which I now throw +out of the window—” with the word it jangled in the +courtyard below. “I am in Troyes alone among some thousand +Frenchmen, any one of whom would willingly give his life for the +privilege of taking mine. You have but to sound the gong beside you, +and in a few moments I shall be a dead man. Strike, then! For with +me dies the English power in France. Strike, Katharine! If you see +in me but the King of England.” </p> + +<p> She was rigid; and his heart leapt when he saw it was because of +terror. </p> + +<p> “You came alone! You dared!” </p> + +<p> He answered, with a wonderful smile, “Proud spirit! How +else might I conquer you?” </p> + +<p> “You have not conquered!” Katharine lifted the baton +beside the gong, poising it. God had granted her prayer—to +save France. Now the past and the ignominy of the past might be +merged in Judith’s nobler guilt. But I must tell you that in +the supreme hour, Destiny at her beck, her main desire was to slap +the man for his childishness. Oh, he had no right thus to besot +himself with adoration! This dejection at her feet of his high +destiny awed her, and pricked her, too, with her inability to +understand him. Angrily she flung away the baton. “Go! Ah, +go!” she cried, like one strangling. “There has been +enough of bloodshed, and I must spare you, loathing you as I do, for +I cannot with my own hand murder you.” </p> + +<p> But the King was a kindly tyrant, crushing independence from his +associates as lesser folk squeeze water from a sponge. “I +cannot go thus. Acknowledge me to be Alain, the man you love, or +else strike upon the gong.” </p> + +<p> “You are cruel!” she wailed, in her torture. </p> + +<p> “Yes, I am cruel.” </p> + +<p> Katharine raised straining arms above her head in a hard gesture +of despair. “You have conquered. You know that I love you. Oh, +if I could find words to voice my shame, to shriek it in your face, +I could better endure it! For I love you. With all my body and heart +and soul I love you. Mine is the agony, for I love you! and +presently I shall stand quite still and see little Frenchmen +scramble about you as hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill +you. And after that I shall live! I preserve France, but after I +have slain you, Henry, I must live. Mine is the agony, the enduring +agony.” She stayed motionless for an interval. “God, +God! Let me not fail!” Katharine breathed; and then: “O +fair sweet friend, I am about to commit a vile action, but it is for +the sake of the France that I love next to God. As Judith gave her +body to Holofernes, I crucify my heart for the preservation of +France.” Very calmly she struck upon the gong. </p> + +<p> If she could have found any reproach in his eyes during the +ensuing silence, she could have borne it; but there was only love. +And with all that, he smiled like one who knew the upshot of this +matter. </p> + +<p> A man-at-arms came into the room. “Germain—” +said Katharine, and then again, “Germain—” She +gave a swallowing motion and was silent. When she spoke it was with +crisp distinctness. “Germain, fetch a harp. Messire Alain here +is about to play for me.” </p> + +<p> At the man’s departure she said: “I am very pitiably +weak. Need you have dragged my soul, too, in the dust? God heard my +prayer, and you have forced me to deny His favor, as Peter denied +Christ. My dear, be very kind to me, for I come to you naked of +honor.” She fell at the King’s feet, embracing his +knees. “My master, be very kind to me, for there remains only +your love.” </p> + +<p> He raised her to his breast. “Love is enough,” he +said. </p> + +<p> She was conscious, as he held her thus, of the chain mail under +his jerkin. He had come armed; he had his soldiers no doubt in the +corridor; he had tricked her, it might be from the first. But that +did not matter now. </p> + +<p> “Love is enough,” she told her master docilely. </p> + +<p> Next day the English entered Troyes and in the cathedral church +these two were betrothed. Henry was there magnificent in a curious +suit of burnished armor; in place of his helmet-plume he wore a +fox-brush ornamented with jewels, which unusual ornament afforded +great matter of remark among the busybodies of both armies. </p> +<br /> +<p align="center"> THE END OF THE TENTH NOVEL </p> + +<a name="epi"></a> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p> +THE EPILOGUE +</p> +</div> + +<div class="epigram"> + “Et je fais sçavoir à tous + lecteurs de ce Livret que les choses que je dis avoir vues et sues + sont enregistrés icy, afin que vous pouviez les regarder + selon vostre bon sens, s’il vous plaist.” +</div> + +<div class="synopsis"> +HERE IS APPENDED THE EPILOGUE THAT MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN AFFIXED TO +THE BOOK WHICH HE HAD MADE ACCORDING TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY; AND +WHICH (IN CONSEQUENCE) HE DARED NOT APPRAISE. +</div> + + +<p class="subhead"> +The Epilogue</p> + + + +<p class="salutation">A Son Livret</p> + + +<p> Intrepidly depart, my little book, into the presence of that +most illustrious lady who bade me compile you. Bow down before her +judgment. And if her sentence be that of a fiery death, I counsel +you not to grieve at what cannot be avoided. </p> + +<p> But, if by any miracle that glorious, strong fortress of the +weak consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pass thence, my +little book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live +out your little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your +appointed season perish and be forgotten. Thus may you share your +betters’ fate, and be at one with those famed comedies of +Greek Menander and all the poignant songs of Sappho. <i>Et quid +Pandoniae</i>—thus, little book, I charge you to poultice your +more-merited oblivion—<i>quid Pandoniae restat nisi nomen +Athenae</i>? </p> + +<p> Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with +those who will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and +protest assertions which are only fables. To these you will reply +that I, your maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of +the most high and noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at +and about her house of Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person +with Dame Katharine, then happily remarried to a private gentleman +of Wales; and so obtained the matter of the ninth story and of the +tenth authentically. You will say also that Messire de Montbrison +afforded me the main matter of the sixth and seventh stories, and +many of the songs which this book contains; and that, moreover, I +once journeyed to Caer Idion and talked for some two hours with +Richard Holland (whom I found a very old and garrulous and cheery +person), and got of him the matter of the eighth tale in this +dizain, together with much information as concerns the sixth and the +seventh. And you will add that the matter of the fourth and fifth +tales was in every detail related to me by my most illustrious +mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this information from +her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady, and one that +was in youth Dame Philippa’s most dear associate. For the rest +you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book to +be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say) even +in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd +times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always +endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me. </p> + +<p> I have pieced together these tales about the women who +intermarried, not very enviably, with the demon-tainted blood of +Edward Longshanks, because it seems to me that these tales, when +they are rightly considered, compose the initial portion of a +troubling history. Whether (as some declare) the taint came from +Manuel of Poictesme, or whether (as yet others say) this poison was +inherited from the demon wife whom Foulques Plantagenet fetched out +of hell, the blood in these men was not all human. These men might +not tread equally with human beings: their wives suffered therefor, +just as they that had inherited this blood suffered therefor, and +all England suffered therefor. And the upshot of it I have narrated +elsewhere, in the book called and entitled <i>The Red Cuckold</i>, +which composes the final portion of this history, and tells of the +last spilling and of the extinction of this blood. </p> + +<p> Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people +who will jeer at you, and will say that you and I have cheated them +of your purchase-money. To these you will reply, with Plutarch, +<i>Non mi aurum posco, nec mi pretium</i>. Secondly you will say +that, of necessity, the tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; +and that he cannot undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering +Orion suitably when the resources of his shop amount to only a few +yards of cambric. Indeed had I the power to make you better, my +little book, I would have exercised that power to the utmost. A good +conscience is a continual feast, and I summon high Heaven to be my +witness that had I been Homer you had awed the world, another Iliad. +I lament your inability to do this, as heartily as any person +living; yet Heaven willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven +these aforementioned cavillers should rightfully complain. </p> + +<p> So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless +indeed you should elect to answer them by repetition of this song +which I now make for you, my little book, at your departure from me. +And the song runs in this fashion: </p> + + +<div class="poem"> + + <p class="i2"> + Depart, depart, my book! and live and die</p> + <p>Dependent on the idle fantasy</p> + <p>Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + For I am fond, and willingly mistake</p> + <p>My book to be the book I meant to make,</p> + <p>And cannot judge you, for that phantom’s sake.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill</p> + <p>In making you, that never spared the will</p> + <p>To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I</p> + <p>Had wrought in you some wizardry so high</p> + <p>That no man but had listened ...</p> + +<p class="stanzail"> + They pass by,</p> + <p>And shrug—as we, who know that unto us</p> + <p>It has been granted never to fare thus,</p> + <p>And never to be strong and glorious.</p> + +<p class="stanzai2"> + Is it denied me to perpetuate</p> + <p>What so much loving labor did create?—</p> + <p>I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate,</p> + <p>And acquiesce, not all disconsolate.</p> + +<p class="stanzai6"> + For I have got such recompense</p> + <p class="i4">Of that high-hearted excellence</p> + <p class="i4">Which the contented craftsman knows,</p> + <p class="i4">Alone, that to loved labor goes,</p> + <p class="i4">And daily does the work he chose,</p> + <p class="i4">And counts all else impertinence!</p> +</div> +<br /> +<br /> +<p align="center"> +EXPLICIT DECAS REGINARUM +</p> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr /> +<h4>FOOTNOTES</h4> +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a> +1. +For this perplexing matter the curious may consult Paul +Verville’s <i>Notice sur la vie de Nicolas de Caen</i>, p. +93 <i>et seq</i>. The indebtedness to Antoine Riczi is, of course, +conceded by Nicolas in his “EPILOGUE.” +<a href="#footnotetag1">(Return)</a></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a> +2. She was the daughter of King Ferdinand of Leon and Castile, +whose conversion to sainthood the inquisitive may find recorded +elsewhere. <a href="#footnotetag2">(Return)</a></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a> +3. Not without indulgence in anachronism. But Nicolas, be it repeated, +was no Gradgrindian. +<a href="#footnotetag3">(Return)</a></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<a id="footnote4" name="footnote4"></a> +4. Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, for obvious reasons, his +translator would prefer to do otherwise. +<a href="#footnotetag4">(Return)</a></blockquote> + +<blockquote class="footnote"> +<a id="footnote5" name="footnote5"></a> +5. Nicolas unaccountably omits to mention that during the French +wars she had ruled England as Regent with signal +capacity,—although this fact, as you will see more lately, is +the pivot of his chronicle. +<a href="#footnotetag5">(Return)</a></blockquote> +<br /> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIVALRY***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 11752-h.txt or 11752-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/7/5/11752">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/7/5/11752</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Chivalry + +Author: James Branch Cabell + +Release Date: March 28, 2004 [eBook #11752] +[Date last updated: September 30, 2005] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIVALRY*** + + +E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Joris Van Dael, Susan Lucy, and Project +Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders + + + +CHIVALRY + +JAMES BRANCH CABELL + +1921 + + + + + + +TO +ANNE BRANCH CABELL + + + "AINSI A VOUS, MADAME, A MA TRES HAULTE ET + TRES NOBLE DAME, A QUI J'AYME A DEVOIR + ATTACHEMENT ET OBEISSANCE, + J'ENVOYE CE LIVRET." + + + + + +Introduction + + +Few of the more astute critics who have appraised the work of James +Branch Cabell have failed to call attention to that extraordinary +cohesion which makes his very latest novel a further flowering of the +seed of his very earliest literary work. Especially among his later +books does the scheme of each seem to dovetail into the scheme of the +other and the whole of his writing take on the character of an +uninterrupted discourse. To this phenomenon, which is at once a fact and +an illusion of continuity, Mr. Cabell himself has consciously +contributed, not only by a subtly elaborate use of conjunctions, by +repetition, and by reintroducing characters from his other books, but by +actually setting his expertness in genealogy to the genial task of +devising a family tree for his figures of fiction. + +If this were an actual continuity, more tangible than that fluid +abstraction we call the life force; if it were merely a tireless +reiteration and recasting of characters, Mr. Cabell's work would have an +unbearable monotony. But at bottom this apparent continuity has no more +material existence than has the thread of lineal descent. To insist +upon its importance is to obscure, as has been obscured, the epic range +of Mr. Cabell's creative genius. It is to fail to observe that he has +treated in his many books every mainspring of human action and that his +themes have been the cardinal dreams and impulses which have in them +heroic qualities. Each separate volume has a unity and harmony of a +complete and separate life, for the excellent reason that with the +consummate skill of an artist he is concerned exclusively in each book +with one definite heroic impulse and its frustrations. + +It is true, of course, that like the fruit of the tree of life, Mr. +Cabell's artistic progeny sprang from a first conceptual germ--"In the +beginning was the Word." That animating idea is the assumption that if +life may be said to have an aim it must be an aim to terminate in +success and splendor. It postulates the high, fine importance of excess, +the choice or discovery of an overwhelming impulse in life and a +conscientious dedication to its fullest realization. It is the quality +and intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological +norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the +exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, +aimless mediocrities about him. What the dream is, matters not at +all--it may be a dream of sainthood, kingship, love, art, asceticism or +sensual pleasure--so long as it is fully expressed with all the +resources of self. It is this sort of completion which Mr. Cabell has +elected to depict in all his work: the complete sensualist in +Demetrios, the complete phrase-maker in Felix Kennaston, the complete +poet in Marlowe, the complete lover in Perion. In each he has shown that +this complete self-expression is achieved at the expense of all other +possible selves, and that herein lies the tragedy of the ideal. +Perfection is a costly flower and is cultured only by an uncompromising, +strict husbandry. + +All this is, we see, the ideational gonfalon under which surge the +romanticists; but from the evidence at hand it is the banner to which +life also bears allegiance. It is in humanity's records that it has +reserved its honors for its romantic figures. It remembers its Caesars, +its saints, its sinners. It applauds, with a complete suspension of +moral judgment, its heroines and its heroes who achieve the greatest +self-realization. And from the splendid triumphs and tragic defeats of +humanity's individual strivings have come our heritage of wisdom and of +poetry. + +Once we understand the fundamentals of Mr. Cabell's artistic aims, it is +not easy to escape the fact that in _Figures of Earth_ he undertook the +staggering and almost unsuspected task of rewriting humanity's sacred +books, just as in _Jurgen_ he gave us a stupendous analogue of the +ceaseless quest for beauty. For we must accept the truth that Mr. Cabell +is not a novelist at all in the common acceptance of the term, but a +historian of the human soul. His books are neither documentary nor +representational; his characters are symbols of human desires and +motives. By the not at all simple process of recording faithfully the +projections of his rich and varied imagination, he has written thirteen +books, which he accurately terms biography, wherein is the bitter-sweet +truth about human life. + + +II + +Among the scant certainties vouchsafed us is that every age lives by its +special catchwords. Whether from rebellion against the irking monotony +of its inherited creeds or from compulsions generated by its own +complexities, each age develops its code of convenient illusions which +minimize cerebration in dilemmas of conduct by postulating an +unequivocal cleavage between the current right and the current wrong. It +works until men tire of it or challenge the cleavage, or until +conditions render the code obsolete. It has in it, happily, a certain +poetic merit always; it presents an ideal to be lived up to; it gives +direction to the uncertain, stray impulses of life. + +The Chivalric code is no worse than most and certainly it is prettier +than some. It is a code peculiar to an age, or at least it flourishes +best in an age wherein sentiment and the stuff of dreams are easily +translatable into action. Its requirements are less of the intellect +than of the heart. It puts God, honor, and mistress above all else, and +stipulates that a knight shall serve these three without any +reservation. It requires of its secular practitioners the holy virtues +of an active piety, a modified chastity, and an unqualified obedience, +at all events, to the categorical imperative. The obligation of poverty +it omits, for the code arose at a time when the spiritual snobbery of +the meek and lowly was not pressing the simile about the camel and the +eye of the needle. It leads to charming manners and to delicate +amenities. It is the opposite of the code of Gallantry, for while the +code of Chivalry takes everything with a becoming seriousness, the code +of Gallantry takes everything with a wink. If one should stoop to pick +flaws with the Chivalric ideal, it would be to point out a certain +priggishness and intolerance. For, while it is all very well for one to +cherish the delusion that he is God's vicar on earth and to go about his +Father's business armed with a shining rectitude, yet the unhallowed may +be moved to deprecate the enterprise when they recall, with discomfort, +the zealous vicarship of, say, the late Anthony J. Comstock. + +But here I blunder into Mr. Cabell's province. For he has joined many +graceful words in delectable and poignant proof of just that lamentable +tendency of man to make a mess of even his most immaculate conceivings. +When he wrote _Chivalry_, Mr. Cabell was yet young enough to view the +code less with the appraising eye of a pawnbroker than with the ardent +eye of an amateur. He knew its value, but he did not know its price. So +he made of it the thesis for a dizain of beautiful happenings that are +almost flawless in their verbal beauty. + + +III + +It is perhaps of historical interest here to record the esteem in which +Mark Twain held the genius of Mr. Cabell as it was manifested as early +as a dozen years ago. Mr. Cabell wrote _The Soul of Melicent_, or, as it +was rechristened on revision, _Domnei_, at the great humorist's request, +and during the long days and nights of his last illness it was Mr. +Cabell's books which gave Mark Twain his greatest joy. This knowledge +mitigates the pleasure, no doubt, of those who still, after his fifteen +years of writing, encounter him intermittently with a feeling of having +made a great literary discovery. The truth is that Mr. Cabell has been +discovered over and over with each succeeding book from that first fine +enthusiasm with which Percival Pollard reviewed _The Eagle's Shadow_ to +that generous acknowledgment by Hugh Walpole that no one in England, +save perhaps Conrad and Hardy, was so sure of literary permanence as +James Branch Cabell. + +With _The Cream of the Jest, Beyond Life_, and _Figures of Earth_ before +him, it is not easy for the perceptive critic to doubt this permanence. +One might as sensibly deny a future to Ecclesiastes, _The Golden Ass, +Gulliver's Travels_, and the works of Rabelais as to predict oblivion +for such a thesaurus of ironic wit and fine fantasy, mellow wisdom and +strange beauty as _Jurgen_. But to appreciate the tales of _Chivalry_ +is, it seems, a gift more frequently reserved for the general reader +than for the professional literary evaluator. Certainly years before +discussion of Cabell was artificially augmented by the suppression of +_Jurgen_ there were many genuine lovers of romance who had read these +tales with pure enjoyment. That they did not analyse and articulate +their enjoyment for the edification of others does not lessen the +quality of their appreciation. Even in those years they found in +Cabell's early tales what we find who have since been directed to them +by the curiosity engendered by his later work, namely, a superb +craftsmanship in recreating a vanished age, an atmosphere in keeping +with the themes, a fluid, graceful, personal style, a poetic ecstasy, a +fine sense of drama, and a unity and symmetry which are the hall-marks +of literary genius. + +BURTON RASCOE. New York City, September, 1921. + + + + +Contents + +PRECAUTIONAL + +THE PROLOGUE + + + I THE STORY OF THE SESTINA + + II THE STORY OF THE TENSON + + III THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP + + IV THE STORY OF THE CHOICES + + V THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE + + VI THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS + + VII THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE + +VIII THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD + + IX THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE + + X THE STORY OF THE FOX-BRUSH + + THE EPILOGUE + + + + + +Precautional + + +Imprimis, as concerns the authenticity of these tales perhaps the less +debate may be the higher wisdom, if only because this Nicolas de Caen, +by common report, was never a Gradgrindian. And in this volume in +particular, writing it (as Nicolas is supposed to have done) in 1470, as +a dependant on the Duke of Burgundy, it were but human nature should he, +in dealing with the putative descendants of Dom Manuel and Alianora of +Provence, be niggardly in his ascription of praiseworthy traits to any +member of the house of Lancaster or of Valois. Rather must one in common +reason accept old Nicolas as confessedly a partisan writer, who upon +occasion will recolor an event with such nuances as will be least +inconvenient to a Yorkist and Burgundian bias. + +The reteller of these stories needs in addition to plead guilty of +having abridged the tales with a free hand. Item, these tales have been +a trifle pulled about, most notably in "The Story of the Satraps," where +it seemed advantageous, on reflection, to put into Gloucester's mouth a +history which in the original version was related _ab ovo_, and as a +sort of bungling prologue to the story proper. + +Item, the re-teller of these stories desires hereby to tender +appropriate acknowledgment to Mr. R.E. Townsend for his assistance in +making an English version of the lyrics included hereinafter; and to +avoid discussion as to how freely, in these lyrics, Nicolas has +plagiarized from Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and other elder poets.[1] + +And--"sixth and lastly"--should confession be made that in the present +rendering a purely arbitrary title has been assigned this little book; +chiefly for commercial reasons, since the word "dizain" has been +adjudged both untranslatable and, in its pristine form, repellantly +_outre_. + + +2 + +You are to give my titular makeshift, then, a wide interpretation; and +are always to remember that in the bleak, florid age these tales +commemorate this Chivalry was much the rarelier significant of any +personal trait than of a world-wide code in consonance with which all +estimable people lived and died. Its root was the assumption +(uncontested then) that a gentleman will always serve his God, his honor +and his lady without any reservation; nor did the many emanating by-laws +ever deal with special cases as concerns this triple, fixed, and +fundamental homage. + + + +Such is the trinity served hereinafter. Now about lady-service, or +_domnei_, I have written elsewhere. Elsewhere also I find it recorded +that "the cornerstone of Chivalry is the idea of vicarship: for the +chivalrous person is, in his own eyes at least, the child of God, and +goes about this world as his Father's representative in an alien +country." + +I believe the definition holds: it certainly tends to explain the +otherwise puzzling pertinacity with which the characters in these tales +talk about God and act upon an assured knowledge as to Heaven's private +intentions and preferences. These people are the members of one family +engrossed, as all of us are apt to be when in the society of our kin, by +family matters and traditions and by-words. It is not merely that they +are all large children consciously dependent in all things upon a not +foolishly indulgent Father, Who keeps an interested eye upon the least +of their doings, and punishes at need,--not merely that they know +themselves to act under surveillance and to speak within ear-shot of a +divine eavesdropper. The point is, rather, that they know this +observation to be as tender, the punishment to be as unwilling, as that +which they themselves extend to their own children's pranks and +misdemeanors. The point is that to them Heaven is a place as actual and +tangible as we consider Alaska or Algiers to be, and that their living +is a conscious journeying toward this actual place. The point is that +the Father is a real father, and not a word spelt with capital letters +in the Church Service; not an abstraction, not a sort of a something +vaguely describable as "the Life Force," but a very famous kinsman, of +whom one is naively proud, and whom one is on the way to visit.... The +point, in brief, is that His honor and yours are inextricably blended, +and are both implicated in your behavior on the journey. + +We nowadays can just cloudily imagine this viewing of life as a sort of +boarding-school from which one eventually goes home, with an official +report as to progress and deportment: and in retaliation for being +debarred from the comforts of this view, the psychoanalysts have no +doubt invented for it some opprobrious explanation. At all events, this +Chivalry was a pragmatic hypothesis: it "worked," and served society for +a long while, not faultlessly of course, but by creating, like all the +other codes of human conduct which men have yet tried, a tragi-comic +melee wherein contended "courtesy and humanity, friendliness, hardihood, +love and friendship, and murder, hate, and virtue, and sin." + + +3 + +For the rest, since good wine needs no bush, and an inferior beverage is +not likely to be bettered by arboreal adornment, I elect to piece out +my exordium (however lamely) with "The Printer's Preface." And it runs +in this fashion: + +"Here begins the volume called and entitled the Dizain of Queens, +composed and extracted from divers chronicles and other sources of +information, by that extremely venerable person and worshipful man, +Messire Nicolas de Caen, priest and chaplain to the right noble, +glorious and mighty prince in his time, Philippe, Duke of Burgundy, of +Brabant, etc., in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord God a thousand +four hundred and seventy: and imprinted by me, Colard Mansion, at +Bruges, in the year of our said Lord God a thousand four hundred and +seventy-one; at the commandment of the right high, mighty and virtuous +Princess, my redoubted Lady, Isabella of Portugal, by the grace of God +Duchess of Burgundy and Lotharingia, of Brabant and Limbourg, of +Luxembourg and of Gueldres, Countess of Flanders, of Artois, and of +Burgundy, Palatine of Hainault, of Holland, of Zealand and of Namur, +Marquesse of the Holy Empire, and Lady of Frisia, of Salins and of +Mechlin; whom I beseech Almighty God less to increase than to continue +in her virtuous disposition in this world, and after our poor fleet +existence to receive eternally. Amen." + + + + +THE PROLOGUE + + + "_Afin que les entreprises honorables et les nobles aventures et + faicts d'armes soyent noblement enregistres et conserves, je vais + traiter et raconter et inventer ung galimatias_." + +THE DIZAIN OF QUEENS OF THAT NOBLE MAKER IN THE FRENCH TONGUE, MESSIRE +NICOLAS DE CAEN, DEDICATED TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS ISABELLA OF PORTUGAL, +OF THE HOUSE OF THE INDOMITABLE ALFONSO HENRIQUES, AND DUCHESS DOWAGER +OF BURGUNDY. HERE BEGINS IN AUSPICIOUS WISE THE PROLOGUE. + + + + +The Prologue + +A Sa Dame + + +Inasmuch as it was by your command, illustrious and exalted lady, that I +have gathered together these stories to form the present little book, +you should the less readily suppose I have presumed to dedicate to your +Serenity this trivial offering because of my esteeming it to be not +undeserving of your acceptance. The truth is otherwise: your postulant +approaches not spurred toward you by vainglory, but rather by equity, +and equity's plain need to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of +noble ladies must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who +is the light and mainstay of our age. I humbly bring my book to you as +Phidyle approached another and less sacred shrine, _farre pio et +saliente mica_, and lay before you this my valueless mean tribute not as +appropriate to you but as the best I have to offer. + +It is a little book wherein I treat of divers queens and of their +love-business; and with necessitated candor I concede my chosen field to +have been harvested, and scrupulously gleaned, by many writers of +innumerable conditions. Since Dares Phrygius wrote of Queen Heleine, and +Virgil (that shrewd necromancer) of Queen Dido, a preponderating mass of +clerks, in casting about for high and serious matter, have chosen, as +though it were by common instinct, to dilate upon the amours of royal +women. Even in romance we scribblers must contrive it so that the fair +Nicolete shall be discovered in the end to be no less than the King's +daughter of Carthage, and that Sir Dooen of Mayence shall never sink in +his love affairs beneath the degree of a Saracen princess; and we are +backed in this old procedure not only by the authority of Aristotle but, +oddly enough, by that of reason. + +Kings have their policies and wars wherewith to drug each human +appetite. But their consorts are denied these makeshifts; and love may +rationally be defined as the pivot of each normal woman's life, and in +consequence as the arbiter of that ensuing life which is eternal. +Because--as anciently Propertius demanded, though not, to speak the +truth, of any woman-- + + Quo fugis? ah demens! nulla est fuga, tu licet usque + Ad Tanaim fugias, usque sequetur amor. + +And a dairymaid, let us say, may love whom she will, and nobody else be +a penny the worse for her mistaking of the preferable nail whereon to +hang her affections; whereas with a queen this choice is more +portentous. She plays the game of life upon a loftier table, ruthlessly +illuminated, she stakes by her least movement a tall pile of counters, +some of which are, of necessity, the lives and happiness of persons whom +she knows not, unless it be by vague report. Grandeur sells itself at +this hard price, and at no other. A queen must always play, in fine, as +the vicar of destiny, free to choose but very certainly compelled in the +ensuing action to justify that choice: as is strikingly manifested by +the authentic histories of Brunhalt, and of Guenevere, and of swart +Cleopatra, and of many others that were born to the barbaric queenhoods +of extinct and dusty times. + +All royal persons are (I take it) the immediate and the responsible +stewards of Heaven; and since the nature of each man is like a troubled +stream, now muddied and now clear, their prayer must ever be, _Defenda +me, Dios, de me_! Yes, of exalted people, and even of their near +associates, life, because it aims more high than the aforementioned +Aristotle, demands upon occasion a more great catharsis, which would +purge any audience of unmanliness, through pity and through terror, +because, by a quaint paradox, the players have been purged of humanity. +For a moment Destiny has thrust her scepter into the hands of a human +being and Chance has exalted a human being to decide the issue of many +human lives. These two--with what immortal chucklings one may facilely +imagine--have left the weakling thus enthroned, free to direct the heavy +outcome, free to choose, and free to evoke much happiness or age-long +weeping, but with no intermediate course unbarred. _Now prove thyself_! +saith Destiny; and Chance appends: _Now prove thyself to be at bottom a +god or else a beast, and now eternally abide that choice. And now_ (O +crowning irony!) _we may not tell thee clearly by which choice thou +mayst prove either_. + +In this little book about the women who intermarried, not very enviably, +with an unhuman race (a race predestinate to the red ending which I have +chronicled elsewhere, in _The Red Cuckold_), it is of ten such moments +that I treat. + +You alone, I think, of all persons living, have learned, as you have +settled by so many instances, to rise above mortality in such a testing, +and unfailingly to merit by your conduct the plaudits and the adoration +of our otherwise dissentient world. You have often spoken in the stead +of Destiny, with nations to abide your verdict; and in so doing have +both graced and hallowed your high vicarship. If I forbear to speak of +this at greater length, it is because I dare not couple your well-known +perfection with any imperfect encomium. Upon no plea, however, can any +one forbear to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of noble ladies +must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who is the light +and mainstay of our age. + +_Therefore to you, madame--most excellent and noble lady, to whom I love +to owe both loyalty and love--I dedicate this little book._ + + + + +I + +_THE STORY OF THE SESTINA_ + + + "Armatz de fust e de fer e d'acier, Mos ostal seran bosc, fregz, + e semdier, E mas cansos sestinas e descortz, E mantenrai los frevols + contra 'ls fortz." + +THE FIRST NOVEL.--ALIANORA OF PROVENCE, COMING IN DISGUISE AND IN +ADVERSITY TO A CERTAIN CLERK, IS BY HIM CONDUCTED ACROSS A HOSTILE +COUNTRY; AND IN THAT TROUBLED JOURNEY ARE MADE MANIFEST TO EACH THE +SNARES WHICH HAD BEGUILED THEM AFORETIME. + + + + +The Story of the Sestina + + +In this place we have to do with the opening tale of the Dizain of +Queens. I abridge, as afterward, at discretion; and an initial account +of the Barons' War, among other superfluities, I amputate as more +remarkable for veracity than interest. The result, we will agree at +outset, is that to the Norman cleric appertains whatever these tales may +have of merit, whereas what you find distasteful in them you must impute +to my delinquencies in skill rather than in volition. + +Within the half hour after de Giars' death (here one overtakes Nicolas +mid-course in narrative) Dame Alianora thus stood alone in the corridor +of a strange house. Beyond the arras the steward and his lord were at +irritable converse. + +First, "If the woman be hungry," spoke a high and peevish voice, "feed +her. If she need money, give it to her. But do not annoy me." + +"This woman demands to see the master of the house," the steward then +retorted. + +"O incredible Boeotian, inform her that the master of the house has no +time to waste upon vagabonds who select the middle of the night as an +eligible time to pop out of nowhere. Why did you not do so in the +beginning, you dolt?" The speaker got for answer only a deferential +cough, and very shortly continued: "This is remarkably vexatious. _Vox +et praeterea nihil_--which signifies, Yeck, that to converse with women +is always delightful. Admit her." This was done, and Dame Alianora came +into an apartment littered with papers, where a neat and shriveled +gentleman of fifty-odd sat at a desk and scowled. + +He presently said, "You may go, Yeck." He had risen, the magisterial +attitude with which he had awaited her entrance cast aside. "Oh, God!" +he said; "you, madame!" His thin hands, scholarly hands, were plucking +at the air. + +Dame Alianora had paused, greatly astonished, and there was an interval +before she said, "I do not recognize you, messire." + +"And yet, madame, I recall very clearly that some thirty years ago the +King-Count Raymond Berenger, then reigning in Provence, had about his +court four daughters, each one of whom was afterward wedded to a king. +First, Meregrett, the eldest, now regnant in France; then Alianora, the +second and most beautiful of these daughters, whom troubadours hymned as +the Unattainable Princess. She was married a long while ago, madame, to +the King of England, Lord Henry, third of that name to reign in these +islands." + +Dame Alianora's eyes were narrowing. "There is something in your voice," +she said, "which I recall." + +He answered: "Madame and Queen, that is very likely, for it is a voice +which sang a deal in Provence when both of us were younger. I concede +with the Roman that I have somewhat deteriorated since the reign of +Cynara. Yet have you quite forgotten the Englishman who made so many +songs of you? They called him Osmund Heleigh." + +"He made the Sestina of Spring which won the violet crown at my +betrothal," the Queen said; and then, with eagerness: "Messire, can it +be that you are Osmund Heleigh?" He shrugged assent. She looked at him +for a long time, rather sadly, and demanded if he were the King's man or +of the barons' party. + +The nervous hands were raised in deprecation. "I have no politics," +Messire Heleigh began, and altered it, gallantly enough, to, "I am the +Queen's man, madame." + +"Then aid me, Osmund," she said. + +He answered with a gravity which singularly became him, "You have reason +to understand that to my fullest power I will aid you." + +"You know that at Lewes these swine overcame us." He nodded assent. "Now +they hold the King, my husband, captive at Kenilworth. I am content +that he remain there, for he is of all the King's enemies the most +dangerous. But, at Wallingford, Leicester has imprisoned my son, Prince +Edward. The Prince must be freed, my Osmund. Warren de Basingbourne +commands what is left of the royal army, now entrenched at Bristol, and +it is he who must liberate my son. Get me to Bristol, then. Afterward we +will take Wallingford." The Queen issued these orders in cheery, +practical fashion, and did not admit opposition into the account, for +she was a capable woman. + +"But you, madame?" he stammered. "You came alone?" + +"I come from France, where I have been entreating--and vainly +entreating--succor from yet another monkish king, the holy Lewis of that +realm. Eh, what is God about when He enthrones these whining pieties! +Were I a king, were I even a man, I would drive these smug English out +of their foggy isle in three days' space! I would leave alive not one of +these curs that dare yelp at me! I would--" She paused, anger veering +into amusement. "See how I enrage myself when I think of what your +people have made me suffer," the Queen said, and shrugged her shoulders. +"In effect, I skulked back in disguise to this detestable island, +accompanied by Avenel de Giars and Hubert Fitz-Herveis. To-night some +half-dozen fellows--robbers, thorough knaves, like all you +English,--attacked us on the common yonder and slew the men of our +party. While they were cutting de Giars' throat I slipped away in the +dark and tumbled through many ditches till I spied your light. There you +have my story. Now get me an escort to Bristol." + +It was a long while before Messire Heleigh spoke. Then, "These men," he +said--"this de Giars and this Fitz-Herveis--they gave their lives for +yours, as I understand it,--_pro caris amicis_. And yet you do not +grieve for them." + +"I shall regret de Giars," the Queen acknowledged, "for he made +excellent songs. But Fitz-Herveis?--foh! the man had a face like a +horse." Again her mood changed. "Many persons have died for me, my +friend. At first I wept for them, but now I am dry of tears." + +He shook his head. "Cato very wisely says, 'If thou hast need of help, +ask it of thy friends.' But the sweet friend that I remember was a clean +eyed girl, joyous and exceedingly beautiful. Now you appear to me one of +those ladies of remoter times--Faustina, or Jael, or Artemis, the King's +wife of Tauris,--they that slew men, laughing. I am somewhat afraid of +you, madame." + +She was angry at first; then her face softened. "You English!" she said, +only half mirthful. "Eh, my God! you remember me when I was a high +hearted young sorceress. Now the powers of the Apsarasas have departed +from me, and time has thrust that Alianora, who was once the +Unattainable Princess, chin deep in misery. Yet even now I am your +Queen, messire, and it is not yours to pass judgment upon me." "I do +not judge you," he returned. "Rather I cry with him of old, _Omnia +incerta ratione!_ and I cry with Salomon that he who meddles with the +strife of another man is like to him that takes a hound by the ears. Yet +listen, madame and Queen. I cannot afford you an escort to Bristol. This +house, of which I am in temporary charge, is Longaville, my brother's +manor. Lord Brudenel, as you doubtless know, is of the barons' party +and--scant cause for grief!--is with Leicester at this moment. I can +trust none of my brother's people, for I believe them to be of much the +same opinion as those Londoners who not long ago stoned you and would +have sunk your barge in Thames River. Oh, let us not blink the fact that +you are not overbeloved in England. So an escort is out of the question. +Yet I, madame, if you so elect, will see you safe to Bristol." + +"You? Singly?" the Queen demanded. + +"My plan is this: Singing folk alone travel whither they will. We will +go as jongleurs, then. I can yet manage a song to the viol, I dare +affirm. And you must pass as my wife." + +He said this with simplicity. The plan seemed unreasonable, and at first +Dame Alianora waved it aside. Out of the question! But reflection +suggested nothing better; it was impossible to remain at Longaville, and +the man spoke sober truth when he declared any escort other than himself +to be unprocurable. Besides, the lunar madness of the scheme was its +strength; that the Queen would venture to cross half England +unprotected--and Messire Heleigh on the face of him was a paste-board +buckler--was an event which Leicester would neither anticipate nor on +report credit. There you were! these English had no imagination. The +Queen snapped her fingers and said: "Very willingly will I be your wife, +my Osmund. But how do I know that I can trust you? Leicester would give +a deal for me; he would pay any price for the pious joy of burning the +Sorceress of Provence. And you are not wealthy, I suspect." + +"You may trust me, mon bel esper,"--his eyes here were those of a beaten +child--"because my memory is better than yours." Messire Osmund Heleigh +gathered his papers into a neat pile. "This room is mine. To-night I +keep guard in the corridor, madame. We will start at dawn." + +When he had gone, Dame Alianora laughed contentedly. "Mon bel esper! my +fairest hope! The man called me that in his verses--thirty years ago! +Yes, I may trust you, my poor Osmund." + +So they set out at cockcrow. He had procured for himself a viol and a +long falchion, and had somewhere got suitable clothes for the Queen; and +in their aging but decent garb the two approached near enough to the +appearance of what they desired to be thought. In the courtyard a knot +of servants gaped, nudged one another, but openly said nothing. Messire +Heleigh, as they interpreted it, was brazening out an affair of +gallantry before the countryside; and they esteemed his casual +observation that they would find a couple of dead men on the common +exceedingly diverting. + +When the Queen asked him the same morning, "And what will you sing, my +Osmund? Shall we begin the practise of our new profession with the +Sestina of Spring?"--old Osmund Heleigh grunted out: "I have forgotten +that rubbish long ago. _Omnis amans, amens_, saith the satirist of Rome +town, and with reason." + +Followed silence. + +One sees them thus trudging the brown, naked plains under a sky of +steel. In a pageant the woman, full-veined and comely, her russet gown +girded up like a harvester's might not inaptly have prefigured October; +and for less comfortable November you could nowhere have found a symbol +more precise than her lank companion, humorously peevish under his white +thatch of hair, and constantly fretted by the sword tapping at his +ankles. + +They made Hurlburt prosperously and found it vacant, for the news of +Falmouth's advance had driven the villagers hillward. There was in this +place a child, a naked boy of some two years, lying on a doorstep, +overlooked in his elders' gross terror. As the Queen with a sob lifted +this boy the child died. + +"Starved!" said Osmund Heleigh; "and within a stone's throw of my snug +home!" + +The Queen laid down the tiny corpse, and, stooping, lightly caressed +its sparse flaxen hair. She answered nothing, though her lips moved. + +Past Vachel, scene of a recent skirmish, with many dead in the gutters, +they were overtaken by Falmouth himself, and stood at the roadside to +afford his troop passage. The Marquess, as he went by, flung the Queen a +coin, with a jest sufficiently high flavored. She knew the man her +inveterate enemy, knew that on recognition he would have killed her as +he would a wolf; she smiled at him and dropped a curtsey. + +"This is remarkable," Messire Heleigh observed. "I was hideously afraid, +and am yet shaking. But you, madame, laughed." + +The Queen replied: "I laughed because I know that some day I shall have +Lord Falmouth's head. It will be very sweet to see it roll in the dust, +my Osmund." + +Messire Heleigh somewhat dryly observed that tastes differed. + +At Jessop Minor befell a more threatening adventure. Seeking food at the +_Cat and Hautbois_ in that village, they blundered upon the same troop +at dinner in the square about the inn. Falmouth and his lieutenants were +somewhere inside the house. The men greeted the supposed purveyors of +amusement with a shout; and one of these soldiers--a swarthy rascal with +his head tied in a napkin--demanded that the jongleurs grace their meal +with a song. + +Osmund tried to put him off with a tale of a broken viol. + +But, "Haro!" the fellow blustered; "by blood and by nails! you will sing +more sweetly with a broken viol than with a broken head. I would have +you understand, you hedge thief, that we gentlemen of the sword are not +partial to wordy argument." Messire Heleigh fluttered inefficient hands +as the men-at-arms gathered about them, scenting some genial piece of +cruelty. "Oh, you rabbit!" the trooper jeered, and caught at Osmund's +throat, shaking him. In the act this rascal tore open Messire Heleigh's +tunic, disclosing a thin chain about his neck and a handsome locket, +which the fellow wrested from its fastening. "Ahoi!" he continued. +"Ahoi, my comrades, what sort of minstrel is this, who goes about +England all hung with gold like a Cathedral Virgin! He and his +sweetheart"--the actual word was grosser--"will be none the worse for an +interview with the Marquess." + +The situation smacked of awkwardness, because Lord Falmouth was familiar +with the Queen, and to be brought specifically to his attention meant +death for two detected masqueraders. Hastily Osmund Heleigh said: + +"Messire, the locket contains the portrait of a lady whom in my youth I +loved very greatly. Save to me, it is valueless. I pray you, do not rob +me of it." + +But the trooper shook his head with drunken solemnity. "I do not like +the looks of this. Yet I will sell it to you, as the saying is, for a +song." + +"It shall be the king of songs," said Osmund,--"the song that Arnaut +Daniel first made. I will sing for you a Sestina, messieurs,--a Sestina +in salutation of Spring." + +The men disposed themselves about the dying grass, and presently he +sang. + +Sang Messire Heleigh: + + "Awaken! for the servitors of Spring + Proclaim his triumph! ah, make haste to see + With what tempestuous pageantry they bring + The victor homeward! haste, for this is he + That cast out Winter and all woes that cling + To Winter's garments, and bade April be! + + "And now that Spring is master, let us be + Content, and laugh, as anciently in spring + The battle-wearied Tristan laughed, when he + Was come again Tintagel-ward, to bring + Glad news of Arthur's victory--and see + Ysoude, with parted lips, that waver and cling. + + "Not yet in Brittany must Tristan cling + To this or that sad memory, and be + Alone, as she in Cornwall; for in spring + Love sows against far harvestings,--and he + Is blind, and scatters baleful seed that bring + Such fruitage as blind Love lacks eyes to see!" + +Osmund paused here for an appreciable interval, staring at the Queen. +You saw his flabby throat a-quiver, his eyes melting, saw his cheeks +kindle, and youth seeping into the lean man like water over a crumbling +dam. His voice was now big and desirous. + +Sang Messire Heleigh: + + "Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see + The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling, + Never again when in the grave ye be + Incurious of your happiness in spring, + And get no grace of Love there, whither he + That bartered life for love no love may bring. + + "No braggart Heracles avails to bring + Alcestis hence; nor here may Roland see + The eyes of Aude; nor here the wakening spring + Vex any man with memories: for there be + No memories that cling as cerements cling, + No force that baffles Death, more strong than he. + + "Us hath he noted, and for us hath he + An hour appointed; and that hour will bring + Oblivion.--Then, laugh! Laugh, dear, and see + The tyrant mocked, while yet our bosoms cling, + While yet our lips obey us, and we be + Untrammeled in our little hour of spring! + + "Thus in the spring we jeer at Death, though he + Will see our children perish and will briny + Asunder all that cling while love may be." + +Then Osmund put the viol aside and sat quite silent. The soldiery +judged, and with cordial frankness stated, that the difficulty of his +rhyming scheme did not atone for his lack of indecency, but when the +Queen of England went among them with Messire Heleigh's faded green hat +she found them liberal. Even the fellow with the broken head admitted +that a bargain was proverbially a bargain, and returned the locket with +the addition of a coin. So for the present these two went safe, and +quitted the _Cat and Hautbois_ fed and unmolested. + +"My Osmund," Dame Alianora said, presently, "your memory is better than +I had thought." + +"I remembered a boy and a girl," he returned. "And I grieved that they +were dead." + +Afterward they plodded on toward Bowater, and the ensuing night rested +in Chantrell Wood. They had the good fortune there to encounter dry and +windless weather and a sufficiency of brushwood, with which Osmund +constructed an agreeable fire. In its glow these two sat, eating bread +and cheese. + +But talk languished at the outset. The Queen had complained of an ague, +and Messire Heleigh was sedately suggesting three spiders hung about the +neck as an infallible corrective for this ailment, when Dame Alianora +rose to her feet. "Eh, my God!" she said; "I am wearied of such +ungracious aid! Not an inch of the way but you have been thinking of +your filthy books and longing to be back at them! No; I except the +moments when you were frightened into forgetfulness--first by Falmouth, +then by the trooper. O Eternal Father! afraid of a single dirty +soldier!" + +"Indeed, I was very much afraid," said Messire Heleigh, with perfect +simplicity; "_timidus perire, madame._" + +"You have not even the grace to be ashamed! Yet I am shamed, messire, +that Osmund Heleigh should have become the book-muddled pedant you are. +For I loved young Osmund Heleigh." + +He also had risen in the firelight, and now its convulsive shadows +marred two dogged faces. "I think it best not to recall that boy and +girl who are so long dead. And, frankly, madame and Queen, the merit of +the business I have in hand is questionable. It is you who have set all +England by the ears, and I am guiding you toward opportunities for +further mischief. I must serve you. Understand, madame, that ancient +folly in Provence yonder has nothing to do with the affair. Count Manuel +left you: and between his evasion and your marriage you were pleased to +amuse yourself with me--" + +"You were more civil then, my Osmund--" + +"I am not uncivil, I merely point out that this old folly constitutes +no overwhelming obligation, either way. I cry _nihil ad Andromachen!_ +For the rest, I must serve you because you are a woman and helpless; yet +I cannot forget that he who spares the wolf is the sheep's murderer. It +would be better for all England if you were dead. Hey, your gorgeous +follies, madame! Silver peacocks set with sapphires! Cloth of fine +gold--" + +"Would you have me go unclothed?" Dame Alianora demanded, pettishly. + +"Not so," Osmund retorted; "again I say to you with Tertullian, 'Let +women paint their eyes with the tints of chastity, insert into their +ears the Word of God, tie the yoke of Christ about their necks, and +adorn their whole person with the silk of sanctity and the damask of +devotion.' I say to you that the boy you wish to rescue from +Wallingford, and make King of England, is freely rumored to be not +verily the son of Sire Henry but the child of tall Manuel of Poictesme. +I say to you that from the first you have made mischief in England. And +I say to you--" + +But Dame Alianora was yawning quite frankly. "You will say to me that I +brought foreigners into England, that I misguided the King, that I +stirred up strife between the King and his barons. Eh, my God! I am +sufficiently familiar with the harangue. Yet listen, my Osmund: They +sold me like a bullock to a man I had never seen. I found him a man of +wax, and I remoulded him. They asked of me an heir for England: I +provided that heir. They gave me England as a toy; I played with it. I +was the Queen, the source of honor, the source of wealth--the trough, in +effect, about which swine gathered. Never since I came into England, +Osmund, has any man or woman loved me; never in all my English life have +I loved man or woman. Do you understand, my Osmund?--the Queen has many +flatterers, but no friends. Not a friend in the world, my Osmund! And so +the Queen made the best of it and amused herself." + +Somewhat he seemed to understand, for he answered without asperity: + +"Mon bel esper, I do not find it anywhere in Holy Writ that God requires +it of us to amuse ourselves; but upon many occasions we have been +commanded to live righteously. We are tempted in divers and insidious +ways. And we cry with the Psalmist, 'My strength is dried up like a +potsherd.' But God intends this, since, until we have here demonstrated +our valor upon Satan, we are manifestly unworthy to be enregistered in +God's army. The great Captain must be served by proven soldiers. We may +be tempted, but we may not yield. O daughter of the South! we must not +yield!" + +"Again you preach," Dame Alianora said. "That is a venerable truism." + +"Ho, madame," he returned, "is it on that account the less true?" + +Pensively the Queen considered this. "You are a good man, my Osmund," +she said, at last, "though you are very droll. Ohime! it is a pity that +I was born a princess! Had it been possible for me to be your wife, I +would have been a better woman. I shall sleep now and dream of that good +and stupid and contented woman I might have been." So presently these +two slept in Chantrell Wood. + +Followed four days of journeying. As Messer Dante had not yet surveyed +Malebolge, Osmund Heleigh and Dame Alianora lacked a parallel for that +which they encountered; their traverse discovered England razed, +charred, and depopulate--picked bones of an island, a vast and absolute +ruin about which passion-wasted men skulked like rats. Messire Heleigh +and the Queen traveled without molestation; malice and death had +journeyed before them on this road, and had swept it clear. + +At every trace of these hideous precessors Osmund Heleigh would say, "By +a day's ride I might have prevented this." Or, "By a day's ride I might +have saved this woman." Or, "By two days' riding I might have fed this +child." + +The Queen kept Spartan silence, but daily you saw the fine woman age. In +their slow advance every inch of misery was thrust before her for +inspection; meticulously she observed and evaluated her handiwork. +Enthroned, she had appraised from a distance the righteous wars she set +afoot; trudging thus among the debris of these wars, she found they had +unsuspected aspects. Bastling the royal army had recently sacked. +There remained of this village the skeletons of two houses, and for the +rest a jumble of bricks, rafters half-burned, many calcined fragments of +humanity, and ashes. At Bastling, Messire Heleigh turned to the Queen +toiling behind. + +"Oh, madame!" he said, in a dry whisper, "this was the home of so many +men!" + +"I burned it," Dame Alianora replied. "That man we passed just now I +killed. Those other men and women--my folly slew them all. And little +children, my Osmund! The hair like flax, blood-dabbled!" + +"Oh, madame!" he wailed, in the extremity of his pity. + +For she stood with eyes shut, all gray. The Queen demanded: "Why have +they not slain me? Was there no man in England to strangle the proud +wanton? Are you all cowards here?" + +He said: "I detect only one coward in the affair. Your men and +Leicester's men also ride about the world, and draw sword and slay and +die for the right as they see it. And you and Leicester contend for the +right as ye see it. But I, madame! I! I, who sat snug at home spilling +ink and trimming rose-bushes! God's world, madame, and I in it afraid to +speak a word for Him! God's world, and a curmudgeon in it grudging God +the life He gave!" The man flung out his soft hands and snarled: _"We +are tempted in divers and insidious ways._ But I, who rebuked you! +behold, now, with how gross a snare was I entrapped!" "I do not +understand, my Osmund." + +"I was afraid, madame," he returned, dully. "Everywhere men fight, and I +am afraid to die." + +So they stood silent in the ruins of Bastling. + +"Of a piece with our lives," Dame Alianora said at last. "All ruin, my +Osmund." + +But Messire Heleigh threw back his head and laughed, new color in his +face. "Presently men will build here, my Queen. Presently, as in legend +was re-born the Arabian bird, arises from these ashes a lordlier and +more spacious town." + +They went forward. The next day chance loosed upon them Gui Camoys, lord +of Bozon, Foliot, and Thwenge, who, riding alone through Poges Copse, +found there a man and a woman over their limited supper. The woman had +thrown back her hood, and Camoys drew rein to stare at her. Lispingly he +spoke the true court dialect. + +"Ma belle," said this Camoys, in friendly condescension, "n'estez vous +pas jongleurs?" + +Dame Alianora smiled up at him. "Ouais, messire; mon mary faict les +chancons--" She paused, with dilatory caution, for Camoys had leaped +from his horse, giving a great laugh. + +"A prize! ho, an imperial prize!" Camoys shouted. "A peasant woman with +the Queen's face, who speaks French! And who, madame, is this? Have you +by any chance brought pious Lewis from oversea? Have I bagged a brace +of monarchs?" + +Here was imminent danger, for Camoys had known the Queen some fifteen +years. Messire Heleigh rose, his five days' beard glinting like +hoar-frost as his mouth twitched. + +"I am Osmund Heleigh, messire, younger brother to the Earl of Brudenel." + +"I have heard of you, I believe--the fellow who spoils parchment. This +is odd company, however, Messire Osmund, for Brudenel's brother." + +"A gentleman must serve his Queen, messire. As Cicero very justly +observes--" + +"I am inclined to think that his political opinions are scarcely to our +immediate purpose. This is a high matter, Messire Heleigh. To let the +sorceress pass is, of course, out of the question; upon the other hand, +I observe that you lack weapons of defence. Yet if you will have the +kindness to assist me in unarming, your courtesy will place our commerce +on more equal footing." + +Osmund had turned very white. "I am no swordsman, messire--" + +"Now, this is not handsome of you," Camoys began. "I warn you that +people will speak harshly of us if we lose this opportunity of gaining +honor. And besides, the woman will be burned at the stake. Plainly, you +owe it to all three of us to fight." + +"--But I refer my cause to God. I am quite at your service." "No, my +Osmund!" Dame Alianora then cried. "It means your death." + +He spread out his hands. "That is God's affair, madame." + +"Are you not afraid?" she breathed. + +"Of course I am afraid," said Messire Heleigh, irritably. + +After that he unarmed Camoys, and presently they faced each other in +their tunics. So for the first time in the journey Osmund's long +falchion saw daylight. He had thrown away his dagger, as Camoys had +none. + +The combat was sufficiently curious. Camoys raised his left hand. "So +help me God and His saints, I have upon me neither bone, stone, nor +witchcraft wherethrough the power and the word of God might be +diminished or the devil's power increased." + +Osmund made similar oath. "Judge Thou this woman's cause!" he cried, +likewise. + +Then Gui Camoys shouted, as a herald might have done, "Laissez les +aller, laissez les aller, laissez les aller, les bons combatants!" and +warily each moved toward the other. + +On a sudden Osmund attacked, desperately apprehensive of his own +cowardice. Camoys lightly eluded him and slashed at Osmund's undefended +thigh, drawing much blood. Osmund gasped. He flung away his sword, and +in the instant catching Camoys under the arms, threw him to the ground. +Messire Heleigh fell with his opponent, who in stumbling had lost his +sword, and thus the two struggled unarmed, Osmund atop. But Camoys was +the younger man, and Osmund's strength was ebbing rapidly by reason of +his wound. Now Camoys' tethered horse, rearing with nervousness, tumbled +his master's flat-topped helmet into the road. Osmund caught up this +helmet and with it battered Camoys in the face, dealing severe blows. + +"God!" Camoys cried, his face all blood. + +"Do you acknowledge my quarrel just?" said Osmund, between horrid sobs. + +"What choice have I?" said Gui Camoys, very sensibly. + +So Osmund rose, blind with tears and shivering. The Queen bound up their +wounds as best she might, but Camoys was much dissatisfied. + +"For private purposes of His own, madame," he observed, "and doubtless +for sufficient reasons, God has singularly favored your cause. I am +neither a fool nor a pagan to question His decision, and you two may go +your way unhampered. But I have had my head broken with my own helmet, +and this I consider to be a proceeding very little conducive toward +enhancing my reputation. Of your courtesy, messire, I must entreat +another meeting." + +Osmund shrank as if from a blow. Then, with a short laugh, he conceded +that this was Camoys' right, and they fixed upon the following Saturday, +with Poges Copse as the rendezvous. + +"I would suggest that the combat be to the death," Gui Camoys said, "in +consideration of the fact it was my own helmet. You must undoubtedly be +aware, Messire Osmund, that such an affront is practically without any +parallel." + +This, too, was agreed upon. + +Then, after asking if they needed money, which was courteously declined, +Gui Camoys rode away, and sang as he went. Osmund Heleigh remained +motionless. He raised quivering hands to the sky. + +"Thou hast judged!" he cried. "Thou hast judged, O puissant Emperor of +Heaven! Now pardon! Pardon us twain! Pardon for unjust stewards of Thy +gifts! Thou hast loaned this woman dominion over England, with all +instruments to aid Thy cause, and this trust she has abused. Thou hast +loaned me life and manhood, agility and wit and strength, all +instruments to aid Thy cause. Talents in a napkin, O God! Repentant we +cry to Thee. Pardon for unjust stewards! Pardon for the ungirt loin, for +the service shirked, for all good deeds undone! Pardon and grace, O King +of kings!" + +Thus he prayed, while Gui Camoys sang, riding deeper into the tattered, +yellowing forest. By an odd chance Camoys had lighted on that song made +by Thibaut of Champagne, beginning _Signor, saciez, ki or ne s'en ira_, +which denounces all half-hearted servitors of Heaven; and this he sang +with a lilt gayer than his matter countenanced. Faintly there now came +to Osmund and the Queen the sound of Camoys' singing, and they found it, +in the circumstances, ominously apt. + +Sang Camoys: + + "Et vos, par qui je n'ci onques aie, + Descendez luit en infer le parfont." + +Dame Alianora shivered. But she was a capable woman, and so she said: "I +may have made mistakes. But I am sure I never meant any harm, and I am +sure, too, that God will be more sensible about it than are you poets." + +They slept that night in Ousley Meadow, and the next afternoon came +safely to Bristol. You may learn elsewhere with what rejoicing the royal +army welcomed the Queen's arrival, how courage quickened at sight of the +generous virago. In the ebullition Messire Heleigh was submerged, and +Dame Alianora saw nothing more of him that day. Friday there were +counsels, requisitions, orders signed, a memorial despatched to Pope +Urban, chief of all a letter (this in the Queen's hand throughout) +privily conveyed to the Lady Maude de Mortemer, who shortly afterward +contrived Prince Edward's escape from her husband's gaolership. There +was much sowing of a seed, in fine, that eventually flowered victory. +There was, however, no sign of Osmund Heleigh, though by Dame Alianora's +order he was sought. + +On Saturday at seven in the morning he came to her lodging, in complete +armor. From the open helmet his wrinkled face, showing like a wizened +nut in a shell, smiled upon her questionings. + +"I go to fight Gui Camoys, madame and Queen." + +Dame Alianora wrung her hands. "You go to your death." + +He answered: "That is true. Therefore I am come to bid you farewell." + +The Queen stared at him for a while; on a sudden she broke into a +curious fit of deep but tearless sobbing, which bordered upon laughter, +too. + +"Mon bel esper," said Osmund Heleigh, gently, "what is there in all this +worthy of your sorrow? The man will kill me; granted, for he is my +junior by some fifteen years, and is in addition a skilled swordsman. I +fail to see that this is lamentable. Back to Longaville I cannot go +after recent happenings; there a rope's end awaits me. Here I must in +any event shortly take to the sword, since a beleaguered army has very +little need of ink-pots; and shortly I must be slain in some skirmish, +dug under the ribs perhaps by a greasy fellow I have never seen. I +prefer a clean death at a gentleman's hands." + +"It is I who bring about your death!" she said. "You gave me gallant +service, and I have requited you with death, and it is a great pity." + +"Indeed the debt is on the other side. The trivial services I rendered +you were such as any gentleman must render a woman in distress. Naught +else have I afforded you, madame, save very anciently a Sestina. Ho, a +Sestina! And in return you have given me a Sestina of fairer make,--a +Sestina of days, six days of manly common living." His eyes were +fervent. + +She kissed him on either cheek. "Farewell, my champion!" + +"Ay, your champion. In the twilight of life old Osmund Heleigh rides +forth to defend the quarrel of Alianora of Provence. Reign wisely, my +Queen, so that hereafter men may not say I was slain in an evil cause. +Do not, I pray you, shame my maiden venture at a man's work." + +"I will not shame you," the Queen proudly said; and then, with a change +of voice: "O my Osmund! My Osmund, you have a folly that is divine, and +I lack it." + +He caught her by each wrist, and stood crushing both her hands to his +lips, with fierce staring. "Wife of my King! wife of my King!" he +babbled; and then put her from him, crying, "I have not failed you! +Praise God, I have not failed you!" + +From her window she saw him ride away, a rich flush of glitter and +color. In new armor with a smart emblazoned surcoat the lean pedant sat +conspicuously erect; and as he went he sang defiantly, taunting the +weakness of his flesh. + +Sang Osmund Heleigh: + + "Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see + The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling + Never again when in the grave ye be + Incurious of your happiness in spring, + And get no grace of Love, there, whither he + That bartered life for love no love may bring." + +So he rode away and thus out of our history. But in the evening Gui +Camoys came into Bristol under a flag of truce, and behind him heaved a +litter wherein lay Osmund Heleigh's body. + +"For this man was frank and courteous," Camoys said to the Queen, "and +in the matter of the reparation he owed me acted very handsomely. It is +fitting that he should have honorable interment." + +"That he shall not lack," the Queen said, and gently unclasped from +Osmund's wrinkled neck the thin gold chain, now locketless. "There was a +portrait here," she said; "the portrait of a woman whom he loved in his +youth, Messire Camoys. And all his life it lay above his heart." + +Camoys answered stiffly: "I imagine this same locket to have been the +object which Messire Heleigh flung into the river, shortly before we +began our combat. I do not rob the dead, madame." + +"Well," the Queen said, "he always did queer things, and so, I shall +always wonder what sort of lady he picked out to love, but it is none of +my affair." + +Afterward she set to work on requisitions in the King's name. But Osmund +Heleigh she had interred at Ambresbury, commanding it to be written on +his tomb that he died in the Queen's cause. + +How the same cause prospered (Nicolas concludes), how presently Dame +Alianora reigned again in England and with what wisdom, and how in the +end this great Queen died a nun at Ambresbury and all England wept +therefor--this you may learn elsewhere. I have chosen to record six days +of a long and eventful life; and (as Messire Heleigh might have done) I +say modestly with him of old, _Majores majora sonent._ Nevertheless, I +assert that many a forest was once a pocketful of acorns. + +THE END OF THE FIRST NOVEL + + + + +II + +THE STORY OF THE TENSON + + + "Plagues a Dieu ja la nueitz non falhis, + Ni'l mieus amicx lone de mi nos partis, + Ni la gayta jorn ni alba ne vis. + Oy Dieus! oy Dieus! de l'alba tan tost we!" + +THE SECOND NOVEL.--ELLINOR OF CASTILE, BEING ENAMORED OF A HANDSOME +PERSON, IS IN HER FLIGHT FROM MARITAL OBLIGATIONS ASSISTED BY HER +HUSBAND, AND IS IN THE END BY HIM CONVINCED OF THE RATIONALITY OF ALL +ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES. + + + + +_The Story of the Tenson_ + + +In the year of grace 1265 (Nicolas begins), about the festival of Saint +Peter _ad Vincula_, the Prince de Gatinais came to Burgos. Before this +he had lodged for three months in the district of Ponthieu; and the +object of his southern journey was to assure the tenth Alphonso, then +ruling in Castile, that the latter's sister Ellinor, now resident at +Entrechat, was beyond any reasonable doubt the transcendent lady whose +existence old romancers had anticipated, however cloudily, when they +fabled in remote time concerning Queen Heleine of Sparta. + +There was a postscript to this news. The world knew that the King of +Leon and Castile desired to be King of Germany as well, and that at +present a single vote in the Diet would decide between his claims and +those of his competitor, Earl Richard of Cornwall. De Gatinais chaffered +fairly; he had a vote, Alphonso had a sister. So that, in effect--ohe, +in effect, he made no question that his Majesty understood! + +The Astronomer twitched his beard and demanded if the fact that Ellinor +had been a married woman these ten years past was not an obstacle to the +plan which his fair cousin had proposed? + +Here the Prince was accoutred cap-a-pie, and hauled out a paper. Dating +from Viterbo, Clement, Bishop of Rome, servant to the servants of God, +desirous of all health and apostolical blessing for his well-beloved son +in Christ, stated that a compact between a boy of fifteen and a girl of +ten was an affair of no particular moment; and that in consideration of +the covenantors never having clapped eyes upon each other since the +wedding-day,--even had not the precontract of marriage between the +groom's father and the bride's mother rendered a consummation of the +childish oath an obvious and a most heinous enormity,--why, that, in a +sentence, and for all his coy verbosity, the new pontiff was perfectly +amenable to reason. + +So in a month it was settled. Alphonso would give his sister to de +Gatinais, and in exchange get the latter's vote to make Alphonso King of +Germany; and Gui Foulques of Sabionetta--now Clement, fourth Pope to +assume that name--would annul the previous marriage, and in exchange get +an armament to serve him against Manfred, the late and troublesome +tyrant of Sicily and Apulia. The scheme promised to each one of them +that which he in particular desired, and messengers were presently sent +into Ponthieu. + +It is now time we put aside these Castilian matters and speak of other +things. In England, Prince Edward had fought, and won, a shrewd battle +at Evesham. People said, of course, that such behavior was less in the +manner of his nominal father, King Henry, than reminiscent of Count +Manuel of Poictesme, whose portraits certainly the Prince resembled to +an embarrassing extent. Either way, the barons' power was demolished, +there would be no more internecine war; and spurred by the unaccustomed +idleness, Prince Edward began to think of the foreign girl he had not +seen since the day he wedded her. She would be a woman by this, and it +was befitting that he claim his wife. He rode with Hawise Bulmer and her +baby to Ambresbury, and at the gate of the nunnery they parted, with +what agonies are immaterial to this history's progression; the tale +merely tells that, having thus decorously rid himself of his mistress, +the Prince went into Lower Picardy alone, riding at adventure as he +loved to do, and thus came to Entrechat, where his wife resided with her +mother, the Countess Johane. + +In a wood near the castle he approached a company of Spaniards, four in +number, their horses tethered while these men (Oviedans, as they told +him) drank about a great stone which served them for a table. Being +thirsty, he asked and was readily accorded hospitality, and these five +fell into amicable discourse. One fellow asked his name and business in +those parts, and the Prince gave each without hesitancy as he reached +for the bottle, and afterward dropped it just in time to catch, cannily, +with his naked left hand, the knife-blade with which the rascal had dug +at the unguarded ribs. The Prince was astounded, but he was never a +subtle man: here were four knaves who, for reasons unexplained--but to +them of undoubted cogency--desired his death: manifestly there was here +an actionable difference of opinion; so he had his sword out and killed +the four of them. + +Presently came to him an apple-cheeked boy, habited as a page, who, +riding jauntily through the forest, lighted upon the Prince, now in +bottomless vexation. The lad drew rein, and his lips outlined a whistle. +At his feet were several dead men in various conditions of +dismemberment. And seated among them, as if throned upon this boulder, +was a gigantic and florid person, so tall that the heads of few men +reached to his shoulder; a person of handsome exterior, high-featured +and blond, having a narrow, small head, and vivid light blue eyes, and +the chest of a stallion; a person whose left eyebrow had an odd oblique +droop, so that the stupendous man appeared to be winking the information +that he was in jest. + +"Fair friend," said the page. "God give you joy! and why have you +converted this forest into a shambles?" + +The Prince told him as much of the half-hour's action as has been +narrated. "I have perhaps been rather hasty," he considered, by way of +peroration, "and it vexes me that I did not spare, say, one of these +lank Spaniards, if only long enough to ascertain why, in the name of +Termagaunt, they should have desired my destruction." + +But midway in his tale the boy had dismounted with a gasp, and he was +now inspecting the features of one carcass. "Felons, my Prince! You have +slain some eight yards of felony which might have cheated the gallows +had they got the Princess Ellinor safe to Burgos. Only two days ago this +chalk-eyed fellow conveyed to her a letter." + +Prince Edward said, "You appear, lad, to be somewhat overheels in the +confidence of my wife." + +Now the boy arose and defiantly flung back his head in shrill laughter. +"Your wife! Oh, God have mercy! Your wife, and for ten years left to her +own devices! Why, look you, to-day you and your wife would not know each +other were you two brought face to face." + +Prince Edward said, "That is very near the truth." But, indeed, it was +the absolute truth, and as it concerned him was already attested. + +"Sire Edward," the boy then said, "your wife has wearied of this long +waiting till you chose to whistle for her. Last summer the young Prince +de Gatinais came a-wooing--and he is a handsome man." The page made +known all which de Gatinais and King Alphonso planned, the words +jostling as they came in torrents, but so that one might understand. "I +am her page, my lord. I was to follow her. These fellows were to be my +escort, were to ward off possible pursuit. Cry haro, beau sire! Cry +haro, and shout it lustily, for your wife in company with six other +knaves is at large between here and Burgos,--that unreasonable wife who +grew dissatisfied after a mere ten years of neglect." + +"I have been remiss," the Prince said, and one huge hand strained at his +chin; "yes, perhaps I have been remiss. Yet it had appeared to me--But +as it is, I bid you mount, my lad!" + +The boy demanded, "And to what end?" + +"Oy Dieus, messire! have I not slain your escort? Why, in common reason, +equity demands that I afford you my protection so far as Burgos, +messire, just as plainly as equity demands I slay de Gatinais and fetch +back my wife to England." + +The page wrung exquisite hands with a gesture which was but partially +tinged with anguish, and presently began to laugh. Afterward these two +rode southerly, in the direction of Castile. + +For it appeared to the intriguing little woman a diverting jest that in +this fashion her husband should be the promoter of her evasion. It +appeared to her more diverting when in two days' space she had become +fond of him. She found him rather slow of comprehension, and she was +humiliated by the discovery that not an eyelash of the man was irritated +by his wife's decampment; he considered, to all appearances, that some +property of his had been stolen, and he intended, quite without passion, +to repossess himself of it, after, of course, punishing the thief. + +This troubled the Princess somewhat; and often, riding by her stolid +husband's side, the girl's heart raged at memory of the decade so newly +overpast which had kept her always dependent on the charity of this or +that ungracious patron--on any one who would take charge of her while +the truant husband fought out his endless squabbles in England. Slights +enough she had borne during the period, and squalor, and physical hunger +also she had known, who was the child of a king and a saint.[2] But now +she rode toward the dear southland; and presently she would be rid of +this big man, when he had served her purpose; and afterward she meant to +wheedle Alphonso, just as she had always wheedled him, and later still, +she and Etienne would be very happy: in fine, to-morrow was to be a new +day. + +So these two rode southward, and always Prince Edward found this new +page of his--this Miguel de Rueda,--a jolly lad, who whistled and sang +inapposite snatches of balladry, without any formal ending or beginning, +descanting always with the delicate irrelevancy of a bird-trill. + +Sang Miguel de Rueda: + + "Man's Love, that leads me day by day + Through many a screened and scented way, + Finds to assuage my thirst. + + "No love that may the old love slay, + None sweeter than the first. + + "Fond heart of mine, that beats so fast + As this or that fair maid trips past, + Once, and with lesser stir + We viewed the grace of love, at last, + And turned idolater. + + "Lad's Love it was, that in the spring + When all things woke to blossoming + Was as a child that came + Laughing, and filled with wondering, + Nor knowing his own name--" + +"And still I would prefer to think," the big man interrupted, heavily, +"that Sicily is not the only allure. I would prefer to think my wife so +beautiful.--And yet, as I remember her, she was nothing extraordinary." + +The page a little tartly said that people might forget a deal within a +decade. + +The Prince continued his unriddling of the scheme hatched in Castile. +"When Manfred is driven out of Sicily they will give the throne to de +Gatinais. He intends to get both a kingdom and a handsome wife by this +neat affair. And in reason, England must support my Uncle Richard's +claim to the German crown, against El Sabio--Why, my lad, I ride +southward to prevent a war that would devastate half Europe." + +"You ride southward in the attempt to rob a miserable woman of her sole +chance of happiness," Miguel de Rueda estimated. + +"That is undeniable, if she loves this thrifty Prince, as indeed I do +not question my wife does. Yet our happiness here is a trivial matter, +whereas war is a great disaster. You have not seen--as I, my little +Miguel, have often seen--a man viewing his death-wound with a face of +stupid wonder, a bewildered wretch in point to die in his lord's quarrel +and understanding never a word of it. Or a woman, say--a woman's twisted +and naked body, the breasts yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes of +some village, or the already dripping hoofs which will presently crush +this body. Well, it is to prevent many such ugly spectacles hereabout +that I ride southward." + +Miguel de Rueda shuddered. But, "She has her right to happiness," the +page stubbornly said. + +"She has only one right," the Prince retorted; "because it has pleased +the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us twain to lofty stations, to entrust +to us the five talents of the parable; whence is our debt to Him, being +fivefold, so much the greater than that of common persons. Therefore +the more is it our sole right, being fivefold, to serve God without +faltering, and therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more +an inconsiderable matter. For, as I have read in the Annals of the +Romans--" He launched upon the story of King Pompey and his daughter, +whom a certain duke regarded with impure and improper emotions. "My +little Miguel, that ancient king is our Heavenly Father, that only +daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here delivered for +protection to five soldiers--that is, to the five senses,--to preserve +it from the devil, the world, and the flesh. But, alas! the +too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon the gaudy vapors of this +world--" + +"You whine like a canting friar," the page complained; "and I can assure +you that the Lady Ellinor was prompted rather than hindered by her +God-given faculties of sight and hearing and so on when she fell in love +with de Gatinais. Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer +and the more intelligent man, and it was God who bestowed on her +sufficient wit to perceive the superiority of de Gatinais. And what am I +to deduce from this?" + +The Prince reflected. At last he said: "I have also read in these same +Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on account of the +malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm will engender; but if +the body be smitten by lightning, in a few days the carcass will abound +with vermin. My little Miguel, both men and women are at birth +empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no worm--that is, no virtue. +But once they are struck with lightning--that is, by the grace of +God,--they are astonishingly fruitful in good works." + +The page began to laugh. "You are hopelessly absurd, my Prince, though +you will never know it,--and I hate you a little,--and I envy you a +great deal." + +"Ah, but," Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, for the man was never +quick-witted,--"but it is not for my own happiness that I ride +southward." + +The page then said, "What is her name?" + +Prince Edward answered, very fondly, "Hawise." + +"I hate her, too," said Miguel de Rueda; "and I think that the holy +angels alone know how profoundly I envy her." + +In the afternoon of the same day they neared Ruffec, and at the ford +found three brigands ready, two of whom the Prince slew, and the other +fled. + +Next night they supped at Manneville, and sat afterward in the little +square, tree-chequered, that lay before their inn. Miguel had procured a +lute from the innkeeper, and he strummed idly as these two debated +together of great matters; about them was an immeasurable twilight, +moonless, but tempered by many stars, and everywhere they could hear an +agreeable whispering of leaves. + +"Listen, my Prince," the boy said: "here is one view of the affair." +And he began to chant, without rhyming, without raising his voice above +the pitch of talk, while the lute monotonously accompanied his chanting. + +Sang Miguel: + + "Passeth a little while, and Irus the beggar and + Menephtah the high king are at sorry unison, and + Guenevere is a skull. Multitudinously we tread + toward oblivion, as ants hasten toward sugar, and + presently Time cometh with his broom. Multitudinously + we tread a dusty road toward oblivion; but + yonder the sun shines upon a grass-plot, converting it + into an emerald; and I am aweary of the trodden path. + + "Vine-crowned is the fair peril that guards the + grasses yonder, and her breasts are naked. 'Vanity + of Vanities!' saith the beloved. But she whom I love + seems very far away to-night, though I might be with + her if I would. And she may not aid me now, for not + even love is all-powerful. She is most dear of created + women, and very wise, but she may never understand + that at any time one grows aweary of the trodden path. + + "At sight of my beloved, love closes over my heart + like a flood. For the sake of my beloved I have striven, + with a good endeavor, to my tiny uttermost. Pardie, I + am not Priam at the head of his army! A little while + and I will repent; to-night I cannot but remember that + there are women whose lips are of a livelier tint, that + life is short at best, that wine evokes in me some admiration + for myself, and that I am aweary of the trodden + path. + + "She is very far from me to-night. Yonder in the + Hoerselberg they exult and make sweet songs, songs + which are sweeter, immeasurably sweeter, than this + song of mine, but in the trodden path I falter, for I am + tired, tired in every fibre of me, and I am aweary of + the trodden path" + +Followed a silence. "Ignorance spoke there," the Prince said. "It is the +song of a woman, or else of a boy who is very young. Give me the lute, +my little Miguel." And presently the Prince, too, sang. + +Sang the Prince: + + "I was in a path, and I trod toward the citadel of the + land's Seigneur, and on either side were pleasant and + forbidden meadows, having various names. And one + trod with me who babbled of the brooding mountains + and of the low-lying and adjacent clouds; of the west + wind and of the budding fruit-trees. He debated the + significance of these things, and he went astray to + gather violets, while I walked in the trodden path." + + "He babbled of genial wine and of the alert lips of + women, of swinging censers and of the serene countenances + of priests, and of the clear, lovely colors of + bread and butter, and his heart was troubled by a + world profuse in beauty. And he leaped a stile to share + his allotted provision with a dying dog, and afterward, + being hungry, a wall to pilfer apples, while I walked + in the trodden path. + + "He babbled of Autumn's bankruptcy and of the age-long + lying promises of Spring; and of his own desire + to be at rest; and of running waters and of decaying + leaves. He babbled of the far-off stars; and he debated + whether they were the eyes of God or gases which + burned, and he demonstrated, with logic, that neither + existed. At times he stumbled as he stared about him + and munched his apples, so that he was all bemired, but + I walked in the trodden path. + + "And the path led to the gateway of a citadel, and + through the gateway. 'Let us not enter,' he said, 'for + the citadel is vacant, and, moreover, I am in profound + terror, and, besides, I have not as yet eaten all my + apples.' And he wept aloud, but I was not afraid, for + I had walked in the trodden path." + +Again there was a silence. "You paint a dreary world, my Prince." + +"My little Miguel, I paint the world as the Eternal Father made it. The +laws of the place are written large, so that all may read them; and we +know that every road, whether it be my trodden path or some byway through +your gayer meadows, yet leads in the end to God. We have our choice,--or +to come to Him as a laborer comes at evening for the day's wages fairly +earned, or to come as a roisterer haled before the magistrate." + +"I consider you to be in the right," the boy said, after a lengthy +interval, "although I decline--and decline emphatically--to believe you." + +The Prince laughed. "There spoke Youth," he said, and he sighed as +though he were a patriarch. "But we have sung, we two, the Eternal +Tenson of God's will and of man's desires. And I claim the prize, my +Little Miguel." + +Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. "You have conquered, my very +dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that Hawise--" But Miguel de +Rueda choked. "Oh, I do not understand! and yet in part I understand!" +the boy wailed in the darkness. + +And the Prince laid one hand upon his page's hair, and smiled in the +darkness to note how soft was this hair, since the man was less a fool +than at first view you might have taken him to be; and he said: + +"One must play the game out fairly, my lad. We are no little people, +she and I, the children of many kings, of God's regents here on earth; +and it was never reasonable, my Miguel, that gentlefolk should cheat at +their dicing." + +The same night Miguel de Rueda repeated the prayer which Saint Theophilus +made long ago to the Mother of God: + + "Dame, je n'ose, + Flors d'aiglentier et lis et rose, + En qui li filz Diex se repose," + +and so on. Or, in other wording: "Hearken, O gracious Lady! thou that +art more fair than any flower of the eglantine, more comely than the +blossoming of the rose or of the lily! thou to whom was confided the +very Son of God! Harken, for I am afraid! afford counsel to me that am +ensnared by Satan and know not what to do! Never will I make an end of +praying. O Virgin debonnaire! O honored Lady! Thou that wast once a +woman--!" + +So he prayed, and upon the next day as these two rode southward, he sang +half as if in defiance. + +Sang Miguel: + + "And still,--whatever years impend + To witness Time a fickle friend, + And Youth a dwindling fire,-- + I must adore till all years end + My first love, Heart's Desire. + + "I may not hear men speak of her + Unmoved, and vagrant pulses stir + To greet her passing-by, + And I, in all her worshipper + Must serve her till I die. + + "For I remember: this is she + That reigns in one man's memory + Immune to age and fret, + And stays the maid I may not see + Nor win to, nor forget." + +It was on the following day, near Bazas, that these two encountered Adam +de Gourdon, a Provencal knight, with whom the Prince fought for a long +while, without either contestant giving way; in consequence a rendezvous +was fixed for the November of that year, and afterward the Prince and de +Gourdon parted, highly pleased with each other. + +Thus the Prince and his attendant came, in late September, to Mauleon, +on the Castilian frontier, and dined there at the _Fir Cone._ Three or +four lackeys were about--some exalted person's retinue? Prince Edward +hazarded to the swart little landlord, as the Prince and Miguel lingered +over the remnants of their meal. + +Yes, the fellow informed them: the Prince de Gatinais had lodged there +for a whole week, watching the north road, as circumspect of all passage +as a cat over a mouse-hole. Eh, monseigneur expected some one, +doubtless--a lady, it might be,--the gentlefolk had their escapades like +every one else. The innkeeper babbled vaguely, for on a sudden he was +very much afraid of his gigantic patron. + +"You will show me to his room," Prince Edward said, with a politeness +that was ingratiating. + +The host shuddered and obeyed. + +Miguel de Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips drumming +upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his shoulders, all +resolution. On the stairway he passed the black little landlord, who was +now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. But Miguel de Rueda went on +to the room above. The door was ajar. He paused there. + +De Gatinais had risen from his dinner and stood facing the door. He, +too, was a blond man and the comeliest of his day. And at sight of him +awoke in the woman's heart all the old tenderness; handsome and brave +and witty she knew him to be, as indeed the whole world knew him to be +distinguished by every namable grace; and the innate weakness of de +Gatinais, which she alone suspected, made him now seem doubly dear. +Fiercely she wanted to shield him, less from bodily hurt than from that +self-degradation which she cloudily apprehended to be at hand; the test +was come, and Etienne would fail. Thus much she knew with a sick, +illimitable surety, and she loved de Gatinais with a passion which +dwarfed comprehension. + +"O Madame the Virgin!" prayed Miguel de Rueda, "thou that wast once a +woman, even as I am now a woman! grant that the man may slay him +quickly! grant that he may slay Etienne very quickly, honored Lady, so +that my Etienne may die unshamed!" + +"I must question, messire," de Gatinais was saying, "whether you have +been well inspired. Yes, quite frankly, I do await the arrival of her +who is your nominal wife; and your intervention at this late stage, I +take it, can have no outcome save to render you absurd. So, come now! +be advised by me, messire--" + +Prince Edward said, "I am not here to talk." + +"--For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary disputation the cutting of +one gentleman's throat by another gentleman is well enough, since the +argument is unanswerable. Yet in this case we have each of us too much +to live for; you to govern your reconquered England, and I--you perceive +that I am candid--to achieve in turn the kingship of another realm. Now +to secure this realm, possession of the Lady Ellinor is to me essential; +to you she is nothing." + +"She is a woman whom I have deeply wronged," Prince Edward said, "and to +whom, God willing, I mean to make atonement. Ten years ago they wedded +us, willy-nilly, to avert the impending war between Spain and England; +to-day El Sabio intends to purchase Germany with her body as the price; +you to get Sicily as her husband. Mort de Dieu! is a woman thus to be +bought and sold like hog's flesh! We have other and cleaner customs, we +of England." + +"Eh, and who purchased the woman first?" de Gatinais spat at him, +viciously, for the Frenchman now saw his air-castle shaken to the +corner-stone. + +"They wedded me to the child in order that a great war might be averted. +I acquiesced, since it appeared preferable that two people suffer +inconvenience rather than many thousands be slain. And still this is my +view of the matter. Yet afterward I failed her. Love had no clause in +our agreement; but I owed her more protection than I have afforded. +England has long been no place for women. I thought she would comprehend +that much. But I know very little of women. Battle and death are more +wholesome companions, I now perceive, than such folk as you and +Alphonso. Woman is the weaker vessel--the negligence was mine--I may not +blame her." The big and simple man was in an agony of repentance. + +On a sudden he strode forward, his sword now shifted to his left hand +and his right hand outstretched. "One and all, we are weaklings in the +net of circumstance. Shall one herring, then, blame his fellow if his +fellow jostle him? We walk as in a mist of error, and Belial is fertile +in allurements; yet always it is granted us to behold that sin is sin. I +have perhaps sinned through anger, Messire de Gatinais, more deeply than +you have planned to sin through luxury and through ambition. Let us then +cry quits, Messire de Gatinais, and afterward part in peace, and in +common repentance." + +"And yield you Ellinor?" de Gatinais said. "Oh no, messire, I reply to +you with Arnaud de Marveil, that marvellous singer of eld, 'They may +bear her from my presence, but they can never untie the knot which +unites my heart to her; for that heart, so tender and so constant, God +alone divides with my lady, and the portion which God possesses He holds +but as a part of her domain, and as her vassal.'" "This is blasphemy," +Prince Edward now retorted, "and for such observations alone you merit +death. Will you always talk and talk and talk? I perceive that the devil +is far more subtle than you, messire, and leads you, like a pig with a +ring in his nose, toward gross iniquity. Messire, I tell you that for +your soul's health I doubly mean to kill you now. So let us make an end +of this." + +De Gatinais turned and took up his sword. "Since you will have it," he +rather regretfully said; "yet I reiterate that you play an absurd part. +Your wife has deserted you, has fled in abhorrence of you. For three +weeks she has been tramping God knows whither or in what company--" + +He was here interrupted. "What the Lady Ellinor has done," Prince Edward +crisply said, "was at my request. We were wedded at Burgos; it was +natural that we should desire our reunion to take place at Burgos; and +she came to Burgos with an escort which I provided." + +De Gatinais sneered. "So that is the tale you will deliver to the +world?" + +"After I have slain you," the Prince said, "yes." + +"The reservation is wise. For if I were dead, Messire Edward, there +would be none to know that you risk all for a drained goblet, for an +orange already squeezed--quite dry, messire." + +"Face of God!" the Prince said. + +But de Gatinais flung back both arms in a great gesture, so that he +knocked a flask of claret from the table at his rear. "I am candid, my +Prince. I would not see any brave gentleman slain in a cause so foolish. +In consequence I kiss and tell. In effect, I was eloquent, I was +magnificent, so that in the end her reserve was shattered like the +wooden flask yonder at our feet. Is it worth while, think you, that our +blood flow like this flagon's contents?" + +"Liar!" Prince Edward said, very softly. "O hideous liar! Already your +eyes shift!" He drew near and struck the Frenchman. "Talk and talk and +talk! and lying talk! I am ashamed while I share the world with a thing +as base as you." + +De Gatinais hurled upon him, cursing, sobbing in an abandoned fury. In +an instant the place resounded like a smithy, for there were no better +swordsmen living than these two. The eavesdropper could see nothing +clearly. Round and round they veered in a whirl of turmoil. Presently +Prince Edward trod upon the broken flask, smashing it. His foot slipped +in the spilth of wine, and the huge body went down like an oak, his head +striking one leg of the table. + +"A candle!" de Gatinais cried, and he panted now--"a hundred candles to +the Virgin of Beaujolais!" He shortened his sword to stab the Prince of +England. + +The eavesdropper came through the doorway, and flung herself between +Prince Edward and the descending sword. The sword dug deep into her +shoulder, so that she shrieked once with the cold pain of this wound. +Then she rose, ashen. "Liar!" she said. "Oh, I am shamed while I share +the world with a thing as base as you!" + +In silence de Gatinais regarded her. There was a long interval before he +said, "Ellinor!" and then again, "Ellinor!" like a man bewildered. + +"_I was eloquent, I was magnificent_" she said, "_so that in the end her +reserve was shattered!_ Certainly, messire, it is not your death which I +desire, since a man dies so very, very quickly. I desire for you--I know +not what I desire for you!" the girl wailed. + +"You desire that I should endure this present moment," de Gatinais +replied; "for as God reigns, I love you, of whom I have spoken infamy, +and my shame is very bitter." + +She said: "And I, too, loved you. It is strange to think of that." + +"I was afraid. Never in my life have I been afraid before to-day. But I +was afraid of this terrible and fair and righteous man. I saw all hope +of you vanish, all hope of Sicily--in effect, I lied as a cornered beast +spits out his venom." + +"I know," she answered. "Give me water, Etienne." She washed and bound +the Prince's head with a vinegar-soaked napkin. Ellinor sat upon the +floor, the big man's head upon her knee. "He will not die of this, for +he is of strong person. Look you, Messire de Gatinais, you and I are not +strong. We are so fashioned that we can enjoy only the pleasant things +of life. But this man can enjoy--enjoy, mark you--the commission of any +act, however distasteful, if he think it to be his duty. There is the +difference. I cannot fathom him. But it is now necessary that I become +all which he loves--since he loves it,--and that I be in thought and +deed all which he desires. For I have heard the Tenson through." + +"You love him!" said de Gatinais. + +She glanced upward with a pitiable smile. "No, it is you whom I love, my +Etienne. You cannot understand how at this very moment every fibre of +me--heart, soul, and body--may be longing just to comfort you, and to +give you all which you desire, my Etienne, and to make you happy, my +handsome Etienne, at however dear a cost. No; you will never understand +that. And since you may not understand, I merely bid you go and leave me +with my husband." + +And then there fell between these two an infinite silence. + +"Listen," de Gatinais said; "grant me some little credit for what I do. +You are alone; the man is powerless. My fellows are within call. A word +secures the Prince's death; a word gets me you and Sicily. And I do not +speak that word, for you are my lady as well as his, and your will is my +one law." + +But there was no mercy in the girl, no more for him than for herself. +The big head lay upon her breast; she caressed the gross hair of it ever +so lightly. "These are tinsel oaths," she crooned, as if rapt with +incurious content; "these are the old empty protestations of all you +strutting poets. A word gets you what you desire! Then why do you not +speak that word? Why do you not speak many words, and become again as +eloquent and as magnificent as you were when you contrived that adultery +about which you were just now telling my husband?" + +De Gatinais raised clenched hands. "I am shamed," he said; and then he +said, "It is just." + +He left the room and presently rode away with his men. I say that, here +at last, he had done a knightly deed, but she thought little of it, +never raised her head as the troop clattered from Mauleon, with a +lessening beat which lapsed now into the blunders of an aging fly who +doddered about the window yonder. + +She stayed thus, motionless, her meditations adrift in the future; and +that which she foreread left her not all sorry nor profoundly glad, for +living seemed by this, though scarcely the merry and colorful business +which she had esteemed it, yet immeasurably the more worth while. + +THE END OF THE SECOND NOVEL + + + + +III + +THE STORY OF THE RAT-TRAP + + + "Leixant a part le stil dels trobados, + Dos grans dezigs ban combatut ma pensa, + Mas lo voler vers un seguir dispensa: + Yo l'vos publich, amar dretament vos." + +THE THIRD NOVEL.--MEREGRETT OF FRANCE, THINKING TO PRESERVE A HOODWINKED +GENTLEMAN, ANNOYS A SPIDER; AND BY THE GRACE OF DESTINY THE WEB OF THAT +CUNNING INSECT ENTRAPS A BUTTERFLY, A WASP, AND THEN A GOD; WHO SHATTERS +IT. + + + + +_The Story of the Rat-Trap_ + + +In the year of grace 1298, a little before Candlemas (thus Nicolas +begins), came letters to the first King Edward of England from his +kinsman and ambassador to France, Earl Edmund of Lancaster. It was +perfectly apparent, the Earl wrote, that the French King meant to +surrender to the Earl's lord and brother neither the duchy of Guienne +nor the Lady Blanch. This lady, I must tell you, was now affianced to +King Edward, whose first wife, Dame Ellinor, had died eight years before +this time. + +The courier found Sire Edward at Ipswich, midway in celebration of his +daughter's marriage to the Count of Holland. The King read the letters +through and began to laugh; and presently broke into a rage such as was +possible (men whispered) only to the demon-tainted blood of Oriander's +descendants. Next day the keeper of the privy purse entered upon the +house-hold-books a considerable sum "to make good a large ruby and an +emerald lost out of his coronet when the King's Grace was pleased to +throw it into the fire"; and upon the same day the King recalled +Lancaster. The King then despatched yet another embassy into France to +treat about Sire Edward's marriage. This last embassy was headed by the +Earl of Aquitaine: his lieutenant was Lord Pevensey, the King's natural +son by Hawise Bulmer. + +The Earl got audience of the French King at Mezelais. Walking alone came +this Earl of Aquitaine, with a large retinue, into the hall where the +barons of France stood according to their rank; in unadorned russet were +the big Earl and his attendants, but upon the scarlets and purples of +the French lords many jewels shone: it was as though through a corridor +of gayly painted sunlit glass that the grave Earl came to the dais where +sat King Philippe. + +The King had risen at close sight of the new envoy, and had gulped once +or twice, and without speaking, had hurriedly waved his lords out of +ear-shot. The King's perturbation was very extraordinary. + +"Fair cousin," the Earl now said, without any prelude, "four years ago I +was affianced to your sister, Dame Blanch. You stipulated that Gascony +be given up to you in guaranty, as a settlement on any children I might +have by that incomparable lady. I assented, and yielded you the +province, upon the understanding, sworn to according to the faith of +loyal kings, that within forty days you assign to me its seignory as +your vassal. And I have had of you since then neither my province nor +my betrothed wife, but only excuses, Sire Philippe." + +With eloquence the Frenchman touched upon the emergencies to which the +public weal so often drives men of high station, and upon his private +grief over the necessity--unavoidable, alas!--of returning a hard answer +before the council; and became so voluble that Sire Edward merely +laughed in that big-lunged and disconcerting way of his, and afterward +lodged for a week at Mezelais, nominally passing by his minor title of +Earl of Aquitaine, and as his own ambassador. + +Negotiations became more swift of foot, since a man serves himself with +zeal. In addition, the French lords could make nothing of a politician +so thick-witted that he replied to every consideration of expediency +with a parrot-like reiteration of the circumstance that already the +bargain was signed and sworn to: in consequence, while daily they fumed +over his stupidity, daily he gained his point. During this period he +was, upon one pretext or another, very often in the company of his +affianced wife, Dame Blanch. + +This lady, I must tell you, was the handsomest of her day; there could +nowhere be found a creature more agreeable to every sense; and she +compelled the adoring regard of men, it is recorded, not gently but in +an imperious fashion. Sire Edward, who, till this, had loved her merely +by report, and, in accordance with the high custom of old, through many +perusals of her portrait, now appeared besotted. He was an aging man, +near sixty, huge and fair, with a crisp beard, and the bright unequal +eyes of Manuel of Poictesme. The better-read at Mezelais began to liken +this so candidly enamored monarch and his Princess to Sieur Hercules at +the feet of Queen Omphale. + +The court hunted and slew a stag of ten in the woods of Ermenoueil, +which stand thick about the chateau; and at the hunt's end, these two +had dined at Rigon the forester's hut, in company with Dame Meregrett, +the French King's younger sister. She sat a little apart from the +betrothed, and stared through the hut's one window. We know, nowadays, +it was not merely the trees she was considering. + +Dame Blanch seemed undisposed to mirth. "We have slain the stag, beau +sire," she said, "and have made of his death a brave diversion. To-day +we have had our sport of death,--and presently the gay years wind past +us, as our cavalcade came toward the stag, and God's incurious angel +slays us, much as we slew the stag. And we shall not understand, and we +shall wonder, as the stag did, in helpless wonder. And Death will have +his sport of us, as if in atonement." Her big eyes shone, as when the +sun glints upon a sand-bottomed pool. "Ohe, I have known such happiness +of late, beau sire, that I am hideously afraid to die." + +The King answered, "I too have been very happy of late." + +"But it is profitless to talk about death thus drearily. Let us flout +him, instead, with some gay song." And thereupon she handed Sire Edward +a lute. + +The King accepted it. "Death is not reasonably mocked by any person," +Sire Edward said, "since in the end he conquers, and of the lips that +gibed at him remains but a little dust. Rather should I, who already +stand beneath a lifted sword, make for my destined and inescapable +conqueror a Sirvente, which is the Song of Service." + +Sang Sire Edward:[3] + + "I sing of Death, that comes unto the king, + And lightly plucks him from the cushioned throne; + And drowns his glory and his warfaring + In unrecorded dim oblivion; + And girds another with the sword thereof; + And sets another in his stead to reign; + And ousts the remnant, nakedly to gain + Styx' formless shore and nakedly complain + Midst twittering ghosts lamenting life and love. + + "For Death is merciless: a crack-brained king + He raises in the place of Prester John, + Smites Priam, and mid-course in conquering + Bids Caesar pause; the wit of Salomon, + The wealth of Nero and the pride thereof, + And battle-prowess--or of Tamburlaine + Darius, Jeshua, or Charlemaigne,-- + Wheedle and bribe and surfeit Death in vain, + And get no grace of him nor any love. + + "Incuriously he smites the armored king + And tricks his counsellors--" + +"True, O God!" murmured the tiny woman, who sat beside the window +yonder. With that, Dame Meregrett rose, and passed from the room. + +The two lovers started, and laughed, and afterward paid little heed to +her outgoing. Sire Edward had put aside the lute and sat now regarding +the Princess. His big left hand propped the bearded chin; his grave +countenance was flushed, and his intent eyes shone under their shaggy +brows, very steadily, although the left eye was now so nearly shut as to +reveal the merest spark. + +Irresolutely, Dame Blanch plucked at her gown; then rearranged a fold of +it, and with composure awaited the ensuing action, afraid at bottom, but +not at all ill-pleased; and she looked downward. + +The King said: "Never before were we two alone, madame. Fate is very +gracious to me this morning." + +"Fate," the lady considered, "has never denied much to the Hammer of the +Scots." + +"She has denied me nothing," he sadly said, "save the one thing that +makes this business of living seem a rational proceeding. Fame and power +and wealth fate has accorded me, no doubt, but never the common joys of +life. And, look you, my Princess, I am of aging person now. During some +thirty years I have ruled England according to my interpretation of +God's will as it was anciently made manifest by the holy Evangelists; +and during that period I have ruled England not without odd by-ends of +commendation: yet behold, to-day I forget the world-applauded, excellent +King Edward, and remember only Edward Plantagenet--hot-blooded and +desirous man!--of whom that much-commended king has made a prisoner all +these years." + +"It is the duty of exalted persons," Blanch unsteadily said, "to put +aside such private inclinations as their breasts may harbor--" + +He said, "I have done what I might for the happiness of every Englishman +within my realm saving only Edward Plantagenet; and now I think his turn +to be at hand." Then the man kept silence; and his hot appraisal daunted +her. + +"Lord," she presently faltered, "lord, you know that we are already +betrothed, and, in sober verity, Love cannot extend his laws between +husband and wife, since the gifts of love are voluntary, and husband and +wife are but the slaves of duty--" + +"Troubadourish nonsense!" Sire Edward said; "yet it is true that the +gifts of love are voluntary. And therefore--Ha, most beautiful, what +have you and I to do with all this chaffering over Guienne?" The two +stood very close to each other now. Blanch said, "It is a high +matter--" Then on a sudden the full-veined girl was aglow. "It is a +trivial matter." He took her in his arms, since already her cheeks +flared in scarlet anticipation of the event. + +Thus holding her, he wooed the girl tempestuously. Here, indeed, was +Sieur Hercules enslaved, burned by a fiercer fire than that of Nessus, +and the huge bulk of the unconquerable visibly shaken by his adoration. +In a disordered tapestry of verbiage, aflap in winds of passion, she +presently beheld herself prefigured by Balkis, the Judean's lure, and by +that Princess of Cyprus who reigned in Aristotle's time, and by +Nicolete, the King's daughter of Carthage,--since the first flush of +morning was as a rush-light before her resplendency, the man swore; and +in conclusion, he likened her to a modern Countess of Tripolis, for love +of whom he, like Rudel, had cleft the seas, and losing whom he must +inevitably die as did Rudel. Sire Edward snapped his fingers now over +any consideration of Guienne. He would conquer for her all Muscovy and +all Cataia, too, if she desired mere acreage. Meanwhile he wanted her, +and his hard and savage passion beat down opposition as if with a +bludgeon. + +"Heart's emperor," the trembling girl replied, "I think that you were +cast in some larger mould than we of France. Oh, none of us may dare +resist you! and I know that nothing matters, nothing in all the world, +save that you love me. Then take me, since you will it,--and take me +not as King, since you will otherwise, but as Edward Plantagenet. For +listen! by good luck you have this afternoon despatched Rigon for +Chevrieul, where to-morrow we were to hunt the great boar. So to-night +this hut will be unoccupied." + +The man was silent. He had a gift that way when occasion served. + +"Here, then, beau sire! here, then, at nine, you are to meet me with my +chaplain. Behold, he marries us, as glibly as though we two were +peasants. Poor king and princess!" cried Dame Blanch, and in a voice +which thrilled him, "shall ye not, then, dare to be but man and woman?" + +"Ha!" the King said. "So the chaplain makes a third! Well, the King is +pleased to loose his prisoner, that long-imprisoned Edward Plantagenet: +and I will do it." + +So he came that night, without any retinue, and habited as a forester, +with a horn swung about his neck, into the unlighted hut of Rigon the +forester, and he found a woman there, though not the woman whom he had +expected. + +"Treachery, beau sire! Horrible treachery!" she wailed. + +"I have encountered it before this," the big man said. + +"Presently will come to you not Blanch but Philippe, with many men to +back him. And presently they will slay you. You have been trapped, beau +sire. Ah, for the love of God, go! Go, while there is yet time!" Sire +Edward reflected. Undoubtedly, to light on Edward Longshanks alone in a +forest would appear to King Philippe, if properly attended, a tempting +chance to settle divers difficulties, once for all; and Sire Edward knew +the conscience of his old opponent to be invulnerable. The act would +violate the core of hospitality and knighthood, no doubt, but its +outcome would be a very definite gain to France, and for the rest, +merely a dead body in a ditch. Not a monarch in Christendom, Sire Edward +reflected, but feared and in consequence hated the Hammer of the Scots, +and in further consequence would not lift a finger to avenge him; and +not a being in the universe would rejoice more heartily at the success +of Philippe's treachery than would Sire Edward's son and immediate +successor, the young Prince Edward of Caernarvon. Taking matters by and +large, Philippe had all the powers of common-sense to back him in +contriving an assassination. + +What Sire Edward said was, "Dame Blanch, then, knew of this?" But +Meregrett's pitiful eyes had already answered him, and he laughed a +little. + +"In that event, I have to-night enregistered my name among the goodly +company of Love's Lunatics,--as yokefellow with Dan Merlin in his +thornbush, and with wise Salomon when he capered upon the high places of +Chemosh, and with Duke Ares sheepishly agrin in the net of Mulciber. +Rogues all, madame! fools all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and +allures the soul to such sensual delights as bar its passage toward the +eternal life wherein alone lies the empire and the heritage of the soul. +And why does this carnal prison so impede the soul? Because Satan once +ranked among the sons of God, and the Eternal Father, as I take it, has +not yet forgotten the antique relationship,--and hence it is permitted +even in our late time that always the flesh rebel against the spirit, +and that always these so tiny and so thin-voiced tricksters, these +highly tinted miracles of iniquity, so gracious in demeanor and so +starry-eyed--" + +Then he turned and pointed, no longer the orotund zealot but the +expectant captain now. "Look, my Princess!" In the pathway from which he +had recently emerged stood a man in full armor like a sentinel. "Mort de +Dieu, we can but try to get out of this," Sire Edward said. + +"You should have tried without talking so much," replied Meregrett. She +followed him. And presently, in a big splash of moonlight, the armed +man's falchion glittered across their way. "Back," he bade them, "for by +the King's orders, I can let no man pass." + +"It would be very easy now to strangle this herring," Sire Edward +reflected. + +"But it is not easy to strangle a whole school of herring," the fellow +retorted. "Hoh, Messire d'Aquitaine, the bushes of Ermenoueil are alive +with my associates. The hut yonder, in effect, is girdled by them,--and +we have our orders to let no man pass." + +"Have you any orders concerning women?" the King said. + +The man deliberated. Sire Edward handed him three gold pieces. "There +was assuredly no specific mention of petticoats," the soldier now +recollected, "and in consequence I dare to pass the Princess, against +whom certainly nothing can be planned." + +"Why, in that event," Sire Edward said, "we two had as well bid each +other adieu." + +But Meregrett only said, "You bid me go?" + +He waved his hand. "Since there is no choice. For that which you have +done--however tardily--I thank you. Meantime I return to Rigon's hut to +rearrange my toga as King Caesar did when the assassins fell upon him, +and to encounter with due decorum whatever Dame Luck may prefer." + +She said, "You go to your death." + +He shrugged his broad shoulders. "In the end we necessarily die." + +Dame Meregrett turned, and without faltering passed back into the hut. + +When he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, Sire +Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation. "Presently come your +brother and his tattling lords. To be discovered here with me at night, +alone, means trouble for you. If Philippe chances to fall into one of +his Capetian rages it means death." + +She answered, as though she were thinking about other matters, "Yes." + +Now, for the first time, Sire Edward regarded her with profound +consideration. To the finger-tips this so-little lady showed a +descendant of the holy Lewis whom he had known and loved in old years. +Small and thinnish she was, with soft and profuse hair that, for all its +blackness, gleamed in the lamplight with stray ripples of brilliancy, as +you may see sparks shudder to extinction over burning charcoal. She had +the Valois nose, long and delicate in form, and overhanging a short +upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious in tint, and the whiteness of her +skin would have matched the Hyperborean snows tidily enough. As for her +eyes, the customary similes of the court poets were gigantic onyxes or +ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. These eyes were too big for +her little face: they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which +nervously endured each incident of life, like a foreigner uneasily +acquiescent to the custom of the country. + +Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. "Madame, I +do not understand." + +Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. "It means that I +love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for presently you die. +Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may hearten me to live." + +The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming to +Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful haze of +forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes a god and +transmutes whatever in corporeal man would have been a defect into some +divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must tell you in this +place, since no other occasion offers, that even until the end of her +life it was so. For to her what in other persons would have seemed +flagrant dulness showed somehow, in Sire Edward, as the majestic +deliberation of one that knows his verdict to be decisive, and therefore +appraises cautiously; and if sometimes his big, irregular calm eyes +betrayed no apprehension of the jest at which her lips were laughing, +and of which her brain approved, always within the instant her heart +convinced her that a god is not lightly moved to mirth. + +And now it was a god--_O deus certe!_--who had taken a woman's paltry +face between his hands, half roughly. "And the maid is a Capet!" Sire +Edward mused. + +"Blanch has never desired you any ill, beau sire. But she loves the +Archduke of Austria. And once you were dead, she might marry him. One +cannot blame her," Meregrett considered, "since he wishes to marry her, +and she, of course, wishes to make him happy." + +"And not herself, save in some secondary way!" the big King said. "In +part I comprehend, madame. Now I too hanker after this same happiness, +and my admiration for the cantankerous despoiler whom I praised this +morning is somewhat abated. There was a Tenson once--Lord, Lord, how +long ago! I learn too late that truth may possibly have been upon the +losing side--" Thus talking incoherencies, he took up Rigon's lute. + +Sang Sire Edward: + + "Incuriously he smites the armored king + And tricks his counsellors-- + +"yes, the jingle ran thus. Now listen, madame--listen, the while that I +have my singing out, whatever any little cut-throats may be planning in +corners." + +Sang Sire Edward: + + "As, later on, + Death will, half-idly, still our pleasuring, + And change for fevered laughter in the sun + Sleep such as Merlin's,--and excess thereof,-- + Whence we, divorceless Death our Viviaine + Implacable, may never more regain + The unforgotten rapture, and the pain + And grief and ecstasy of life and love. + + "For, presently, as quiet as the king + Sleeps now that planned the keeps of Ilion, + We, too, will sleep, whilst overhead the spring + Rules, and young lovers laugh--as we have done,-- + And kiss--as we, that take no heed thereof, + But slumber very soundly, and disdain + The world-wide heralding of winter's wane + And swift sweet ripple of the April rain + Running about the world to waken love. + + "We shall have done with Love, and Death be king + And turn our nimble bodies carrion, + Our red lips dusty;--yet our live lips cling + Despite that age-long severance and are one + Despite the grave and the vain grief thereof,-- + Which we will baffle, if in Death's domain + Fond memories may enter, and we twain + May dream a little, and rehearse again + In that unending sleep our present love. + + "Speed forth to her in halting unison, + My rhymes: and say no hindrance may restrain + Love from his aim when Love is bent thereon; + And that were love at my disposal lain-- + All mine to take!--and Death had said, 'Refrain, + Lest I, even I, exact the cost thereof,' + I know that even as the weather-vane + Follows the wind so would I follow Love." + +Sire Edward put aside the lute. "Thus ends the Song of Service," he +said, "which was made not by the King of England but by Edward +Plantagenet--hot-blooded and desirous man!--in honor of the one woman +who within more years than I care to think of has at all considered +Edward Plantagenet." + +"I do not comprehend," she said. And, indeed, she dared not. + +But now he held both tiny hands in his. "At best, your poet is an +egotist. I must die presently. Meantime I crave largesse, madame, and a +great almsgiving, so that in his unending sleep your poet may rehearse +our present love." And even in Rigon's dim light he found her kindling +eyes not niggardly. + +Sire Edward strode to the window and raised big hands toward the +spear-points of the aloof stars. "Master of us all!" he cried; "O Father +of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the Scourge of France, the +conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and the flail of the accursed +race that slew Thine only Son! the King of England am I, who have made +of England an imperial nation, and have given to Thy Englishmen new +laws! And to-night I crave my hire. Never, O my Father, have I had of +any person aught save reverence or hatred! never in my life has any +person loved me! And I am old, my Father--I am old, and presently I die. +As I have served Thee--as Jacob wrestled with Thee at the ford of +Jabbok--at the place of Peniel--" Against the tremulous blue and silver +of the forest the Princess saw how horribly the big man was shaken. "My +hire! my hire!" he hoarsely said. "Forty long years, my Father! And now +I will not let Thee go except Thou hear me, and grant me life and this +woman's love." + +He turned, stark and black in the rearward splendor of the moon. _"As a +prince hast thou power with God,"_ he calmly said, _"and thou hast +prevailed._ For the King of kings was never obdurate, my dear, to them +that have deserved well of Him. So He will attend to my request, and +will get us out of this pickle somehow." + +Even as he said this, Philippe the Handsome came into the room, and at +the heels of the French King were seven lords, armed cap-a-pie. + +The French King was an odd man. Subtly smiling, he came forward through +the twilight, with soft, long strides, and he made no outcry at +recognition of his sister. "Take the woman away, Victor," he said, +disinterestedly, to de Montespan. Afterward he sat down beside the table +and remained silent for a while, intently regarding Sire Edward and the +tiny woman who clung to Sire Edward's arm; and in the flickering gloom +of the hut Philippe smiled as an artist may smile who gazes on the +perfected work and knows it to be adroit. + +"You prefer to remain, my sister?" he said presently. "He bien! it +happens that to-night I am in a mood for granting almost any favor. A +little later and I will attend to your merits." The fleet disorder of +his visage had lapsed again into the meditative smile which was that of +Lucifer watching a toasted soul. "And so it ends," he said, "and England +loses to-night the heir that Manuel the Redeemer provided. Conqueror of +Scotland, Scourge of France! O unconquerable king! and will the worms of +Ermenoueil, then, pause to-morrow to consider through what a glorious +turmoil their dinner came to them?" + +"Do you design to murder me?" Sire Edward said. + +The French King shrugged. "I design that within this moment my lords +shall slay you while I sit here and do not move a finger. Is it not good +to be a king, my cousin, and to sit quite still, and to see your +bitterest enemy hacked and slain,--and all the while to sit quite still, +quite unruffled, as a king should always be? Eh, eh! I never lived until +to-night!" + +"Now, by Heaven," said Sire Edward, "I am your kinsman and your guest, I +am unarmed--" + +Philippe bowed his head. "Undoubtedly," he assented, "the deed is foul. +But I desire Gascony very earnestly, and so long as you live you will +never permit me to retain Gascony. Hence it is quite necessary, you +conceive, that I murder you. What!" he presently said, "will you not beg +for mercy? I had hoped," the French King added, somewhat wistfully, +"that you might be afraid to die, O huge and righteous man! and would +entreat me to spare you. To spurn the weeping conqueror of Llewellyn, +say ... But these sins which damn one's soul are in actual performance +very tedious affairs; and I begin to grow aweary of the game. He bien! +now kill this man for me, messieurs." + +The English King strode forward. "Shallow trickster!" Sire Edward +thundered. _"Am I not afraid?_ You grimacing baby, do you think to +ensnare a lion with such a flimsy rat-trap? Wise persons do not hunt +lions with these contraptions: for it is the nature of a rat-trap, fair +cousin, to ensnare not the beast which imperiously desires and takes in +daylight, but the tinier and the filthier beast that covets meanly and +attacks under the cover of darkness--as do you and your seven skulkers!" +The man was rather terrible; not a Frenchman within the hut but had +drawn back a little. + +"Listen!" Sire Edward said, and he came yet farther toward the King of +France and shook at him one forefinger; "when you were in your cradle I +was leading armies. When you were yet unbreeched I was lord of half +Europe. For thirty years I have driven kings before me as did Fierabras. +Am I, then, a person to be hoodwinked by the first big-bosomed huzzy +that elects to waggle her fat shoulders and to grant an assignation in a +forest expressly designed for stabbings? You baby, is the Hammer of the +Scots the man to trust for one half moment a Capet? Ill-mannered +infant," the King said, with bitter laughter, "it is now necessary that +I summon my attendants and remove you to a nursery which I have prepared +in England." He set the horn to his lips and blew three blasts. There +came many armed warriors into the hut, bearing ropes. Here was the +entire retinue of the Earl of Aquitaine. Cursing, Sire Philippe sprang +upon the English King, and with a dagger smote at the impassive big +man's heart. The blade broke against the mail armor under the tunic. +"Have I not told you," Sire Edward wearily said, "that one may never +trust a Capet? Now, messieurs, bind these carrion and convey them +whither I have directed you. Nay, but, Roger--" He conversed apart with +his son, the Earl of Pevensey, and what Sire Edward commanded was done. +The French King and seven lords of France went from that hut trussed +like chickens ready for the oven. + +And now Sire Edward turned toward Meregrett and chafed his big hands +gleefully. "At every tree-bole a tethered horse awaits us; and a ship +awaits our party at Fecamp. To-morrow we sleep in England--and, Mort de +Dieu! do you not think, madame, that once within my very persuasive +Tower of London, your brother and I may come to some agreement over +Guienne?" + +She had shrunk from him. "Then the trap was yours? It was you that lured +my brother to this infamy!" + +"In effect, I planned it many months ago at Ipswich yonder," Sire Edward +gayly said. "Faith of a gentleman! your brother has cheated me of +Guienne, and was I to waste eternity in begging him to give me back my +province? Oh, no, for I have many spies in France, and have for some two +years known your brother and your sister to the bottom. Granted that I +came hither incognito, to forecast your kinfolk's immediate endeavors +was none too difficult; and I wanted Guienne--and, in consequence, the +person of your brother. Hah, death of my life! does not the seasoned +hunter adapt his snare to the qualities of his prey, and take the +elephant through his curiosity, as the snake through his notorious +treachery?" Now the King of England blustered. + +But the little Princess wrung her hands. "I am this night most hideously +shamed. Beau sire, I came hither to aid a brave man infamously trapped, +and instead I find an alert spider, snug in his cunning web, and +patiently waiting until the gnats of France fly near enough. Eh, the +greater fool was I to waste my labor on the shrewd and evil thing which +has no more need of me than I of it! And now let me go hence, sire, +unmolested, for the sake of chivalry. Could I have come to the brave man +I had dreamed of, I would have come cheerily through the murkiest lane +of hell; as the more artful knave, as the more judicious trickster"--and +here she thrust him from her--"I spit upon you. Now let me go hence." + +He took her in his brawny arms. "Fit mate for me," he said. "Little +vixen, had you done otherwise I would have devoted you to the devil." + +Still grasping her, and victoriously lifting Dame Meregrett, so that +her feet swung clear of the floor, Sire Edward said, again with that +queer touch of fanatic gravity: "My dear, you are perfectly right. I was +tempted, I grant you. But it was never reasonable that gentlefolk should +cheat at their dicing. Therefore I whispered Roger Bulmer my final +decision; and he is now loosing all my captives in the courtyard of +Mezelais, after birching the tails of every one of them as soundly as +these infants' pranks to-night have merited. So you perceive that I do +not profit by my trick; and that I lose Guienne, after all, in order to +come to you with hands--well! not intolerably soiled." + +"Oh, now I love you!" she cried, a-thrill with disappointment to find +him so unthriftily high-minded. "Yet you have done wrong, for Guienne is +a king's ransom." + +He smiled whimsically, and presently one arm swept beneath her knees, so +that presently he held her as one dandles a baby; and presently his +stiff and graying beard caressed her burning cheek. Masterfully he said: +"Then let Guienne serve as such and ransom for a king his glad and +common manhood. Now it appears expedient that I leave France without any +unwholesome delay, because these children may resent being spanked. More +lately--he, already I have in my pocket the Pope's dispensation +permitting me to marry, in spite of our cousinship, the sister of the +King of France." + +Very shyly Dame Meregrett lifted her little mouth. She said nothing +because talk was not necessary. + +In consequence, after a deal of political tergiversation (Nicolas +concludes), in the year of grace 1299, on the day of our Lady's +nativity, and in the twenty-seventh year of King Edward's reign, came to +the British realm, and landed at Dover, not Dame Blanch, as would have +been in consonance with seasoned expectation, but Dame Meregrett, the +other daughter of King Philippe the Bold; and upon the following day +proceeded to Canterbury, whither on the next Thursday after came Edward, +King of England, into the Church of the Trinity at Canterbury, and +therein espoused the aforesaid Dame Meregrett. + +THE END OF THE THIRD NOVEL + + + + +IV + +THE STORY OF THE CHOICES + + + "Sest fable es en aquest mon + Semblans al homes que i son; + Que el mager sen qu'om pot aver + So es amar Dieu et sa mer, + E gardar sos comendamens." + +THE FOURTH NOVEL.--YSABEAU OF FRANCE, DESIROUS OF DISTRACTION, LOOKS FOR +RECREATION IN THE TORMENT OF A CERTAIN KNIGHT, WHOM SHE PROVES TO BE NO +MORE THAN HUMAN; BUT IN THE OUTCOME OF HER HOLIDAY HE CONFOUNDS THIS +QUEEN BY THE WIT OF HIS REPLY. + + + + +The Story of the Choices + + +In the year of grace 1327 (thus Nicolas begins) you could have found in +all England no couple more ardent in affection or in despair more +affluent than Rosamund Eastney and Sir Gregory Darrell. She was Lord +Berners' only daughter, a brown beauty, of extensive repute, thanks to a +retinue of lovers who were practitioners of the Gay Science, and who had +scattered broadcast innumerable Canzons in her honor; and Lord Berners +was a man to accept the world as he found it. + +"Dompnedex!" the Earl was wont to say; "in sincerity I am fond of +Gregory Darrell, and if he chooses to make love to my daughter that is +none of my affair. The eyes and the brain preserve a proverbial warfare, +which is the source of all amenity, for without lady-service there would +be no songs and tourneys, no measure and no good breeding; and a man +delinquent in domnei is no more to be valued than an ear of corn +without the grain. No, I am so profoundly an admirer of Love that I can +never willingly behold him slain, of a surfeit, by Matrimony; besides, +this rapscallion Gregory could not to advantage exchange purses with +Lazarus in the parable; and, moreover, Rosamund is to marry the Earl of +Sarum a little after All Saints' day." + +"Sarum!" people echoed. "Why, the old goat has had four wives already!" + +And the Earl would spread his hands. "These redundancies are permissible +to one of the wealthiest persons in England," he was used to submit. + +Thus it fell out that Sir Gregory came and went at his own discretion as +concerned Lord Berners' fief of Ordish, all through those choppy times +of warfare between Sire Edward and Queen Ysabeau. Lord Berners, for one, +vexed himself not inordinately over the outcome, since he protested the +King's armament to consist of fools and the Queen's of rascals; and had +with entire serenity declined to back either Dick or the devil. + +But at last the Queen got resistless aid from Count William of Hainault +(in a way to be told about hereafter), and the King was captured by her +forces, and was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle. There they held the +second Edward to reign in England, who was the unworthy son of Dame +Ellinor and of that first squinting King Edward about whom I have told +you in the two tales preceding this tale. It was in the September of +this year, a little before Michaelmas, that they brought Sir Gregory +Darrell to be judged by the Queen; notoriously the knight had been her +husband's adherent. "Death!" croaked Adam Orleton, who sat to the right +hand, and, "Young de Spencer's death!" amended the Earl of March, with +wild laughter; but Ysabeau leaned back in her great chair--a handsome +woman, stoutening now from gluttony and from too much wine,--and +regarded her prisoner with lazy amiability. + +"And what was your errand in Figgis Wood?" she demanded--"or are you +mad, then, Gregory Darrell, that you dare ride past my gates alone?" + +He curtly said, "I rode for Ordish." + +Followed silence. "Roger," the Queen ordered, "give me the paper which I +would not sign." + +The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of London +somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, like a person in shrewd and +epicurean amusement, while the Queen subscribed the parchment, with a +great scrawling flourish. + +"Take, in the devil's name, the hire of your dexterities," said Ysabeau. +She pushed this document with her wet pen-point toward March. "So! get +it over with, that necessary business with my husband at Berkeley. And +do the rest of you withdraw, saving only my prisoner." + +Followed another silence. Queen Ysabeau lolled in her carven chair, +considering the comely gentleman who stood before her, fettered, at the +point of shameful death. There was in the room a little dog which had +come to the Queen, and now licked the palm of her left hand, and the +soft lapping of its tongue was the only sound you heard. "So at peril of +your life you rode for Ordish, then, messire?" + +The tense man had flushed. "You have harried us of the King's party out +of England,--and in reason I might not leave England without seeing the +desire of my heart." + +"My friend," said Ysabeau, as if half in sorrow, "I would have pardoned +anything save that." She rose. Her face was dark and hot. "By God and +all His saints! you shall indeed leave England to-morrow and the world +also! but not without a final glimpse of this same Rosamund. Yet listen: +I, too, must ride with you to Ordish--as your sister, say--Gregory, did +I not hang, last April, the husband of your sister? Yes, Ralph de +Belomys, a thin man with eager eyes, the Earl of Farrington he was. As +his widow I will ride with you to Ordish, upon condition you disclose to +none at Ordish, saving only, if you will, this quite immaculate +Rosamund, any hint of our merry carnival. And to-morrow (you will swear +according to the nicest obligations of honor) you must ride back with me +to encounter--that which I may devise. For I dare to trust your naked +word in this, and, moreover, I shall take with me a sufficiency of +retainers to leave you no choice." + +Darrell knelt before her. "I can do no homage to Queen Ysabeau; yet the +prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die to-morrow and cunningly +contrives, for old time's sake, to hearten me with a sight of Rosamund, +I cannot but kiss." This much he did. "And I swear in all things to obey +your will." + +"O comely fool!" the Queen said, not ungently, "I contrive, it may be, +but to demonstrate that many tyrants of antiquity were only bunglers. +And, besides, I must have other thoughts than those which I have known +too long: I must this night take holiday from thinking them, lest I go +mad." + +Thus did the Queen arrange her holiday. + +"Either I mean to torture you to-morrow," Dame Ysabeau said, presently, +to Darrell, as these two rode side by side, "or else I mean to free you. +In sober verity I do not know. I am in a holiday humor, and it is as the +whim may take me. But do you indeed love this Rosamund Eastney? And of +course she worships you?" + +"It is my belief, madame, that when I see her I tremble visibly, and my +weakness is such that a child has more intelligence than I,--and toward +such misery any lady must in common reason be a little compassionate." + +Her hands had twitched so that the astonished palfrey reared. "I design +torture," the Queen said; "ah, I perfect exquisite torture, for you have +proven recreant, you have forgotten the maid Ysabeau,--Le Desir du +Cuer, was it not, my Gregory, that you were wont to call her, as +nowadays this Rosamund is the desire of your heart. You lack +inventiveness." + +His palms clutched at heaven. "That Ysabeau is dead! and all true joy is +destroyed, and the world lies under a blight from which God has averted +an unfriendly face in displeasure! yet of all wretched persons existent +I am he who endures the most grievous anguish, for daily I partake of +life without any relish, and I would in truth deem him austerely kind +who slew me now that the maiden Ysabeau is dead." + +She shrugged wearily. "I scent the raw stuff of a Planh," the Queen +observed; "_benedicite!_ it was ever your way, my friend, to love a +woman chiefly for the verses she inspired." And she began to sing, as +they rode through Baverstock Thicket. + +Sang Ysabeau: + + "Man's love hath many prompters, + But a woman's love hath none; + And he may woo a nimble wit + Or hair that shames the sun, + Whilst she must pick of all one man + And ever brood thereon-- + And for no reason, + And not rightly,-- + + "Save that the plan was foreordained + (More old than Chalcedon, + Or any tower of Tarshish + Or of gleaming Babylon), + That she must love unwillingly + And love till life be done,--. + He for a season, + And more lightly." + +So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a +retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell. Lord +Berners received the party with boisterous hospitality. + +"Age has not blinded Father to the fact that your sister is a very +handsome woman," was Rosamund Eastney's comment. The period appears to +have been after supper, and the girl sat with Gregory Darrell in not the +most brilliant corner of the main hall. + +The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then with a +tumbling rush of speech told of the sorry masquerade. "The she-devil +designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she plans I know not what." + +"Yet I--" said Rosamund. The girl had risen, and she continued with an +odd inconsequence: "You have told me you were Pembroke's squire when +long ago he sailed for France to fetch this woman into England--" + +"--Which you never heard!" Lord Berners shouted at this point. "Jasper, +a lute!" And then he halloaed, "Gregory, Madame de Farrington demands +that racy song you made against Queen Ysabeau during your last visit." +Thus did the Queen begin her holiday. + +It was a handsome couple which came forward, with hand quitting hand +tardily, and with blinking eyes yet rapt: these two were not overpleased +at being disturbed, and the man was troubled, as in reason he well might +be, by the task assigned him. + +"Is it, indeed, your will, my sister," he said, "that I should +sing--this song?" + +"It is my will," the Countess said. + +And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. "A truth, once +spoken, may not be disowned in any company. It is not, look you, of my +own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if Queen Ysabeau herself were to +bid me sing this song, I could not refuse, for, Christ aid me! the song +is true." + +Sang Sir Gregory: + + "Dame Ysabeau, la prophecie + Que li sage dit ne ment mie, + Que la royne sut ceus grever + Qui tantost laquais sot aymer--"[4] + +and so on. It was a lengthy ditty, and in its wording not oversqueamish; +the Queen's career in England was detailed without any stuttering, and +you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory delivered +it with an incisive gusto, desperately countersigning his own death +warrant. Her treacheries, her adulteries and her assassinations were +rendered in glowing terms whose vigor seemed, even now, to please their +contriver. Yet the minstrel added a new peroration. + +Sang Sir Gregory: + + "Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gemit-- + Peu pense a ce que la voix dit, + Car me membre du temps jadis + Et d'ung garson, d'amour surpris, + Et d'une fille--et la vois si-- + Et grandement suis esbahi." + +And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without +speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance caught +between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had annoyed her. +She drew the little dagger from her girdle and meditatively cut the +buzzing thing in two. She cast the fragments from her, and resting the +dagger's point upon the arm of her chair, one forefinger upon the summit +of the hilt, considerately twirled the brilliant weapon. + +"This song does not err upon the side of clemency," she said at last, +"nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau." + +"That she-wolf!" said Lord Berners, comfortably. "Hoo, Madame Gertrude! +since the Prophet Moses wrung healing waters from a rock there has been +no such miracle recorded." + +"We read, Messire de Berners, that when the she-wolf once acknowledges a +master she will follow him as faithfully as any dog. My brother, I do +not question your sincerity, yet everybody knows you sing with the voice +of an unhonored courtier. Suppose Queen Ysabeau had heard your song all +through as I have heard it, and then had said--for she is not as the run +of women--'Messire, I had thought until this that there was no thorough +man in England save tall Roger Mortimer. I find him tawdry now, and--I +remember. Come you, then, and rule the England that you love as you may +love no woman, and rule me, messire, since I find even in your +cruelty--For we are no pygmies, you and I! Yonder is squabbling Europe +and all the ancient gold of Africa, ready for our taking! and past that +lies Asia, too, and its painted houses hung with bells, and cloud-wrapt +Tartary, where we two may yet erect our equal thrones, upon which to +receive the tributary emperors! For we are no pygmies, you and I." She +paused. She shrugged. "Suppose Queen Ysabeau, who is not as the run of +women, had said this much, my brother?" + +Darrell was more pallid (as the phrase is) than a sheet, and the lute +had dropped unheeded, and his hands were clenched. + +"I would answer, my sister, that as she has found in England but one +man, I have found in England but one woman--the rose of all the world." +His eyes were turned at this toward Rosamund Eastney. "And yet," the man +stammered, "because I, too, remember--" + +"Hah, in God's name! I am answered," the Countess said. She rose, in +dignity almost a queen. "We have ridden far to-day, and to-morrow we +must travel a deal farther--eh, my brother? I am going to bed, Messire +de Berners." + +So the men and women parted. Madame de Farrington kissed her brother at +leaving him, as was natural; and under her caress his stalwart person +shuddered, but not in repugnance; and the Queen went away singing +hushedly. + +Sang Ysabeau: + + "Were the All-Mother wise, life (shaped anotherwise) + Would be all high and true; + Could I be otherwise I had been otherwise + Simply because of you, ... + With whom I have naught to do, + And who are no longer you! + + "Life with its pay to be bade us essay to be + What we became,--I believe + Were there a way to be what it was play to be + I would not greatly grieve ... + Hearts are not worn on the sleeve. + Let us neither laugh nor grieve!" + +Ysabeau would have slept that night within the chamber of Rosamund +Eastney had either slept. As concerns the older I say nothing. The girl, +though soon aware of frequent rustlings near at hand, lay quiet, +half-forgetful of the poisonous woman yonder. The girl was now fulfilled +with a great blaze of exultation: to-morrow Gregory must die, and then +perhaps she might find time for tears; meanwhile, before her eyes, the +man had flung away a kingdom and life itself for love of her, and the +least nook of her heart ached to be a shade more worthy of the +sacrifice. + +After it might have been an hour of this excruciate ecstasy the Countess +came to Rosamund's bed. "Ay," the woman began, "it is indisputable that +his hair is like spun gold and that his eyes resemble sun-drenched +waters in June. It is certain that when this Gregory laughs God is more +happy. Girl, I was familiar with the routine of your meditations before +you were born." + +Rosamund said, quite simply: "You have known him always. I envy the +circumstance, Madame Gertrude--you alone of all women in the world I +envy, since you, his sister, being so much older, must have known him +always." + +"I know him to the core, my girl," the Countess answered. For a while +she sat silent, one bare foot jogging restlessly. "Yet I am two years +his junior--Did you hear nothing, Rosamund?" "No, Madame Gertrude, I +heard nothing." + +"Strange!" the Countess said; "let us have lights, since I can no longer +endure this overpopulous twilight." She kindled, with twitching fingers, +three lamps. "It is as yet dark yonder, where the shadows quiver very +oddly, as though they would rise from the floor--do they not, my +girl?--and protest vain things. But, Rosamund, it has been done; in the +moment of death men's souls have travelled farther and have been +visible; it has been done, I tell you. And he would stand before me, +with pleading eyes, and would reproach me in a voice too faint to reach +my ears--but I would see him--and his groping hands would clutch at my +hands as though a dropped veil had touched me, and with the contact I +would go mad!" + +"Madame Gertrude!" the girl stammered, in communicated terror. + +"Poor innocent fool!" the woman said, "I am Ysabeau of France." And when +Rosamund made as though to rise, in alarm, Queen Ysabeau caught her by +the shoulder. "Bear witness when he comes that I never hated him. Yet +for my quiet it was necessary that it suffer so cruelly, the scented, +pampered body, and no mark be left upon it! Eia! even now he suffers! +No, I have lied. I hate the man, and in such fashion as you will +comprehend when you are Sarum's wife." + +"Madame and Queen!" the girl said, "you will not murder me!" "I am +tempted!" the Queen answered. "O little slip of girlhood, I am tempted, +for it is not reasonable you should possess everything that I have lost. +Innocence you have, and youth, and untroubled eyes, and quiet dreams, +and the fond graveness of a child, and Gregory Darrell's love--" Now +Ysabeau sat down upon the bed and caught up the girl's face between two +fevered hands. "Rosamund, this Darrell perceives within the moment, as I +do, that the love he bears for you is but what he remembers of the love +he bore a certain maid long dead. Eh, you might have been her sister, +Rosamund, for you are very like her. And she, poor wench--why, I could +see her now, I think, were my eyes not blurred, somehow, almost as +though Queen Ysabeau might weep! But she was handsomer than you, since +your complexion is not overclear, praise God!" + +Woman against woman they were. "He has told me of his intercourse with +you," the girl said, and this was a lie flatfooted. "Nay, kill me if you +will, madame, since you are the stronger, yet, with my dying breath, I +protest that Gregory has loved no woman truly in all his life except +me." + +The Queen laughed bitterly. "Do I not know men? He told you nothing. And +to-night he hesitated, and to-morrow, at the lifting of my finger, he +will supplicate. Since boyhood Gregory Darrell has loved me, O white, +palsied innocence! and he is mine at a whistle. And in that time to +come he will desert you, Rosamund--bidding farewell with a pleasing +Canzon,--and they will give you to the gross Earl of Sarum, as they gave +me to the painted man who was of late our King! and in that time to come +you will know your body to be your husband's makeshift when he lacks +leisure to seek out other recreation! and in that time to come you will +long for death, and presently your heart will be a flame within you, my +Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your God because He +made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you, +and hate all men because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whims! +and chiefly you will hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and +devastation only will you love in that strange time which is to come. It +is adjacent, my Rosamund." + +The girl kept silence. She sat erect in the tumbled bed, her hands +clasping her knees, and she appeared to deliberate what Dame Ysabeau had +said. Plentiful brown hair fell about this Rosamund's face, which was +white and shrewd. "A part of what you say, madame, I understand. I know +that Gregory Darrell loves me, yet I have long ago acknowledged he loves +me as one pets a child, or, let us say, a spaniel which reveres and +amuses one. I lack his wit, you comprehend, and so he never speaks to me +all that he thinks. Yet a part of it he tells me, and he loves me, and +with this I am content. Assuredly, if they give me to Sarum I shall hate +Sarum even more than I detest him now. And then, I think, Heaven help +me! that I would not greatly grieve--Oh, you are all evil!" Rosamund +said; "and you thrust into my mind thoughts which I may not understand!" + +"You will comprehend them," the Queen said, "when you know yourself a +chattel, bought and paid for." + +The Queen laughed. She rose, and her hands strained toward heaven. "You +are omnipotent, yet have You let me become that into which I am +transmuted," she said, very low. + +She began to speak as though a statue spoke through lips that seemed +motionless. "Men have long urged me, Rosamund, to a deed which by one +stroke would make me mistress of these islands. To-day I looked on +Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in love--and I had but to +crush a lewd soft worm to come to him. Eh, and I was tempted--!" + +The girl said: "Let us grant that Gregory loves you very greatly, and me +just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a cushioned infamy, a +colorful and brief delirium, and afterward demolishment of soul and +body; I offer him contentment and a level life, made up of small events, +it may be, and lacking both in abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love +a flame wherein the lover's soul must be purified; it is a flame which +assays high queens just as it does their servants: and thus, madame, to +judge between us I dare summon you." "Child, child!" the Queen said, +tenderly, and with a smile, "you are brave; and in your fashion you are +wise; yet you will never comprehend. But once I was in heart and soul +and body all that you are to-day; and now I am Queen Ysabeau--Did you in +truth hear nothing, Rosamund?" + +"Why, nothing save the wind." + +"Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with +you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and imprecations! But I, +too, grow cowardly, it may be--Nay, I know," she said, and in a resonant +voice, "that by this I am mistress of broad England, until my son--my +own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund--knows me for +what I am. For I have heard--Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!" the +Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I was but your +plaything!" + +"Madame Ysabeau--!" the girl answered vaguely, for she was puzzled and +was almost frightened by the other's strange talk. + +"To bed!" said Ysabeau; "and put out the lights lest he come presently. +Or perhaps he fears me now too much to come to-night. Yet the night +approaches, none the less, when I must lift some arras and find him +there, chalk-white, with painted cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very +terribly, or look into some mirror and behold there not myself but +him,--and in that instant I shall die. Meantime I rule, until my son +attains his manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and so +helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly, and +save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more fair--But I +must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, God orders matters +very shrewdly, my Rosamund." + +Timidly the girl touched Ysabeau's shoulder. "In part, I understand, +madame and Queen." + +"You understand nothing," said Ysabeau; "how should you understand whose +breasts are yet so tiny? So let us put out the light! though I dread +darkness, Rosamund--For they say that hell is poorly lighted--and they +say--" Then Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Pensively she blew out each lamp. + +"We know this Gregory Darrell," the Queen said in the darkness, "ah, to +the marrow we know him, however steadfastly we blink, and we know the +present turmoil of his soul; and in common-sense what chance have you of +victory?" + +"None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. For man is a +being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy orders, and his +life here is one unending warfare between that which is divine in him +and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of +the tourney. Always a man's judgment misleads him and his faculties +allure him to a truce, however brief, with iniquity. His senses raise a +mist about his goings, and there is not an endowment of the man but in +the end plays traitor to his interest, as of God's wisdom God intends; +so that when the man is overthrown, the Eternal Father may, in reason, +be neither vexed nor grieved if only the man takes heart to rise again. +And when, betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight out the +allotted battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors which +God Himself accorded, I think that the Saints hold festival in heaven." + +"A very pretty sermon," said the Queen. "Yet I do not think that our +Gregory could very long endure a wife given over to such high-minded +talking. He prefers to hear himself do the fine talking." + +Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but I +believe that neither of these two slept with profundity. + +About dawn one of the Queen's attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and +conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, where Ysabeau walked in +tranquil converse with Lord Berners. The old man was in high good-humor. + +"My lad," said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the shoulder, "you have, +I do protest, the very phoenix of sisters. I was never happier." And he +went away chuckling. + +The Queen said in a toneless voice, "We ride for Blackfriars now." + +Darrell responded, "I am content, and ask but leave to speak, briefly, +with Dame Rosamund before I die." + +Then the woman came more near to him. "I am not used to beg, but within +this hour you encounter death, and I have loved no man in all my life +saving only you, Sir Gregory Darrell. Nor have you loved any person as +you loved me once in France. Oh, to-day, I may speak freely, for with +you the doings of that boy and girl are matters overpast. Yet were it +otherwise--eh, weigh the matter carefully! for I am mistress of England +now, and England would I give you, and such love as that slim, white +innocence has never dreamed of would I give you, Gregory Darrell--No, +no! ah, Mother of God, not you!" The Queen clapped one hand upon his +lips. + +"Listen," she quickly said; "I spoke to tempt you. But you saw, and you +saw clearly, that it was the sickly whim of a wanton, and you never +dreamed of yielding, for you love this Rosamund Eastney, and you know me +to be vile. Then have a care of me! The strange woman am I, of whom we +read that her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of +death. Hoh, many strong men have been slain by me, and in the gray time +to come will many others be slain by me, it may be; but never you among +them, my Gregory, who are more wary, and more merciful, and who know +that I have need to lay aside at least one comfortable thought against +eternity." + +"I concede you to have been unwise--" he hoarsely began. + +About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air +of this new day seemed raw and chill. + +Then Rosamund came through the opening in the hedge. "Now, choose," she +said; "the woman offers life and high place and wealth, and it may be, a +greater love than I am capable of giving you. I offer a dishonorable +death within the moment." + +And again, with that peculiar and imperious gesture, the man flung back +his head, and he laughed. Said Gregory Darrell: + +"I am I! and I will so to live that I may face without shame not only +God, but also my own scrutiny." He wheeled upon the Queen and spoke +henceforward very leisurely. "I love you; all my life long I have loved +you, Ysabeau, and even now I love you: and you, too, dear Rosamund, I +love, though with a difference. And every fibre of my being lusts for +the power that you would give me, Ysabeau, and for the good which I +would do with it in the England which I or blustering Roger Mortimer +must rule; as every fibre of my being lusts for the man that I would be +could I choose death without debate. And I think also of the man that +you would make of me, my Rosamund. + +"The man! And what is this man, this Gregory Darrell, that his welfare +should be considered?--an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with +the archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts! This much I know, +at bottom. + +"Yet more clearly do I perceive that this same man, like all his +fellows, is a maimed god who walks the world dependent upon many wise +and evil counsellors. He must measure, to a hair's-breadth, every +content of the world by means of a bloodied sponge, tucked somewhere in +his skull, a sponge which is ungeared by the first cup of wine and +ruined by the touch of his own finger. He must appraise all that he +judges with no better instruments than two bits of colored jelly, with a +bungling makeshift so maladroit that the nearest horologer's apprentice +could have devised a more accurate device. In fine, each man is under +penalty condemned to compute eternity with false weights, to estimate +infinity with a yard-stick: and he very often does it, and chooses his +own death without debate. For though, 'If then I do that which I would +not I consent unto the law,' saith even an Apostle; yet a braver Pagan +answers him, 'Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better +and more divine than the things which cause the various effects and, as +it were, pull thee by the strings.' + +"There lies the choice which every man must face,--whether rationally, +as his reason goes, to accept his own limitations and make the best of +his allotted prison-yard? or stupendously to play the fool and swear +even to himself (while his own judgment shrieks and proves a flat +denial), that he is at will omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my +poor proud Ysabeau; and I choose now, and differently: for poltroon that +I am! being now in a cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am +not very much afraid, and I choose death without any more debate." + +It was toward Rosamund that the Queen looked, and smiled a little +pitifully. "Should Queen Ysabeau be angry or vexed or very cruel now, my +Rosamund? for at bottom she is glad." + +And the Queen said also: "I give you back your plighted word. I ride +homeward to my husks, but you remain. Or rather, the Countess of +Farrington departs for the convent of Ambresbury, disconsolate in her +widowhood and desirous to have done with worldly affairs. It is most +natural she should relinquish to her beloved and only brother all her +dower-lands--or so at least Messire de Berners acknowledges. Here, then, +is the grant, my Gregory, that conveys to you those lands of Ralph de +Belomys which last year I confiscated. And this tedious Messire de +Berners is willing now--he is eager to have you for a son-in-law." + +About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air +of this new day seemed raw and chill, while, very calmly, Dame Ysabeau +took Sir Gregory's hand and laid it upon the hand of Rosamund Eastney. +"Our paladin is, in the outcome, a mortal man, and therefore I do not +altogether envy you. Yet he has his moments, and you are capable. Serve, +then, not only his desires but mine also, dear Rosamund." + +There was a silence. The girl spoke as though it was a sacrament. "I +will, madame and Queen." + +Thus did the Queen end her holiday. + +A little later the Countess of Farrington rode from Ordish with all her +train save one; and riding from that place, where love was, she sang +very softly. + +Sang Ysabeau: + + "As with her dupes dealt Circe + Life deals with hers, for she + Reshapes them without mercy, + And shapes them swinishly, + To wallow swinishly, + And for eternity; + + "Though, harder than the witch was, + Life, changing not the whole, + Transmutes the body, which was + Proud garment of the soul, + And briefly drugs the soul, + Whose ruin is her goal; + + "And means by this thereafter + A subtler mirth to get, + And mock with bitterer laughter + Her helpless dupes' regret, + Their swinish dull regret + For what they half forget." + + +And within the hour came Hubert Frayne to Ordish, on a foam-specked +horse, as he rode to announce to the King's men the King's barbaric +murder overnight, at Berkeley Castle, by Queen Ysabeau's order. + +"Ride southward," said Lord Berners, and panted as they buckled on his +disused armor; "but harkee, Frayne! if you pass the Countess of +Farrington's company, speak no syllable of your news, since it is not +convenient that a lady so thoroughly and so praise-worthily--Lord, Lord, +how I have fattened!--so intent on holy things, in fine, should have her +meditations disturbed by any such unsettling tidings. Hey, son-in-law?" + +Sir Gregory Darrell laughed, very bitterly. "He that is without blemish +among you--" he said. Then they armed completely, and went forth to +battle against the murderous harlot. + +THE END OF THE FOURTH NOVEL + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: For this perplexing matter the curious may consult Paul +Verville's _Notice sur la vie de Nicolas de Caen, p. 93 et seq_. The +indebtedness to Antoine Riczi is, of course, conceded by Nicolas in his +"EPILOGUE."] + +[Footnote 2: She was the daughter of King Ferdinand of Leon and Castile, +whose conversion to sainthood the inquisitive may find recorded +elsewhere.] + +[Footnote 3: Not without indulgence in anachronism. But Nicolas, be it +repeated, was no Gradgrindian.] + +[Footnote 4: Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, for obvious +reasons, his translator would prefer to do otherwise.] + + + + +V + +THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE + + + "Selh que m blasma vostr' amor ni m defen + Non podon far en re mon cor mellor, + Ni'l dous dezir qu'ieu ai de vos major, + Ni l'enveya' ni'l dezir, ni'l talen." + +THE FIFTH NOVEL.--PHILIPPA OF HAINAULT DARES TO LOVE UNTHRIFTILY, AND +WITH THE PRODIGALITY OF HER AFFECTION SHAMES TREACHERY, AND +COMMON-SENSE, AND HIGH ROMANCE, QUITE STOLIDLY; BUT, AS LOVING GOES, +IS OVERTOPPED BY HER MORE STOLID SQUIRE. + + + + +_The Story of the Housewife_ + + +In the year of grace 1326, upon Walburga's Eve, some three hours after +sunset (thus Nicolas begins), had you visited a certain garden on the +outskirts of Valenciennes, you might there have stumbled upon a big, +handsome boy, prone on the turf, where by turns he groaned and vented +himself in sullen curses. His profanity had its palliation. Heir to +England though he was, you must know that this boy's father in the +flesh had hounded him from England, as more recently had the lad's +uncle Charles the Handsome driven him from France. Now had this boy +and his mother (the same Queen Ysabeau about whom I have told you in +the preceding tale) come as suppliants to the court of that stalwart +nobleman Sire William (Count of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand, and +Lord of Friesland), where their arrival had evoked the suggestion that +they depart at their earliest convenience. To-morrow, then, these +footsore royalties, the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales, +would be thrust out-of-doors to resume the weary beggarship, to knock +again upon the obdurate gates of this unsympathizing king or that deaf +emperor. + +Accordingly the boy aspersed his destiny. At hand a nightingale +carolled as though an exiled prince were the blithest spectacle the +moon knew. + +There came through the garden a tall girl, running, stumbling in her +haste. "Hail, King of England!" she said. + +"Do not mock me, Philippa!" the boy half-sobbed. Sulkily he rose to +his feet. + +"No mockery here, my fair sweet friend. No, I have told my father all +which happened yesterday. I pleaded for you. He questioned me very +closely. And when I had ended, he stroked his beard, and presently +struck one hand upon the table. 'Out of the mouth of babes!' he said. +Then he said: 'My dear, I believe for certain that this lady and her +son have been driven from their kingdom wrongfully. If it be for the +good of God to comfort the afflicted, how much more is it commendable +to help and succor one who is the daughter of a king, descended from +royal lineage, and to whose blood we ourselves are related!' And +accordingly he and your mother have their heads together yonder, +planning an invasion of England, no less, and the dethronement of your +wicked father, my Edward. And accordingly--hail, King of England!" The +girl clapped her hands gleefully. The nightingale sang. + +But the boy kept momentary silence. Not even in youth were the men of +his race handicapped by excessively tender hearts; yesterday in the +shrubbery the boy had kissed this daughter of Count William, in part +because she was a healthy and handsome person, and partly because +great benefit might come of an alliance with her father. Well! the +Prince had found chance-taking not unfortunate. With the episode as +foundation, Count William had already builded up the future queenship +of England. The strong Count could do--and, as it seemed, was now in +train to do--indomitable deeds to serve his son-in-law; and now the +beggar of five minutes since foresaw himself, with this girl's love as +ladder, mounting to the high habitations of the King of England, the +Lord of Ireland, and the Duke of Aquitaine. Thus they would herald +him. + +So he embraced the girl. "Hail, Queen of England!" said the Prince; +and then, "If I forget--" His voice broke awkwardly. "My dear, if ever +I forget--!" Their lips met now. The nightingale discoursed as if on a +wager. + +Presently was mingled with the bird's descant another kind of singing. +Beyond the yew-hedge as these two stood silent, breast to breast, +passed young Jehan Kuypelant, one of the pages, fitting to the +accompaniment of a lute his paraphrase of the song which Archilochus +of Sicyon very anciently made in honor of Venus Melaenis, the tender +Venus of the Dark. + +At a gap in the hedge the young Brabanter paused. His singing ended, +gulped. These two, who stood heart hammering against heart, saw for an +instant Jehan Kuypelant's lean face silvered by the moonlight, his +mouth a tiny abyss. Followed the beat of lessening footfalls, while +the nightingale improvised an envoi. + +But earlier Jehan Kuypelant also had sung, as though in rivalry with +the bird. + +Sang Jehan Kuypelant: + + "Hearken and heed, Melaenis! + For all that the litany ceased + When Time had pilfered the victim, + And flouted thy pale-lipped priest, + And set astir in the temple + Where burned the fires of thy shrine + The owls and wolves of the desert-- + Yet hearken, (the issue is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine! + + "For I have followed, nor faltered-- + Adrift in a land of dreams + Where laughter and pity and terror + Commingle as confluent streams, + I have seen and adored the Sidonian, + Implacable, fair and divine-- + And bending low, have implored thee + To hearken, (the issue is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine!" + +It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of other +matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the year of +grace 1346, Master John Copeland--as men now called Jehan Kuypelant, +now secretary to the Queen of England,--brought his mistress the +unhandsome tidings that David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty +thousand Scots to back him. The Brabanter found plump Queen Philippa +with the kingdom's arbitress--Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom King +Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring in +France, very notoriously adored and obeyed. + +This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they +narrate, to release the Countess' husband, William de Montacute, from +the French prison of the Chatelet. You may appraise her dominion by +this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had denied all to King Edward, and +in consequence he could deny her nothing; so she sent him to fetch +back her husband, whom she almost loved. That armament had sailed from +Southampton on Saint George's day. + +These two women, then, shared the Brabanter's execrable news. Already +Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the broken meats of King +David. + +The Countess presently exclaimed: "Let them weep for this that must! +My place is not here." + +Philippa said, half hopefully, "Do you forsake Sire Edward, +Catherine?" + +"Madame and Queen," the Countess answered, "in this world every man +must scratch his own back. My lord has entrusted to me his castle of +Wark, his fiefs in Northumberland. These, I hear, are being laid +waste. Were there a thousand men-at-arms left in England I would say +fight. As it is, our men are yonder in France and the island is +defenceless. Accordingly I ride for the north to make what terms I may +with the King of Scots." + +Now you might have seen the Queen's eye brighten. "Undoubtedly," said +she, "in her lord's absence it is the wife's part to defend his +belongings. And my lord's fief is England. I bid you God-speed, +Catherine." And when the Countess was gone, Philippa turned, her round +face somewhat dazed and flushed. "She betrays him! she compounds with +the Scot! Mother of Christ, let me not fail!" + +"A ship must be despatched to bid Sire Edward return," said the +secretary. "Otherwise all England is lost." + +"Not so, John Copeland! We must let Sire Edward complete his +overrunning of France, if such be the Trinity's will. You know +perfectly well that he has always had a fancy to conquer France; and +if I bade him return now he would be vexed." + +"The disappointment of the King," John Copeland considered, "is a +smaller evil than allowing all of us to be butchered." + +"Not to me, John Copeland," the Queen said. + +Now came many lords into the chamber, seeking Madame Philippa. "We +must make peace with the Scottish rascal!--England is lost!--A ship +must be sent entreating succor of Sire Edward!" So they shouted. + +"Messieurs," said Queen Philippa, "who commands here? Am I, then, some +woman of the town?" + +Ensued a sudden silence. John Copeland, standing by the seaward +window, had picked up a lute and was fingering the instrument +half-idly. Now the Marquess of Hastings stepped from the throng. +"Pardon, Highness. But the occasion is urgent." + +"The occasion is very urgent, my lord," the Queen assented, deep in +meditation. + +John Copeland flung back his head and without prelude began to carol +lustily. + +Sang John Copeland: + + "There are taller lads than Atys, + And many are wiser than he,-- + How should I heed them?--whose fate is + Ever to serve and to be + Ever the lover of Atys, + And die that Atys may dine, + Live if he need me--Then heed me, + And speed me, (the moment is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine! + + "Fair is the form unbeholden, + And golden the glory of thee + Whose voice is the voice of a vision + Whose face is the foam of the sea, + And the fall of whose feet is the flutter + Of breezes in birches and pine, + When thou drawest near me, to hear me, + And cheer me, (the moment is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine!" + + +I must tell you that the Queen shivered, as if with extreme cold. She +gazed toward John Copeland wonderingly. The secretary was fretting at +his lutestrings, with his head downcast. Then in a while the Queen +turned to Hastings. + +"The occasion is very urgent, my lord," the Queen assented. "Therefore +it is my will that to-morrow one and all your men be mustered at +Blackheath. We will take the field without delay against the King of +Scots." + +The riot began anew. "Madness!" they shouted; "lunar madness! We can +do nothing until our King returns with our army!" + +"In his absence," the Queen said, "I command here." + +"You are not Regent," the Marquess answered. Then he cried, "This is +the Regent's affair!" + +"Let the Regent be fetched," Dame Philippa said, very quietly. They +brought in her son, Messire Lionel, now a boy of eight years, and, in +the King's absence, Regent of England. + +Both the Queen and the Marquess held papers. "Highness," Lord Hastings +began, "for reasons of state which I lack time to explain, this +document requires your signature. It is an order that a ship be +despatched to ask the King's return. Your Highness may remember the +pony you admired yesterday?" The Marquess smiled ingratiatingly. "Just +here, your Highness--a crossmark." + +"The dappled one?" said the Regent; "and all for making a little +mark?" The boy jumped for the pen. + +"Lionel," said the Queen, "you are Regent of England, but you are also +my son. If you sign that paper you will beyond doubt get the pony, but +you will not, I think, care to ride him. You will not care to sit down +at all, Lionel." + +The Regent considered. "Thank you very much, my lord," he said in the +ultimate, "but I do not like ponies any more. Do I sign here, Mother?" + +Philippa handed the Marquess a subscribed order to muster the English +forces at Blackheath; then another, closing the English ports. "My +lords," the Queen said, "this boy is the King's vicar. In defying him, +you defy the King. Yes, Lionel, you have fairly earned a pot of jam +for supper." + +Then Hastings went away without speaking. That night assembled at his +lodgings, by appointment, Viscount Heringaud, Adam Frere, the Marquess +of Orme, Lord Stourton, the Earls of Neville and Gage, and Sir Thomas +Rokeby. These seven found a long table there littered with pens and +parchment; to the rear of it, with a lackey behind him, sat the +Marquess of Hastings, meditative over a cup of Bordeaux. + +Presently Hastings said: "My friends, in creating our womankind the +Maker of us all was beyond doubt actuated by laudable and cogent +reasons; so that I can merely lament my inability to fathom these +reasons. I shall obey the Queen faithfully, since if I did otherwise +Sire Edward would have my head off within a day of his return. In +consequence, I do not consider it convenient to oppose his vicar. +To-morrow I shall assemble the tatters of troops which remain to us, +and to-morrow we march northward to inevitable defeat. To-night I am +sending a courier into Northumberland. He is an obliging person, and +would convey--to cite an instance--eight letters quite as blithely as +one." + +Each man glanced furtively about. England was in a panic by this, and +knew itself to lie before the Bruce defenceless. The all-powerful +Countess of Salisbury had compounded with King David; now Hastings, +too, their generalissimo, compounded. What the devil! loyalty was a +sonorous word, and so was patriotism, but, after all, one had estates +in the north. + +The seven wrote in silence. I must tell you that when they had ended, +Hastings gathered the letters into a heap, and without glancing at the +superscriptures, handed all these letters to the attendant lackey. +"For the courier," he said. + +The fellow left the apartment. Presently you heard a departing clatter +of hoofs, and Hastings rose. He was a gaunt, terrible old man, +gray-bearded, and having high eyebrows that twitched and jerked. + +"We have saved our precious skins," said he. "Hey, you fidgeters, you +ferments of sour offal! I commend your common-sense, messieurs, and I +request you to withdraw. Even a damned rogue such as I has need of a +cleaner atmosphere in order to breathe comfortably." The seven went +away without further speech. + +They narrate that next day the troops marched for Durham, where the +Queen took up her quarters. The Bruce had pillaged and burned his way +to a place called Beaurepair, within three miles of the city. He sent +word to the Queen that if her men were willing to come forth from the +town he would abide and give them battle. + +She replied that she accepted his offer, and that the barons would +gladly risk their lives for the realm of their lord the King. The +Bruce grinned and kept silence, since he had in his pocket letters +from most of them protesting they would do nothing of the sort. + +Here is comedy. On one side you have a horde of half-naked savages, a +shrewd master holding them in leash till the moment be auspicious; on +the other, a housewife at the head of a tiny force lieutenanted by +perjurers, by men already purchased. God knows what dreams she had of +miraculous victories, while her barons trafficked in secret with the +Bruce. It is recorded that, on the Saturday before Michaelmas, when +the opposing armies marshalled in the Bishop's Park, at Auckland, not +a captain on either side believed the day to be pregnant with battle. +There would be a decent counterfeit of resistance; afterward the +little English army would vanish pell-mell, and the Bruce would be +master of the island. The farce was prearranged, the actors therein +were letter-perfect. + +That morning at daybreak John Copeland came to the Queen's tent, and +informed her quite explicitly how matters stood. He had been drinking +overnight with Adam Frere and the Earl of Gage, and after the third +bottle had found them candid. "Madame and Queen, we are betrayed. The +Marquess of Hastings, our commander, is inexplicably smitten with a +fever. He will not fight to-day. Not one of your lords will fight +to-day." Master Copeland laid bare such part of the scheme as +yesterday's conviviality had made familiar. "Therefore I counsel +retreat. Let the King be summoned out of France." + +Queen Philippa shook her head, as she cut up squares of toast and +dipped them in milk for the Regent's breakfast. "Sire Edward would be +vexed. He has always wanted to conquer France. I shall visit the +Marquess as soon as Lionel is fed,--do you know, John Copeland, I am +anxious about Lionel; he is irritable and coughed five times during +the night,--and then I will attend to this affair." + +She found the Marquess in bed, groaning, the coverlet pulled up to his +chin. "Pardon, Highness," said Lord Hastings, "but I am an ill man. I +cannot rise from this couch." + +"I do not question the gravity of your disorder," the Queen retorted, +"since it is well known that the same illness brought about the death +of Iscariot. Nevertheless, I bid you get up and lead our troops +against the Scot." + +Now the hand of the Marquess veiled his countenance. "I am an ill +man," he muttered, doggedly. "I cannot rise from this couch." + +There was a silence. + +"My lord," the Queen presently began, "without is an army +prepared--yes, and quite able--to defend our England. The one +requirement of this army is a leader. Afford them that, my lord--ah, I +know that our peers are sold to the Bruce, yet our yeomen at least are +honest. Give them, then, a leader, and they cannot but conquer, since +God also is honest and incorruptible. Pardieu! a woman might lead +these men, and lead them to victory!" + +Hastings answered: "I am ill. I cannot rise from this couch." + +"There is no man left in England," said the Queen, "since Sire Edward +went into France. Praise God, I am his wife!" She went away without +flurry. + +Through the tent-flap Hastings beheld all that which followed. The +English force was marshalled in four divisions, each commanded by a +bishop and a baron. You could see the men fidgeting, puzzled by the +delay; as a wind goes about a corn-field, vague rumors were going +about those wavering spears. Toward them rode Philippa, upon a white +palfrey, alone and perfectly tranquil. Her eight lieutenants were now +gathered about her in voluble protestation, and she heard them out. +Afterward she spoke, without any particular violence, as one might +order a strange cur from his room. Then the Queen rode on, as though +these eight declaiming persons had ceased to be of interest. She +reined up before her standard-bearer, and took the standard in her +hand. She began again to speak, and immediately the army was in an +uproar; the barons were clustering behind her, in stealthy groups of +two or three whisperers each; all were in the greatest amazement and +knew not what to do; but the army was shouting the Queen's name. + +"Now is England shamed," said Hastings, "since a woman alone dares to +encounter the Scot. She will lead them into battle--and by God! there +is no braver person under heaven than yonder Dutch Frau! Friend David, +I perceive that your venture is lost, for those men would follow her +to storm hell if she desired it." + +He meditated, and shrugged. "And so would I," said Hastings. + +A little afterward a gaunt and haggard old man, bareheaded and very +hastily dressed, reined his horse by the Queen's side. "Madame and +Queen," said Hastings, "I rejoice that my recent illness is departed. +I shall, by God's grace, on this day drive the Bruce from England." + +Philippa was not given to verbiage. Doubtless she had her emotions, +but none was visible upon the honest face. She rested one plump hand +upon the big-veined hand of Hastings. That was all. "I welcome back +the gallant gentleman of yesterday. I was about to lead your army, my +friend, since there was no one else to do it, but I was hideously +afraid. At bottom every woman is a coward." + +"You were afraid to do it," said the Marquess, "but you were going to +do it, because there was no one else to do it! Ho, madame! had I an +army of such cowards I would drive the Scot not past the Border but +beyond the Orkneys." + +The Queen then said, "But you are unarmed." + +"Highness," he replied, "it is surely apparent that I, who have played +the traitor to two monarchs within the same day, cannot with either +decency or comfort survive that day." He turned upon the lords and +bishops twittering about his horse's tail. "You merchandise, get back +to your stations, and if there was ever an honest woman in any of your +families, the which I doubt, contrive to get yourselves killed this +day, as I mean to do, in the cause of the honestest and bravest woman +our time has known." Immediately the English forces marched toward +Merrington. + +Philippa returned to her pavilion and inquired for John Copeland. She +was informed that he had ridden off, armed, in company with five of +her immediate retainers. She considered this strange, but made no +comment. + +You picture her, perhaps, as spending the morning in prayer, in +beatings upon her breast, and in lamentations. Philippa did nothing of +the sort. She considered her cause to be so clamantly just that to +expatiate to the Holy Father upon its merits would be an impertinence; +it was not conceivable that He would fail her; and in any event, she +had in hand a deal of sewing which required immediate attention. +Accordingly she settled down to her needlework, while the Regent of +England leaned his head against her knee, and his mother told him that +ageless tale of Lord Huon, who in a wood near Babylon encountered the +King of Faery, and subsequently bereaved an atrocious Emir of his +beard and daughter. All this the industrious woman narrated in a low +and pleasant voice, while the wide-eyed Regent attended and at the +proper intervals gulped his cough-mixture. + +You must know that about noon Master John Copeland came into the tent. +"We have conquered," he said. "Now, by the Face!"--thus, scoffingly, +he used her husband's favorite oath,--"now, by the Face! there was +never a victory more complete! The Scottish army is fled, it is as +utterly dispersed from man's seeing as are the sands which dried the +letters King Ahasuerus gave the admirable Esther!" + +"I rejoice," the Queen said, looking up from her sewing, "that we have +conquered, though in nature I expected nothing else--Oh, horrible!" +She sprang to her feet with a cry of anguish. Here in little you have +the entire woman; the victory of her armament was to her a thing of +course, since her cause was just, whereas the loss of two front teeth +by John Copeland was a calamity. + +He drew her toward the tent-flap, which he opened. Without was a +mounted knight, in full panoply, his arms bound behind him, surrounded +by the Queen's five retainers. "In the rout I took him," said John +Copeland; "though, as my mouth witnesses, I did not find this David +Bruce a tractable prisoner." + +"Is that, then, the King of Scots?" Philippa demanded, as she mixed +salt and water for a mouthwash. "Sire Edward should be pleased, I +think. Will he not love me a little now, John Copeland?" + +John Copeland lifted both plump hands toward his lips. "He could not +choose," John Copeland said; "madame, he could no more choose but love +you than I could choose." + +Philippa sighed. Afterward she bade John Copeland rinse his gums and +then take his prisoner to Hastings. He told her the Marquess was dead, +slain by the Knight of Liddesdale. "That is a pity," the Queen said. +She reflected a while, reached her decision. "There is left alive in +England but one man to whom I dare entrust the keeping of the King of +Scots. My barons are sold to him; if I retain Messire David by me, one +or another lord will engineer his escape within the week, and Sire +Edward will be vexed. Yet listen, John--" She unfolded her plan. + +"I have long known," he said, when she had done, "that in all the +world there was no lady more lovable. Twenty years I have loved you, +my Queen, and yet it is only to-day I perceive that in all the world +there is no lady more wise than you." + +Philippa touched his cheek, maternally. "Foolish boy! You tell me the +King of Scots has an arrow-wound in his nose? I think a bread poultice +would be best." She told him how to make this poultice, and gave other +instructions. Then John Copeland left the tent and presently rode away +with his company. + +Philippa saw that the Regent had his dinner, and afterward mounted her +white palfrey and set out for the battle-field. There the Earl of +Neville, as second in command, received her with great courtesy. God +had shown to her Majesty's servants most singular favor: despite the +calculations of reasonable men,--to which, she might remember, he had +that morning taken the liberty to assent,--some fifteen thousand Scots +were slain. True, her gallant general was no longer extant, though +this was scarcely astounding when one considered the fact that he had +voluntarily entered the melee quite unarmed. A touch of age, perhaps; +Hastings was always an eccentric man: in any event, as epilogue, this +Neville congratulated the Queen that--by blind luck, he was forced to +concede,--her worthy secretary had made a prisoner of the Scottish +King. Doubtless, Master Copeland was an estimable scribe, and yet--Ah, +yes, Lord Neville quite followed her Majesty--beyond doubt, the +wardage of a king was an honor not lightly to be conferred. Oh, yes, +he understood; her Majesty desired that the office should be given +some person of rank. And pardie! her Majesty was in the right. Eh? +said the Earl of Neville. + +Intently gazing into the man's shallow eyes, Philippa assented. Master +Copeland had acted unwarrantably in riding off with his captive. Let +him be sought at once. She dictated to Neville's secretary a letter, +which informed John Copeland that he had done what was not agreeable +in purloining her prisoner. Let him without delay deliver the King to +her good friend the Earl of Neville. + +To Neville this was satisfactory, since he intended that once in his +possession David Bruce should escape forthwith. The letter, I repeat, +suited this smirking gentleman in its tiniest syllable, and the single +difficulty was to convey it to John Copeland, for as to his +whereabouts neither Neville nor any one else had the least notion. + +This was immaterial, however, for they narrate that next day a letter +signed with John Copeland's name was found pinned to the front of +Neville's tent. I cite a passage therefrom: "I will not give up my +royal prisoner to a woman or a child, but only to my own lord, Sire +Edward, for to him I have sworn allegiance, and not to any woman. Yet +you may tell the Queen she may depend on my taking excellent care of +King David. I have poulticed his nose, as she directed." + +Here was a nonplus, not without its comical side. Two great realms had +met in battle, and the king of one of them had vanished like a +soap-bubble. Philippa was in a rage,--you could see that both by her +demeanor and by the indignant letters she dictated; true, none of +these letters could be delivered, since they were all addressed to +John Copeland. Meanwhile, Scotland was in despair, whereas the traitor +English barons were in a frenzy, because they did not know what had +become of their fatal letters to the Bruce, or of him either. The +circumstances were unique, and they remained unchanged for three +feverish weeks. + +We will now return to affairs in France, where on the day of the +Nativity, as night gathered about Calais, John Copeland came +unheralded to the quarters of King Edward, then besieging that city. +Master Copeland entreated audience, and got it readily enough, since +there was no man alive whom Sire Edward more cordially desired to lay +his fingers upon. + +A page brought Master Copeland to the King, that stupendous, blond and +incredibly big person. With Sire Edward were that careful Italian, +Almerigo di Pavia, who afterward betrayed Sire Edward, and a lean +soldier whom Master Copeland recognized as John Chandos. These three +were drawing up an account of the recent victory at Creci, to be +forwarded to all mayors and sheriffs in England, with a cogent +postscript as to the King's incidental and immediate need of money. + +Now King Edward sat leaning far back in his chair, a hand on either +hip, and with his eyes narrowing as he regarded Master Copeland. Had +the Brabanter flinched, the King would probably have hanged him within +the next ten minutes; finding his gaze unwavering, the King was +pleased. Here was a novelty; most people blinked quite honestly under +the scrutiny of those fierce big eyes, which were blue and cold and of +an astounding lustre. The lid of the left eye drooped a little: this +was Count Manuel's legacy, they whispered. + +The King rose with a jerk and took John Copeland's hand. "Ha!" he +grunted, "I welcome the squire who by his valor has captured the King +of Scots. And now, my man, what have you done with Davie?" + +John Copeland answered: "Highness, you may find him at your +convenience safely locked in Bamborough Castle. Meanwhile, I entreat +you, sire, do not take it amiss if I did not surrender King David to +the orders of my lady Queen, for I hold my lands of you, and not of +her, and my oath is to you, and not to her, unless indeed by choice." + +"John," the King sternly replied, "the loyal service you have done us +is considerable, whereas your excuse for kidnapping Davie is a farce. +Hey, Almerigo, do you and Chandos avoid the chamber! I have something +in private with this fellow." When they had gone, the King sat down +and composedly said, "Now tell me the truth, John Copeland." + +"Sire," Copeland began, "it is necessary you first understand I bear a +letter from Madame Philippa--" + +"Then read it," said the King. "Heart of God! have I an eternity to +waste on you slow-dealing Brabanters!" + +John Copeland read aloud, while the King trifled with a pen, half +negligent, and in part attendant. + +Read John Copeland: + +"My DEAR LORD,--_recommend me to your lordship with soul and body and +all my poor might, and with all this I thank you, as my dear lord, +dearest and best beloved of all earthly lords I protest to me, and +thank you, my dear lord, with all this as I say before. Your +comfortable letter came to me on Saint Gregory's day, and I was never +so glad as when I heard by your letter that ye were strong enough in +Ponthieu by the grace of God for to keep you from your enemies. Among +them I estimate Madame Catherine de Salisbury, who would have betrayed +you to the Scot. And, dear lord, if it be pleasing to your high +lordship that as soon as ye may that I might hear of your gracious +speed, which may God Almighty continue and increase, I shall be glad, +and also if ye do continue each night to chafe your feet with a rag of +woollen stuff, as your physician directed. And, my dear lord, if it +like you for to know of my fare, John Copeland will acquaint you +concerning the Bruce his capture, and the syrup he brings for our son +Lord Edward's cough, and the great malice-workers in these shires +which would have so despitefully wrought to you, and of the manner of +taking it after each meal. I am lately informed that Madame Catherine +is now at Stirling with Robert Stewart and has lost all her good looks +through a fever. God is invariably gracious to His servants. Farewell, +my dear lord, and may the Holy Trinity keep you from your adversaries +and ever send me comfortable tidings of you. Written at York, in the +Castle, on Saint Gregory's day last past, by your own poor_ + +"PHILIPPA. + +_"To my true lord."_ + +"H'm!" said the King; "and now give me the entire story." + +John Copeland obeyed. I must tell you that early in the narrative King +Edward arose and strode toward a window. "Catherine!" he said. He +remained motionless while Master Copeland went on without any manifest +emotion. When he had ended, King Edward said, "And where is Madame de +Salisbury now?" + +At this the Brabanter went mad. As a leopard springs he leaped upon +the King, and grasping him by each shoulder, shook that monarch as one +punishing a child. + +"Now by the splendor of God--!" King Edward began, very terrible in +his wrath. He saw that John Copeland held a dagger to his breast, and +he shrugged. "Well, my man, you perceive I am defenceless." + +"First you will hear me out," John Copeland said. + +"It would appear," the King retorted, "that I have little choice." + +At this time John Copeland began: "Sire, you are the mightiest monarch +your race has known. England is yours, France is yours, conquered +Scotland lies prostrate at your feet. To-day there is no other man in +all the world who possesses a tithe of your glory; yet twenty years +ago Madame Philippa first beheld you and loved you, an outcast, an +exiled, empty-pocketed prince. Twenty years ago the love of Madame +Philippa, great Count William's daughter, got for you the armament +with which England was regained. Twenty years ago but for Madame +Philippa you had died naked in some ditch." + +"Go on," the King said presently. + +"Afterward you took a fancy to reign in France. You learned then that +we Brabanters are a frugal people: Madame Philippa was wealthy when +she married you, and twenty years had quadrupled her private fortune. +She gave you every penny of it that you might fit out this expedition; +now her very crown is in pawn at Ghent. In fine, the love of Madame +Philippa gave you France as lightly as one might bestow a toy upon a +child who whined for it." + +The King fiercely said, "Go on." + +"Eh, sire, I intend to. You left England undefended that you might +posture a little in the eyes of Europe. And meanwhile a woman +preserves England, a woman gives you Scotland as a gift, and in return +asks nothing--God have mercy on us!--save that you nightly chafe your +feet with a bit of woollen. You hear of it--and inquire, '_Where is +Madame de Salisbury?_' Here beyond doubt is the cock of Aesop's +fable," snarled John Copeland, "who unearthed a gem and grumbled that +his diamond was not a grain of corn." + +"You shall be hanged at dawn," the King replied. "Meanwhile spit out +your venom." + +"I say to you, then," John Copeland continued, "that to-day you are +master of Europe. I say to you that, but for this woman whom for +twenty years you have neglected, you would to-day be mouldering in some +pauper's grave. Eh, without question, you most magnanimously loved +that shrew of Salisbury! because you fancied the color of her eyes, +Sire Edward, and admired the angle between her nose and her forehead. +Minstrels unborn will sing of this great love of yours. Meantime I say +to you"--now the man's rage was monstrous--"I say to you, go home to +your too-tedious wife, the source of all your glory! sit at her feet! +and let her teach you what love is!" He flung away the dagger. "There +you have the truth. Now summon your attendants, my tres beau sire, and +have me hanged." + +The King made no movement. "You have been bold--" he said at last. + +"But you have been far bolder, sire. For twenty years you have dared +to flout that love which is God's noblest heritage to His children." + +King Edward sat in meditation for a long while. The squinting of his +left eye was now very noticeable. "I consider my wife's clerk," he +drily said, "to discourse of love in somewhat too much the tone of a +lover." And a flush was his reward. + +But when this Copeland spoke he was like one transfigured. His voice +was grave and very tender, and he said: + +"As the fish have their life in the waters, so I have and always shall +have mine in love. Love made me choose and dare to emulate a lady, +long ago, through whom I live contented, without expecting any other +good. Her purity is so inestimable that I cannot say whether I derive +more pride or sorrow from its preeminence. She does not love me, and +she will never love me. She would condemn me to be hewed in fragments +sooner than permit her husband's finger to be injured. Yet she +surpasses all others so utterly that I would rather hunger in her +presence than enjoy from another all which a lover can devise." + +Sire Edward stroked the table through this while, with an inverted +pen. He cleared his throat. He said, half-fretfully: + +"Now, by the Face! it is not given every man to love precisely in this +troubadourish fashion. Even the most generous person cannot render to +love any more than that person happens to possess. I have read in an +old tale how the devil sat upon a cathedral spire and white doves flew +about him. Monks came and told him to begone. 'Do not the spires show +you, O son of darkness' they clamored, 'that the place is holy?' And +Satan (in this old tale) replied that these spires were capable of +various interpretations. I speak of symbols, John. Yet I also have +loved, in my own fashion,--and, it would seem, I win the same reward +as you." + +The King said more lately: "And so she is at Stirling now? hobnob with +my armed enemies, and cajoling that red lecher Robert Stewart?" He +laughed, not overpleasantly. "Eh, yes, it needed a bold person to +bring all your tidings! But you Brabanters are a very thorough-going +people." + +The King rose and flung back his high head. "John, the loyal service +you have done us and our esteem for your valor are so great that they +may well serve you as an excuse. May shame fall on those who bear you +any ill-will! You will now return home, and take your prisoner, the +King of Scotland, and deliver him to my wife, to do with as she may +elect. You will convey to her my entreaty--not my orders, John,--that +she come to me here at Calais. As remuneration for this evening's +insolence, I assign lands as near your house as you can choose them to +the value of L500 a year for you and for your heirs." + +You must know that John Copeland fell upon his knees before King +Edward. "Sire--" he stammered. + +But the King raised him. "No, no," he said, "you are the better man. +Were there any equity in fate, John Copeland, your lady had loved you, +not me. As it is, I must strive to prove not altogether unworthy of my +fortune. But I make no large promises," he added, squinting horribly, +"because the most generous person cannot render to love any more than +that person happens to possess. So be off with you, John +Copeland,--go, my squire, and bring me back my Queen!" + +Presently he heard John Copeland singing without. And through that +instant, they say, his youth returned to Edward Plantagenet, and all +the scents and shadows and faint sounds of Valenciennes on that +ancient night when a tall girl came to him, running, stumbling in her +haste to bring him kingship. "She waddles now," he thought forlornly. +"Still, I am blessed." But Copeland sang, and the Brabanter's heart +was big with joy. + +Sang John Copeland: + + "Long I besought thee, nor vainly, + Daughter of Water and Air-- + Charis! Idalia! Hortensis! + Hast thou not heard the prayer, + When the blood stood still with loving, + And the blood in me leapt like wine, + And I cried on thy name, Melaenis?-- + That heard me, (the glory is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine! + + "Falsely they tell of thy dying, + Thou that art older than Death, + And never the Hoerselberg hid thee, + Whatever the slanderer saith, + For the stars are as heralds forerunning, + When laughter and love combine + At twilight, in thy light, Melaenis-- + That heard me, (the glory is thine!) + And let the heart of Atys, + At last, at last, be mine!" + + +THE END OF THE FIFTH NOVEL + + + + +VI + +THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS + + + "Je suis voix au desert criant + Que chascun soyt rectifiant + La voye de Sauveur; non suis, + Et accomplir je ne le puis." + +THE SIXTH NOVEL.--ANNE OF BOHEMIA HAS ONE SOLE FRIEND, AND BY HIM +PLAYS THE FRIEND'S PART; AND IN DOING SO ACHIEVES THEIR COMMON +ANGUISH, AS WELL AS THE CONFUSION OF STATECRAFT AND THE POULTICING OF +A GREAT DISEASE. + + + + +_The Story of the Satraps_ + + +In the year of grace 1381 (Nicolas begins) was Dame Anne magnificently +fetched from remote Bohemia, and at Westminster married to Sire +Richard, the second monarch of that name to reign in England. This +king, I must tell you, had succeeded while he was yet an infant, to +the throne of his grandfather, the third King Edward, about whom I +have told you in the story preceding this. + +Queen Anne had presently noted a certain priest who went forbiddingly +about her court, where he was accorded a provisional courtesy, and who +went also into many hovels, where pitiable wrecks of humankind +received his alms and ministrations. + +Queen Anne made inquiries. This young cleric was amanuensis to the +Duke of Gloucester, she learned, and was notoriously a by-blow of the +Duke's brother, dead Lionel of Clarence. She sent for this Edward +Maudelain. When he came her first perception was, "How wonderful is +his likeness to the King!" while the thought's commentary ran, +unacknowledged, "Yes, as an eagle resembles a falcon!" For here, to +the observant eye, was a more zealous person, already passion-wasted, +and a far more dictatorial and stiff-necked person than the lazy and +amiable King; also, this Maudelain's face and nose were somewhat too +long and high: the priest was, in a word, the less comely of the pair +by a very little, and to an immeasurable extent the more kinglike. + +"You are my cousin now, messire," the Queen told him, and innocently +offered to his lips her own. + +He never moved; but their glances crossed, and for that instant she +saw the face of a man who has just stepped into a quicksand. She grew +red, without knowing why. Then he spoke, composedly, of trivial +matters. + +Thus began the Queen's acquaintance with Edward Maudelain. She was by +this time the loneliest woman in the island. Her husband granted her a +bright and fresh perfection of form and color, but desiderated any +appetizing tang, and lamented, in his phrase, a certain kinship to the +impeccable loveliness of some female saint in a jaunty tapestry; +bright as ice in sunshine, just so her beauty chilled you, he +complained: moreover, this daughter of the Caesars had been fetched +into England, chiefly, to breed him children, and this she had never +done. Undoubtedly he had made a bad bargain,--he was too easy-going, +people presumed upon it. His barons snatched their cue and esteemed +Dame Anne to be negligible; whereas the clergy, finding that she +obstinately read the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, under the +irrelevant plea of not comprehending Latin, began to denounce her from +their pulpits as a heretic and as the evil woman prophesied by +Ezekiel. + +It was the nature of this desolate child to crave affection, as a +necessary, and pitifully she tried to purchase it through almsgiving. +In the attempt she could have found no coadjutor more ready than +Edward Maudelain. Giving was with these two a sort of obsession, +though always he gave in a half scorn of his fellow creatures which +was not more than half concealed. This bastard was charitable and +pious because he knew his soul, conceived in double sin, to be doubly +evil, and therefore doubly in need of redemption through good works. + +Now in and about the Queen's lonely rooms the woman and the priest met +daily to discuss now this or that point of theology, or now (to cite a +single instance) Gammer Tudway's obstinate sciatica. Considerate +persons found something of the pathetic in their preoccupation by +these matters while, so clamantly, the dissension between the young +King and his uncles gathered to a head. The King's uncles meant to +continue governing England, with the King as their ward, as long as +they could; he meant to relieve himself of this guardianship, and them +of their heads, as soon as he was able. War seemed inevitable, the air +was thick with portents; and was this, then, an appropriate time, the +judicious demanded of high Heaven, for the Queen of imperilled England +to concern herself about a peasant's toothache? + +Long afterward was Edward Maudelain to remember this quiet and amiable +period of his life, and to wonder over the man that he had been +through this queer while. Embittered and suspicious she had found him, +noted for the carping tongue he lacked both power and inclination to +bridle; and she had, against his nature, made Maudelain see that every +person is at bottom lovable, and that human vices are but the stains +of a traveller midway in a dusty journey; and had incited the priest +no longer to do good for his soul's health, but simply for his +fellow's benefit. + +In place of that monstrous passion which had at first view of her +possessed the priest, now, like a sheltered taper, glowed an adoration +which made him yearn, in defiance of common-sense, to suffer somehow +for this beautiful and gracious comrade; though very often pity for +her loneliness and knowledge that she dared trust no one save him +would throttle Maudelain like two assassins, and would move the +hot-blooded young man to a rapture of self-contempt and exultation. + +Now Maudelain made excellent songs, it was a matter of common report. +Yet but once in their close friendship did the Queen command him to +make a song for her. This had been at Dover, about vespers, in the +starved and tiny garden overlooking the English Channel, upon which +her apartments faced; and the priest had fingered his lute for an +appreciable while before he sang, more harshly than was his custom. + +Sang Maudelain: + + "Ave Maria! now cry we so + That see night wake and daylight go. + + "Mother and Maid, in nothing incomplete, + This night that gathers is more light and fleet + Than twilight trod alway with stumbling feet, + Agentes semper uno animo. + + "Ever we touch the prize we dare not take! + Ever we know that thirst we dare not slake! + Yet ever to a dreamed-of goal we make-- + Est tui coeli in palatio! + + "Long, long the road, and set with many a snare; + And to how small sure knowledge are we heir + That blindly tread, with twilight everywhere! + Volo in toto; sed non valeo! + + "Long, long the road, and very frail are we + That may not lightly curb mortality, + Nor lightly tread together steadfastly, + Et parvum carmen unum facio: + + "Mater, ora filium, + Ut post hoc exilium + Nobis donet gaudium + Beatorum omnium!" + +Dame Anne had risen. She said nothing. She stayed in this posture for +a lengthy while, one hand yet clasping each breast. Then she laughed, +and began to speak of Long Simon's recent fever. Was there no method +of establishing him in another cottage? No, the priest said, the +peasants, like the cattle, were always deeded with the land, and Simon +could not lawfully be taken away from his owner. + +One day, about the hour of prime, in that season of the year when +fields smell of young grass, the Duke of Gloucester sent for Edward +Maudelain. The court was then at Windsor. The priest came quickly to +his patron. He found the Duke in company with the King's other uncle +Edmund of York and bland Harry of Derby, who was John of Gaunt's +oldest son, and in consequence the King's cousin. Each was a proud and +handsome man: Derby alone (who was afterward King of England) had +inherited the squint that distinguished this family. To-day Gloucester +was gnawing at his finger nails, big York seemed half-asleep, and the +Earl of Derby appeared patiently to await something as yet ineffably +remote. + +"Sit down!" snarled Gloucester. His lean and evil countenance was that +of a tired devil. The priest obeyed, wondering that so high an honor +should be accorded him in the view of three great noblemen. Then +Gloucester said, in his sharp way: "Edward, you know, as England +knows, the King's intention toward us three and our adherents. It has +come to our demolishment or his. I confess a preference in the matter. +I have consulted with the Pope concerning the advisability of taking +the crown into my own hands. Edmund here does not want it, and my +brother John is already achieving one in Spain. Eh, in imagination I +was already King of England, and I had dreamed--Well! to-day the +prosaic courier arrived. Urban--the Neapolitan swine!--dares give me +no assistance. It is decreed I shall never reign in these islands. And +I had dreamed--Meanwhile, de Vere and de la Pole are at the King day +and night, urging revolt. As matters go, within a week or two, the +three heads before you will be embellishing Temple Bar. You, of +course, they will only hang." + +"We must avoid England, then, my noble patron," the priest considered. + +Angrily the Duke struck a clenched fist upon the table. "By the Cross! +we remain in England, you and I and all of us. Others avoid. The Pope +and the Emperor will have none of me. They plead for the Black +Prince's heir, for the legitimate heir. Dompnedex! they shall have +him!" + +Maudelain recoiled, for he thought this twitching man insane. + +"Besides, the King intends to take from me my fief at Sudbury," said +the Duke of York, "in order to give it to de Vere. That is both absurd +and monstrous and abominable." + +Openly Gloucester sneered. "Listen!" he rapped out toward Maudelain; +"when they were drawing up the Great Peace at Bretigny, it happened, +as is notorious, that the Black Prince, my brother, wooed in this town +the Demoiselle Alixe Riczi, whom in the outcome he abducted. It is not +so generally known, however, that, finding this sister of the Vicomte +de Montbrison a girl of obdurate virtue, my brother had prefaced the +action by marriage." + +"And what have I to do with all this?" said Edward Maudelain. + +Gloucester retorted: "More than you think. For this Alixe was conveyed +to Chertsey, here in England, where at the year's end she died in +childbirth. A little before this time had Sir Thomas Holland seen his +last day,--the husband of that Joane of Kent whom throughout life my +brother loved most marvellously. The disposition of the late +Queen-Mother is tolerably well known. I make no comment save that to +her moulding my brother was as so much wax. In fine, the two lovers +were presently married, and their son reigns to-day in England. The +abandoned son of Alixe Riczi was reared by the Cistercians at +Chertsey, where some years ago I found you." + +He spoke with a stifled voice, wrenching forth each sentence; and now +with a stiff forefinger flipped a paper across the table. "_In +extremis_ my brother did more than confess. He signed,--your Majesty," +said Gloucester. The Duke on a sudden flung out his hands, like a +wizard whose necromancy fails, and the palms were bloodied where his +nails had cut the flesh. + +"Moreover, my daughter was born at Sudbury," said the Duke of York. + +And of Maudelain's face I cannot tell you. He made pretence to read +the paper carefully, but his eyes roved, and he knew that he stood +among wolves. The room was oddly shaped, with eight equal sides: the +ceiling was of a light and brilliant blue, powdered with many golden +stars, and the walls were hung with smart tapestries which +commemorated the exploits of Theseus. "Then I am King," this Maudelain +said aloud, "of France and England, and Lord of Ireland, and Duke of +Aquitaine! I perceive that Heaven loves a jest." He wheeled upon +Gloucester and spoke with singular irrelevance, "And what is to be +done with the present Queen?" + +Again the Duke shrugged. "I had not thought of the dumb wench. We have +many convents." + +Now Maudelain twisted the paper between his long, wet fingers and +appeared to meditate. + +"It would be advisable, your Grace," observed the Earl of Derby, +suavely, and breaking his silence for the first time, "that you +yourself should wed Dame Anne, once the Apostolic See has granted the +necessary dispensation. Treading too close upon the fighting requisite +to bring about the dethronement and death of our nominal lord the +so-called King, a war with Bohemia, which would be only too apt to +follow this noble lady's assassination, would be highly inconvenient, +and, lacking that, we would have to pay back her dowry." + +Then these three princes rose and knelt before the priest; they were +clad in long bright garments, and they glittered with gold and many +jewels. He standing among them shuddered in his sombre robe. "Hail, +King of England!" cried these three. + +"Hail, ye that are my kinsmen!" he answered; "hail, ye that spring of +an accursed race, as I! And woe to England for that hour wherein +Manuel of Poictesme held traffic with the Sorceress of Provence, and +the devil's son begot an heir for England! Of ice and of lust and of +hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and fickle and +cold and ravenous and without shame are all our race until the end. Of +your brother's dishonor ye make merchandise to-day, and to-day +fratricide whispers me, and leers, and, Heaven help me! I attend. O +God of Gods! wilt Thou dare bid a man live stainless, having aforetime +filled his veins with such a venom? Then haro, will I cry from Thy +deepest hell.... Oh, now let the adulterous Redeemer of Poictesme +rejoice in his tall fires, to note that his descendants know of what +wood to make a crutch! You are very wise, my kinsmen. Take your +measures, messieurs who are my kinsmen! Though were I of any other +race, with what expedition would I now kill you, I that recognize +within me the strength to do it! Then would I slay you! without any +animosity, would I slay you then, just as I would kill as many +splendid snakes!" + +He went away, laughing horribly. Gloucester drummed upon the table, +his brows contracted. But the lean Duke said nothing; big York seemed +to drowse; and Henry of Derby smiled as he sounded a gong for that +scribe who would draw up the necessary letters. The Earl's time was +not yet come, but it was nearing. + +In the antechamber the priest encountered two men-at-arms dragging a +dead body from the castle. The Duke of Kent, Maudelain was informed, +had taken a fancy to a peasant girl, and in remonstrance her misguided +father had actually tugged at his Grace's sleeve. + +Maudelain went into the park of Windsor, where he walked for a long +while alone. It was a fine day in the middle spring; and now he seemed +to understand for the first time how fair was his England. For all +England was his fief, held in vassalage to God and to no man alive, +his heart now sang; allwhither his empire spread, opulent in grain and +metal and every revenue of the earth, and in stalwart men (his +chattels), and in strong orderly cities, where the windows would be +adorned with scarlet hangings, and women (with golden hair and red lax +lips) would presently admire as King Edward rode slowly by at the head +of a resplendent retinue. And always the King would bow, graciously +and without haste, to his shouting people.... He laughed to find +himself already at rehearsal of the gesture. + +It was strange, though, that in this glorious fief of his so many +persons should, as yet, live day by day as cattle live, suspicious of +all other moving things (with reason), and roused from their incurious +and filthy apathy only when some glittering baron, like a resistless +eagle, swept uncomfortably near as he passed on some by-errand of the +more bright and windy upper-world. East and north they had gone +yearly, for so many centuries, these dumb peasants, to fight out their +master's uncomprehended quarrel, and to manure with their carcasses +the soil of France and of Scotland. Give these serfs a king, now, who +(being absolute), might dare to deal in perfect equity with rich and +poor, who with his advent would bring Peace into England as his bride, +as Trygaeus did very anciently in Athens--"And then," the priest +paraphrased, "may England recover all the blessings she has lost, and +everywhere the glitter of active steel will cease." For everywhere men +would crack a rustic jest or two, unhurriedly. Virid fields would +heave brownly under their ploughs; they would find that with practice +it was almost as easy to chuckle as it was to cringe. + +Meanwhile on every side the nobles tyrannized in their degree, well +clothed and nourished, but at bottom equally comfortless in condition. +As illuminate by lightning Maudelain saw the many factions of his +barons squabbling for gross pleasures, like wolves over a corpse, and +blindly dealing death to one another to secure at least one more +delicious gulp before that inevitable mangling by the teeth of some +burlier colleague. The complete misery of England showed before +Maudelain like a winter landscape. The thing was questionless. He must +tread henceforward without fear among frenzied beasts, and to their +ultimate welfare. On a sudden Maudelain knew himself to be invincible +and fine, and hesitancy ebbed. + +True, Richard, poor fool, must die. Squarely the priest faced that +stark and hideous circumstance; to spare Richard was beyond his power, +and the boy was his brother; yes, this oncoming King Edward would be a +fratricide, and after death would be irrevocably damned. To burn, and +eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the torment was +eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of Richard's ignoble +life and of Edward's inconsiderable soul, to win so many men to +manhood was not a bargain to be refused. + +The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden which +adjoined Dame Anne's apartments. He found the Queen there, alone, as +nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused to wonder at her +bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd was this beauty, he +reflected, too; how alien in its effect to that of any other woman in +sturdy England, and how associable it was, somehow, with every wild +and gracious denizen of the woods which blossomed yonder. + +In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but undiluted. +They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short to ripple, +which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and left, birds +sang as if in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint and radiant +blue throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the zenith, so +that the Queen's brows cast honey-colored shadows upon either cheek. +The priest was greatly troubled by the proud and heatless +brilliancies, the shrill joys, of every object within the radius of +his senses. + +She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, tinted +like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and wore over all a gown +of white, cut open on each side as far as the hips. This garment was +embroidered with golden leopards and was trimmed with ermine. About +her yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein emeralds glowed. Her +blue eyes were as large and shining and changeable (he thought) as two +oceans in midsummer; and Maudelain stood motionless and seemed to +himself but to revere, as the Earl Ixion did, some bright unstable +wisp of cloud, while somehow all elation departed from him as water +does from a wetted sponge compressed. He laughed discordantly. + +"Wait--! O my only friend--!" said Maudelain. Then in a level voice he +told her all, unhurriedly and without any apparent emotion. + +She had breathed once, with a deep inhalation. She had screened her +countenance from his gaze the while you might have counted fifty. +Presently she said: "This means more war, for de Vere and Tressilian +and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons know that the +King's fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands die to-morrow." + +He answered, "It means a war which will make me King of England, and +will make you my wife." + +"In that war the nobles will ride abroad with banners and gay +surcoats, and will kill and ravish in the pauses of their songs; while +daily in that war the naked peasants will kill the one the other, +without knowing why." + +His thought had forerun hers. "Yes, some must die, so that in the end +I may be King, and the general happiness may rest at my disposal. The +adventure of this world is wonderful, and it goes otherwise than under +the strict tutelage of reason." + +"It would not be yours, but Gloucester's and his barons'. Friend, they +would set you on the throne to be their puppet and to move only as +they pulled the strings. Thwart them in their maraudings and they will +fling you aside, as the barons have pulled down every king that dared +oppose them. No, they desire to live pleasantly, to have fish on +Fridays, and white bread and the finest wine the whole year through, +and there is not enough for all, say they. Can you alone contend +against them? and conquer them? for not unless you can do this may I +dare bid you reign." + +The sun had grown too bright, too merciless, but as always she drew +the truth from him. "I could not venture to oppose in anything the +barons who supported my cause: for if I did, I would not endure a +fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor I nor any one may transform +through any personal force this bitter world, this piercing, cruel +place of frost and sun. Charity and Truth are excommunicate, and a +king is only an adorned and fearful person who leads wolves toward +their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and devour him. Everywhere +the powerful labor to put one another out of worship, and each to +stand the higher with the other's corpse as his pedestal; and Lechery +and Greed and Hatred sway these proud and inconsiderate fools as winds +blow at will the gay leaves of autumn. We walk among shining vapors, +we aspire to overpass a mountain of unstable sparkling sand! We two +alone in all the scuffling world! Oh, it is horrible, and I think that +Satan plans the jest! We dream for a while of refashioning this bright +desolation, and know that we alone can do it! we are as demigods, you +and I, in those gallant dreams! and at the end we can but poultice +some dirty rascal!" + +The Queen answered sadly: "Once and only once did God tread this +tangible world, for a very little while, and, look you, to what +trivial matters He devoted that brief space! Only to chat with +fishermen, and to talk with light women, and to consort with rascals, +and at last to die between two cutpurses, ignominiously! If Christ +Himself achieved so little that seemed great and admirable, how should +we two hope to do any more?" + +He answered: "It is true. Of anise and of cumin the Master gets His +tithe--" Maudelain broke off with a yapping laugh. "Puf! Heaven is +wiser than we. I am King of England. It is my heritage." + +"It means war. Many will die, thousands will die, and to no betterment +of affairs." + +"I am King of England. I am Heaven's satrap here, and answerable to +Heaven alone. It is my heritage." And now his large and cruel eyes +were aflame as he regarded her. + +And visibly beneath their glare the woman changed. "My friend, must I +not love you any longer? You would be content with happiness? Then I +am jealous of that happiness! for you are the one friend that I have +had, and so dear to me--Look you!" she said, with a light, wistful +laugh, "there have been times when I was afraid of everything you +touched, and I hated everything you looked at. I would not have you +stained; I desired to pass my whole life between the four walls of +some dingy and eternal gaol, forever alone with you, lest you become +like other men. I would in that period have been the very bread you +eat, the least perfume which delights you, the clod you touch in +crushing it, and I have often loathed some pleasure I derived from +life because I might not transfer it to you undiminished. For I wanted +somehow to make you happy to my own anguish.... It was wicked, I +suppose, for the imagining of it made me happy, too." + +Now while he listened to this dear and tranquil speaking, Edward +Maudelain's raised hands had fallen like so much lead, and remembering +his own nature, he longed for annihilation, before she had appraised +his vileness. He said: + +"With reason Augustine crieth out against the lust of the eyes. 'For +pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, and +soft; but this disease those contrary as well, not for the sake of +suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of making trial of them!' Ah! +ah! too curiously I planned my own damnation, too presumptuously I had +esteemed my soul a worthy scapegoat, and I had gilded my enormity with +many lies. Yet indeed, indeed, I had believed brave things, I had +planned a not ignoble bargain--! Ey, say, is it not laughable, +madame?--as my birth-right Heaven accords me a penny, and with that +only penny I must presently be seeking to bribe Heaven." + +Then he said: "Yet are we indeed God's satraps, as but now I cried in +my vainglory, and we hold within our palms the destiny of many +peoples. Depardieux! God is wiser than we are. Still, Satan offers no +unhandsome bribes--bribes that are tangible and sure. For Satan, too, +is wiser than we are." + +They stood like effigies, lit by the broad, unsparing splendor of the +morning, but again their kindling eyes had met, and again the man +shuddered. "Decide! oh, decide very quickly, my only friend!" he said, +"for throughout I am all filth!" + +Closer she drew to him, and laid one hand upon each shoulder. "O my +only friend!" she breathed, with red lax lips which were very near to +his, "through these six years I have ranked your friendship as the +chief of all my honors! and I pray God with an entire heart that I may +die so soon as I have done what I must do to-day!" + +Now Maudelain was trying to smile, but he could not quite manage it. +"God save King Richard!" said the priest. "For by the cowardice and +greed and ignorance of little men is Salomon himself confounded, and +by them is Hercules lightly unhorsed. Were I Leviathan, whose bones +were long ago picked clean by pismires, I could perform nothing +against the will of many human pismires. Therefore do you pronounce my +doom." + +"O King," then said Dame Anne, "I bid you go forever from the court +and live forever a landless man, friendless, and without even any +name. Otherwise, you can in no way escape being made an instrument to +bring about the misery and death of many thousands. This doom I dare +adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's satraps, you +and I." + +Twice or thrice his dry lips moved before he spoke. He was aware of +innumerable birds that carolled with a piercing and intolerable +sweetness. "O Queen!" he hoarsely said, "O fellow satrap! Heaven has +many fiefs. A fair province is wasted and accords to Heaven no +revenue. So wastes beauty, and a shrewd wit, and an illimitable +charity, which of their pride go in fetters and achieve no increase. +To-day the young King junkets with his flatterers, and but rarely +thinks of England. You have that beauty by which men are lightly +conquered, and the mere sight of which may well cause a man's voice to +tremble as my voice trembles now, and through desire of which--But I +tread afield! Of that beauty you have made no profit. O daughter of +the Caesars, I bid you now gird either loin for an unlovely traffic. +Old Legion must be fought with fire. True that the age is sick, true +that we may not cure, we can but salve the hurt--" His hand had torn +open his sombre gown, and the man's bared breast shone in the +sunlight, and on his breast heaved sleek and glittering beads of +sweat. Twice he cried the Queen's name. In a while he said: "I bid you +weave incessantly such snares of brain and body as may lure King +Richard to be swayed by you, until against his will you daily guide +this shallow-hearted fool to some commendable action. I bid you live +as other folk do hereabouts. Coax! beg! cheat! wheedle! lie!" he +barked like a teased dog, "and play the prostitute for him that wears +my crown, till you achieve in part the task which is denied me. This +doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's +satraps, you and I." + +She answered with a tiny, wordless sound. But presently, "I take my +doom," the Queen proudly said. "I shall be lonely now, my only friend, +and yet--it does not matter," the Queen said, with a little shiver. +"No, nothing will ever greatly matter now, I think, now that I may not +ever see you any more, my dearest." + +Her eyes had filled with tears; she was unhappy, and, as always, this +knowledge roused in Maudelain a sort of frenzied pity and a hatred, +quite illogical, of all other things existent. She was unhappy, that +only he comprehended: and for her to be made unhappy was unjust. + +So he stood thus for an appreciable silence, staying motionless save +that behind his back his fingers were bruising one another. Everywhere +was this or that bright color and an incessant melody. It was +unbearable. Then it was over; the ordered progress of all happenings +was apparent, simple, and natural; and contentment came into his heart +like a flight of linnets over level fields at dawn. He left her, and +as he went he sang. + +Sang Maudelain: + + "Christ save us all, as well He can, + A solis ortus cardine! + For He is both God and man, + Qui natus est de virgine, + And we but part of His wide plan + That sing, and heartily sing we, + 'Gloria Tibi, Domine!' + + "Between a heifer and an ass + Enixa est puerpera; + In ragged woollen clad He was + Qui regnat super aethera, + And patiently may we then pass + That sing, and heartily sing we, + 'Gloria Tibi, Domine!'" + +The Queen shivered in the glad sunlight. "I am, it must be, pitiably +weak," she said at last, "because I cannot sing as he does. And, since +I am not very wise, were he to return even now--But he will not +return. He will never return," the Queen repeated, carefully. "It is +strange I cannot comprehend that he will never return! Ah, Mother of +God!" she cried, with a steadier voice, "grant that I may weep! nay, +of thy infinite mercy let me presently find the heart to weep!" And +about the Queen of England many birds sang joyously. + +She sent for the King that evening, after supper, and they may well +have talked of many matters, for he did not return to his own +apartments that night. Next day the English barons held a council, and +in the midst of it King Richard demanded to be told his age. + +"Your Grace is in your twenty-second year," said the uneasy +Gloucester, who was now with reason troubled, since he had been vainly +seeking everywhere for the evanished Maudelain. + +"Then I have been under tutors and governors longer than any other +ward in my dominion. My lords, I thank you for your past services, but +I need them no more." They had no check handy, and Gloucester in +particular foreread his death-warrant, but of necessity he shouted +with the others, "Hail, King of England!" + +That afternoon the King's assumption of all royal responsibility was +commemorated by a tournament, over which Dame Anne presided. Sixty of +her ladies led as many knights by silver chains into the +tilting-grounds at Smithfield, and it was remarked that the Queen +appeared unusually mirthful. The King was in high good humor, a +pattern of conjugal devotion; and the royal pair retired at dusk to +the Bishop of London's palace at Saint Paul's, where was held a merry +banquet, with dancing both before and after supper. + +THE END OF THE SIXTH NOVEL + + + + +VII + +THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE + + + "Pour vous je suis en prison mise, + En ceste chambre a voulte grise, + Et traineray ma triste vie + Sans que jamais mon cueur varie, + Car toujours seray vostre amye." + +THE SEVENTH NOVEL.--ISABEL OF VALOIS, BEING FORSAKEN BY ALL OTHERS, IS +BEFRIENDED BY A PRIEST, WHO IN CHIEF THROUGH A CHILD'S INNOCENCE, +CONTRIVES AND EXECUTES A LAUDABLE IMPOSTURE, AND WINS THEREBY TO +DEATH. + + + + +_The Story of the Heritage_ + + +In the year of grace 1399 (Nicolas begins) dwelt in a hut near Caer +Dathyl in Arvon, as he had dwelt for some five years, a gaunt hermit, +notoriously consecrate, whom neighboring Welshmen revered as the +Blessed Evrawc. There had been a time when people called him Edward +Maudelain, but this period he dared not often remember. + +For though in macerations of the flesh, in fasting, and in hour-long +prayers he spent his days, this holy man was much troubled by devils. +He got little rest because of them. Sometimes would come into his hut +Belphegor in the likeness of a butler, and whisper, "Sire, had you +been King, as was your right, you had drunk to-day not water but the +wines of Spain and Hungary." Or Asmodeus saying, "Sire, had you been +King, as was your right, you had lain now not upon the bare earth but +on cushions of silk." + +One day in early spring, they say, the spirit called Orvendile sent +the likeness of a fair woman with yellow hair and large blue eyes. She +wore a massive crown which seemed too heavy for her frailness to +sustain. Soft tranquil eyes had lifted from her book. "You are my +cousin now, messire," this phantom had appeared to say. + +That was the worst, and Maudelain began to fear he was a little mad +because even this he had resisted with many aves. + +There came also to his hut, through a sullen snowstorm, upon the +afternoon of All Soul's day, a horseman in a long cloak of black. He +tethered his black horse and he came noiselessly through the doorway +of the hut, and upon his breast and shoulders the snow was white as +the bleached bones of those women that died in Merlin's youth. + +"Greetings in God's name, Messire Edward Maudelain," the stranger +said. + +Since the new-comer spoke intrepidly of holy things a cheerier +Maudelain knew that this at least was no demon. "Greetings!" he +answered. "But I am Evrawc. You name a man long dead." + +"But it is from a certain Bohemian woman I come. What matter, then, if +the dead receive me?" And thus speaking, the stranger dropped his +cloak. + +He was clad, as you now saw, in flame-colored satin, which shimmered +with each movement like a high flame. He had the appearance of a tall, +lean youngster, with crisp, curling, very dark red hair. He now +regarded Maudelain. He displayed peculiarly wide-set brown eyes; and +their gaze was tender, and the tears somehow had come to Maudelain's +eyes because of his great love for this tall stranger. "Eh, from the +dead to the dead I travel, as ever," said the new-comer, "with a +message and a token. My message runs, _Time is, O fellow satrap!_ and +my token is this." + +In this packet, wrapped with white parchment and tied with a golden +cord, was only a lock of hair. It lay like a little yellow serpent in +Maudelain's palm. "And yet five years ago," he mused, "this hair was +turned to dust. God keep us all!" Then he saw the tall lean emissary +puffed out like a candle-flame; and upon the floor he saw the huddled +cloak waver and spread like ink, and he saw the white parchment slowly +dwindle, as snow melts under the open sun. But in his hand remained +the lock of yellow hair. + +"O my only friend," said Maudelain, "I may not comprehend, but I know +that by no unhallowed art have you won back to me." Hair by hair he +scattered upon the floor that which he held. "_Time is!_ and I have +not need of any token to spur my memory." He prized up a corner of the +hearthstone, took out a small leather bag, and that day purchased a +horse and a sword. + +At dawn the Blessed Evrawc rode eastward in secular apparel. Two weeks +later he came to Sunninghill; and it happened that the same morning +the Earl of Salisbury, who had excellent reason to consider ... + +_Follows a lacuna of fourteen pages. Maudelain's successful imposture +of his half-brother, Richard the Second, so strangely favored by their +physical resemblance, and the subsequent fiasco at Circencester, are +now, however, tolerably well known to students of history._ + +_In one way or another, Maudelain contrived to take the place of his +now dethroned brother, and therewith also the punishment designed for +Richard. It would seem evident, from the Argument of the story in +hand, that Nicolas de Caen attributes a large part of this mysterious +business to the co-operancy of Isabel of Valois, King Richard's eleven +year old wife. And (should one have a taste for the deductive) the +foregoing name of Orvendile, when compared with "THE STORY OF THE +SCABBARD," would certainly hint that Owain Glyndwyr had a finger in +the affair._ + +_It is impossible to divine by what method, according to Nicolas, this +Edward Maudelain was substituted for his younger brother. Nicolas, if +you are to believe his "EPILOGUE," had the best of reasons for knowing +that the prisoner locked up in Pontefract Castle in the February of +1400, after Harry of Derby had seized the crown of England, was not +Richard Plantagenet: as is attested, also, by the remaining fragment +of this same_ "STORY OF THE HERITAGE." + +... and eight men-at-arms followed him. + +Quickly Maudelain rose from the table, pushing his tall chair aside, +and as he did this, one of the soldiers closed the door securely. +"Nay, eat your fill, Sire Richard," said Piers Exton, "since you will +not ever eat again." + +"Is it so?" the trapped man answered quietly. "Then indeed you come in +a good hour." Once only he smote upon his breast. "_Mea culpa!_ O +Eternal Father, do Thou shrive me very quickly of all those sins I +have committed, both in thought and deed, for now the time is very +short." + +And Exton spat upon the dusty floor. "Foh, they had told me I would +find a king here. I discover only a cat that whines." + +"Then 'ware his claws!" As a viper leaps Maudelain sprang upon the +nearest fellow and wrested away his halberd. "Then 'ware his claws, my +men! For I come of an accursed race. And now let some of you lament +that hour wherein the devil's son begot an heir for England! For of +ice and of lust and of hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest +it; and fickle and cold and ravenous and without fear are all our race +until the end. Hah, until the end! O God of Gods!" this Maudelain +cried, with a great voice, "wilt Thou dare bid a man die patiently, +having aforetime filled his veins with such a venom? For I lack the +grace to die as all Thy saints have died, without one carnal blow +struck in my own defence. I lack the grace, my Father, for even at the +last the devil's blood You gave me is not quelled. I dare atone for +that old sin done by my father in the flesh, but yet I must atone as +befits the race of Oriander!" + +Then it was he and not they who pressed to the attack. Their meeting +was a bloody business, for in that dark and crowded room Maudelain +raged among his nine antagonists like an angered lion among wolves. + +They struck at random and cursed shrilly, for they were now +half-afraid of this prey they had entrapped; so that presently he was +all hacked and bleeding, though as yet he had no mortal wound. Four of +these men he had killed by this time, and Piers Exton also lay at his +feet. + +Then the other four drew back a little. "Are ye tired so soon?" said +Maudelain, and he laughed terribly. "What, even you! Why, look ye, my +bold veterans, I never killed before to-day, and I am not breathed as +yet." + +Thus he boasted, exultant in his strength. But the other men saw that +behind him Piers Exton had crawled into the chair from which (they +thought) King Richard had just risen, and they saw Exton standing +erect in this chair, with both arms raised. They saw this Exton strike +the King with his pole-axe, from behind, once only, and they knew no +more was needed. + +"By God!" said one of them in the ensuing stillness, and it was he who +bled the most, "that was a felon's blow." + +But the dying man who lay before them made as though to smile. "I +charge you all to witness," he faintly said, "how willingly I render +to Caesar's daughter that which was ever hers." + +Then Exton fretted, as if with a little trace of shame: "Who would +have thought the rascal had remembered that first wife of his so long? +Caesar's daughter, saith he! and dares in extremis to pervert Holy +Scripture like any Wycliffite! Well, he is as dead as that first +Caesar now, and our gracious King, I think, will sleep the better for +it. And yet--God only knows! for they are an odd race, even as he +said--these men that have old Manuel's blood in them." + +THE END OF THE SEVENTH NOVEL + + + + +VIII + +THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD + + + "Ainsi il avait trouve sa mie + Si belle qu'on put souhaiter. + N'avoit cure d'ailleurs plaider, + Fors qu'avec lui manoir et estre. + Bien est Amour puissant et maistre." + +THE EIGHTH NOVEL.--BRANWEN OF WALES GETS A KING'S LOVE UNWITTINGLY, +AND IN ALL INNOCENCE CONVINCES HIM OF THE LITTLENESS OF HIS KINGDOM; +SO THAT HE BESIEGES AND IN DUE COURSE OCCUPIES ANOTHER REALM AS YET +UNMAPPED. + + + + +_The Story of the Scabbard_ + + +In the year of grace 1400 (Nicolas begins) King Richard, the second +monarch of that name to rule in England, wrenched his own existence, +and nothing more, from the close wiles of his cousin, Harry of Derby, +who was now sometimes called Henry of Lancaster, and sometimes +Bolingbroke. The circumstances of this evasion having been recorded in +the preceding tale, it suffices here to record that this Henry was +presently crowned King of England in Richard's place. All persons, +saving only Owain Glyndwyr and Henry of Lancaster, believed King +Richard dead at that period when Richard attended his own funeral, as +a proceeding taking to the fancy, and, among many others, saw the body +of Edward Maudelain interred with every regal ceremony in the chapel +at Langley Bower. Then alone Sire Richard crossed the seas, and at +thirty-three set out to inspect a transformed and gratefully +untrammelling world wherein not a foot of land belonged to him. + +Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his half-brothers; and +to detail his Asian wanderings would be tedious and unprofitable. But +at the end of each four months would come to him a certain messenger +from Glyndwyr, supposed by Richard to be the imp Orvendile, who +notoriously ran every day around the world upon the Welshman's +business. It was in the Isle of Taprobane, where the pismires are as +great as hounds, and mine and store the gold of which the inhabitants +afterward rob them through a very cunning device, that this emissary +brought the letter which read simply, "Now is England fit pasture for +the White Hart." Presently Richard Holland was in Wales, and then he +rode to Sycharth. + +There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long +stewardship. It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless +machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the +barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their +squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester, +Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open revolt. +"By the God I do not altogether serve," Owain ended, "you have but to +declare yourself, sire, and within the moment England is yours." + +Richard spoke with narrowed eyes. "You forget that while Henry of +Lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign tranquilly in +these islands. Come then! the hour strikes; and we will coax the devil +for once in a way to serve God." + +"Oh, but there is a boundary appointed," Glyndwyr moodily returned. +"You, too, forget that in cold blood this Henry stabbed my best-loved +son. But I do not forget this, and I have tried divers methods which +we need not speak of,--I who can at will corrupt the air, and cause +sickness and storms, raise heavy mists, and create plagues and fires +and shipwrecks; yet the life itself I cannot take. For there is a +boundary appointed, sire, and beyond that frontier the Master of our +Sabbaths cannot serve us even though he would." + +Richard crossed himself. "You horribly mistake my meaning. Your +practices are your own affair, and in them I decline to dabble. I +merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait. For you have +a fief at Caer Idion, I think?--Very well! I intend to herd your sheep +there, for a week or two, after the honorable example of Apollo. It is +your part to see that Henry knows I am living disguised and +defenceless at Caer Idion." + +The gaunt Welshman chuckled. "Yes, squinting Henry of Lancaster would +cross the world, much less the Severn, to make quite sure of Richard's +death. He would come in his own person with at most some twenty +trustworthy followers. I will have a hundred there; and certain aging +scores will then be settled in that place." Glyndwyr meditated +afterward, very evilly. "Sire," he said without prelude, "I do not +recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have garnered much in travelling!" + +"Why, look you," Richard returned, "I have garnered so much that I do +not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. With age I begin +to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing +very seriously. You barons here believe it an affair of importance who +may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you +take sides between Henry and me. I tell you frankly that neither of +us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can +ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything +save discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the +discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking +disaster. No, Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, +depend upon it, to the burden of _Fools All_. For I am as liberally +endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my +performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would +appraise those of another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive +that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself +about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least, +impossible." + +"I have known the thought," said Owain,--"though rarely since I found +the Englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son, +my Gruffyd, was murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than +the others, people said.... You are as yet the empty scabbard, +powerless alike for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword, +sire, that informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we +are as gods." + +"Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms." + +"We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the +second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at +all." + +"--And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the devil." + +"I greatly fear," said Owain with a sigh, "lest it may be your +irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike. +No, you consider things with both eyes open, with an unmanly +rationality: whereas Sire Henry views all matters with that heroic +squint which came into your family from Poictesme." + +"Be off with your dusty scandals!" said Richard, laughing. + +So then Glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of Caerdyf, +while at Caer Idion Richard Holland abode tranquilly for some three +weeks. There was in this place only Caradawc (the former shepherd), +his wife Alundyne, and their sole daughter Branwen. They gladly +perceived Sire Richard was no more a peasant than he was a curmudgeon; +as Caradawc observed: "It is perfectly apparent that the robe of +Padarn Beisrudd, which refuses to adjust itself to any save highborn +persons, would fit him as a glove does the hand; but we will ask no +questions, since it is not wholesome to dispute the orderings of Owain +Glyndwyr." + +Now day by day would Richard Holland drive the flocks to pasture near +the Severn, and loll there in the shade, and make songs to his lute. +He grew to love this leisured life of bright and open spaces; and its +long solitudes, grateful with the warm odors of growing things and +with poignant bird-noises; and the tranquillity of these meadows, that +were always void of hurry, bedrugged the man through many fruitless +and contented hours. + +Each day at noon Branwen would bring his dinner, and she would +sometimes chat with him while he ate. After supper he would discourse +to Branwen of remote kingdoms, through which, as aimlessly as a wind +veers, he had ridden at adventure, among sedate and alien peoples who +adjudged him a madman; and she, in turn, would tell him curious tales +from the _Red Book of Hergest_,--telling of Gwalchmai, and Peredur, +and Geraint, in each one of which fine heroes she had presently +discerned an inadequate forerunnership of Richard's existence. + +This Branwen was a fair wench, slender and hardy. She had the bold +demeanor of a child who is ignorant of evil and in consequence of +suspicion. Happily, though, had she been named for that unhappy lady +of old, the wife of King Matholwch, for this Branwen, too, had a +white, thin, wistful face, like that of an empress on a silver coin +which is a little worn. Her eyes were large and brilliant, colored +like clear emeralds, and her abundant hair was so much cornfloss, only +it was more brightly yellow and was of immeasurably finer texture. In +full sunlight her cheeks were frosted like the surface of a peach, but +the underlying cool pink of them was rather that of a cloud just after +sunset, Richard decided. In all, a taking morsel! though her shapely +hands were hard with labor, and she rarely laughed; for, as if in +recompense, her heart was tender, and she rarely ceased to smile as +though she were thinking of some peculiar and wonderful secret which +she intended, in due time, to share with you and with nobody else. +Branwen had many lovers, and preferred among them young Gwyllem ap +Llyr, a portly lad, who was handsome enough, though he had tiny and +piggish eyes, and who sang divinely. + +One day this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. "Saxon," +he said, "you appear a stout man. Take your pick of these, then, and +have at you." + +"Such are not the weapons I would have named," Richard answered: "yet +in reason, Messire Gwyllem, I can deny you nothing that means nothing +to me." + +With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In these +unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated, +but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and he managed +somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he contrived +this he never ascertained. + +"I have forgotten what we are fighting about," he observed, after ten +minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; "or, to be perfectly exact, I +never knew. But we will fight no more in this place. Come and go with +me to Welshpool, Messire Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a +conclusion over good sack and claret." + +"Content!" cried Gwyllem; "but only if you yield me Branwen." + +"Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?" +Richard demanded; "like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any +one particular toy? Then devil take me if I am not heartily ashamed of +my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I would speak naught save +commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long +as one is able to approach them in a becoming spirit of levity: it is +only their not infrequent misuse which I would condemn; and in my +opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them +has only himself to blame if his chosen goddess will accept no +burnt-offering except his honor and happiness. Yet since time's youth +have many fine men been addicted to this insane practice, as, for +example, were Hercules and Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and, +indeed, the more I reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of +other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I +ashamed of my sex." + +Gwyllem said: "This lazy gabbling of yours is all very fine. Perhaps +it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not reason." + + +"I was endeavoring to prove that," said Richard gently. Then they went +to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem's horse. Tongue loosened by the +claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to +each rapture Richard affably assented. In his heart he likened the boy +to Dionysos at Naxos, and could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover, +the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the +windows, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content. + +"She does not love me?" Gwyllem cried. "It is well enough. I do not +come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered. +Listen, Saxon!" He caught up Richard's lute. The strings shrieked +beneath Gwyllem's fingers as he fashioned his rude song. + +Sang Gwyllem: + + "Love me or love me not, it is enough + That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is + Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,-- + My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred + With tavern-catches, which that pity of his + Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word, + O Branwen! + + "I have accorded you incessant praise + And song and service, dear, because of this; + And always I have dreamed incessantly + Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days + This man or that shall love you, and at last + This man or that shall win you, it must be + That, loving him, you will have pity on me + When happiness engenders memory + And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past, + O Branwen! + + "Of this I know not surely, who am sure + That I shall always love you while I live, + And that, when I am dead, with naught to give + Of song or service, Love will yet endure, + And yet retain his last prerogative, + When I lie still, and sleep out centuries, + With dreams of you and the exceeding love + I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof, + And give God thanks for all, and so find peace, + O Branwen!" + +"Now, were I to get as tipsy as that," Richard enviously thought, +midway in a return to his stolid sheep, "I would simply go to sleep +and wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep +in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, rather, as he hurls himself with +a splurge, I would perform--I wonder, now, what miracle?" + +For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so +earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so untroubled by +forethought: each least desire controlled him, as varying winds sport +with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the +boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was +superb. "And heigho!" said Richard, "I am attestedly a greater fool +than he, but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded." + +The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He declared +himself a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who perfectly +recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker crossed over +into England. + +Richard whistled. "Now my cousin will be quite sure, and now my +anxious cousin will come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux. And now, +by every saint in the calendar! I am as good as King of England." + +He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades of +grass between his fingers while he meditated. Undoubtedly he would +kill this squinting Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience and +even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort of +vermin, but, hand upon heart, Richard was unable to avow any +particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel's death. Thus crudely to +demolish the knave's adroit and year-long schemings savored actually +of grossness. The spider was venomous, and his destruction laudable; +granted, but in crushing him you ruined his web, a miracle of patient +machination, which, despite yourself, compelled hearty admiring and +envy. True, the process would recrown a certain Richard, but then, as +Richard recalled it, being King was rather tedious. Richard was not +now quite sure that he wanted to be King, and, in consequence, be +daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons. "I +shall miss the little huzzy, too," he thought. + +"Heigho!" said Richard, "I shall console myself with purchasing all +beautiful things that can be touched and handled. Life is a flimsy +vapor which passes and is not any more: presently Branwen will be +married to this Gwyllem and will be grown fat and old, and I shall be +remarried to little Dame Isabel, and shall be King of England: and a +trifle later all four of us shall be dead. Pending this deplorable +consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself." + +Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the latter +send the promised implements to Caer Idion. Richard, returning to the +hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, and grovelling at +the threshold. Her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and +through tearless sobs told of what had happened. A half-hour earlier, +while she and Branwen were intent upon their milking, Gwyllem had +ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. Branwen had called him sot, +had bidden him go home. "That I will do," said Gwyllem and suddenly +caught up the girl. Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist +Gwyllem struck her twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away +with Branwen. + +Richard made no observation. In silence he fetched his horse, and did +not pause to saddle it. Quickly he rode to Gwyllem's house, and broke +in the door. Against the farther wall stood lithe Branwen fighting +silently: her breasts and shoulders were naked, where Gwyllem had torn +away her garments. He wheedled, laughed, swore, and hiccoughed, turn +by turn, but she was silent. + +"On guard!" Richard barked. Gwyllem wheeled. His head twisted toward +his left shoulder, and one corner of his mouth convulsively snapped +upward, so that his teeth were bared. There was a knife at Richard's +girdle, which he now unsheathed and flung away. He stepped eagerly +toward the snarling Welshman, and with both hands seized the thick and +hairy throat. What followed was brutal. + +For many minutes Branwen stood with averted face, shuddering. She very +dimly heard the sound of Gwyllem's impotent fists as they beat against +the countenance and body of Richard, and heard the thin splitting +vicious noise of torn cloth as Gwyllem clutched at Richard's tunic and +tore it many times. Richard did not utter any articulate word, and +Gwyllem could not. There was entire silence for a heart-beat, and the +thudding fall of something ponderous and limp. + +"Come!" Richard said then. Through the hut's twilight he came, as +glorious in her eyes as Michael fresh from that primal battle with old +Satan. Tall Richard came to her, his face all blood, and lifted her in +his arms lest Branwen's skirt be soiled by the demolished thing which +sprawled across their path. She never spoke. She could not speak. In +his arms she rode homeward, passive, and content. The horse trod with +deliberation. In the east the young moon was taking heart as the +darkness thickened, and innumerable stars awoke. Branwen noted these +things incuriously. + +Richard was horribly afraid. He it had been, in sober verity it had +been Richard of Bordeaux, that some monstrous force had seized, and +had lifted, and had curtly utilized as its handiest implement. He had +been, and in the moment had known himself to be, the thrown spear as +yet in air, about to kill and quite powerless to refrain from killing. +It was a full three minutes before he had got the better of his +bewilderment and laughed, very softly, lest he disturb this Branwen, +who was so near his heart.... + +Next day she came to him at noon, bearing as always the little basket. +It contained to-day a napkin, some garlic, a ham, and a small soft +cheese; some shalots, salt, nuts, wild apples, lettuce, onions, and +mushrooms. "Behold a feast!" said Richard. He noted then that she +carried also a blue pitcher filled with thin wine, and two cups of +oak-bark. She thanked him for last night's performance, and drank a +mouthful of wine to his health. + +"Decidedly, I shall be sorry to have done with shepherding," said +Richard as he ate. + +Branwen answered, "I too shall be sorry, lord, when the masquerade is +ended." And it seemed to Richard that she sighed, and he was the +happier. + +But he only shrugged. "I am the wisest person unhanged, since I +comprehend my own folly. Yet I grant you that he was wise, too, the +minstrel of old time that sang: 'Over wild lands and tumbling seas +flits Love, at will, and maddens the heart and beguiles the senses of +all whom he attacks, whether his quarry be some monster of the ocean +or some fierce denizen of the forest, or man; for thine, O Love, thine +alone is the power to make playthings of us all.'" + +"Your bard was wise, no doubt, yet it was not in such terms that +Gwyllem sang of this passion. Lord," she demanded shyly, "how would +you sing of love?" + +Richard was replete and contented with the world. He took up the lute, +in full consciousness that his compliance was in large part cenatory. +"In courtesy, thus--" + +Sang Richard: + + "The gods in honor of fair Branwen's worth + Bore gifts to her:--and Jove, Olympus' lord, + Co-rule of Earth and Heaven did accord, + And Hermes brought that lyre he framed at birth, + And Venus her famed girdle (to engirth + A fairer beauty now), and Mars his sword, + And wrinkled Plutus half the secret hoard + And immemorial treasure of mid-earth;-- + + "And while the careful gods were pondering + Which of these goodly gifts the goodliest was, + Young Cupid came among them carolling + And proffered unto her a looking-glass, + Wherein she gazed, and saw the goodliest thing + That Earth had borne, and Heaven might not surpass." + +"Three sounds are rarely heard," said Branwen; "and these are the song +of the birds of Rhiannon, an invitation to feast with a miser, and a +speech of wisdom from the mouth of a Saxon. The song you have made of +courtesy is tinsel. Sing now in verity." + +Richard laughed, though he was sensibly nettled and perhaps a shade +abashed. Presently he sang again. + +Sang Richard: + + "Catullus might have made of words that seek + With rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways, + The perfect song, or in remoter days + Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek; + But I am not as they,--and dare not speak + Of you unworthily, and dare not praise + Perfection with imperfect roundelays, + And desecrate the prize I dare to seek. + + "I do not woo you, then, by fashioning + Vext analogues 'twixt you and Guenevere, + Nor do I come with agile lips that bring + The sugared periods of a sonneteer, + And bring no more--but just with, lips that cling + To yours, in murmuring, 'I love you, dear!'" + +Richard had resolved that Branwen should believe him. Tinsel, indeed! +then here was yet more tinsel which she must receive as gold. He was +very angry, because his vanity was hurt, and the pin-prick spurred him +to a counterfeit so specious that consciously he gloried in it. He was +superb, and she believed him now; there was no questioning the fact, +he saw it plainly, and with exultant cruelty; then curt as lightning +came the knowledge that what Branwen believed was the truth. + +Richard had taken just two strides toward this fair girl. Branwen +stayed motionless, her lips a little parted. The affairs of earth and +heaven were motionless throughout the moment, attendant, it seemed to +him; and to him his whole life was like a wave that trembled now at +full height, and he was aware of a new world all made of beauty and of +pity. Then the lute fell from his spread out hands, and Richard +sighed, and shrugged. + +"There is a task set me," he said--"it is God's work, I think. But I +do not know--I only know that you are very beautiful, Branwen," he +said, and in the name he found a new and piercing loveliness. + +And he said also: "Go! For I have loved many women, and, God help me! +I know that I have but to wheedle you and you, too, will yield! Yonder +is God's work to be done, and within me rages a commonwealth of +devils. Child! child!" he cried, "I am, and ever was, a coward, too +timid to face life without reserve, and always I laughed because I was +afraid to concede that anything is serious!" + +For a long while Richard lay at his ease in the lengthening shadows of +the afternoon. + +"I love her. She thinks me an elderly imbecile with a flat and reedy +singing-voice, and she is perfectly right. She has never even +entertained the notion of loving me. That is well, for to-morrow, or, +it may be, the day after, we must part forever. I would not have the +parting make her sorrowful--or not, at least, too unalterably +sorrowful. It is very well that Branwen does not love me. + +"Why should she? I am almost twice her age, an aging fellow now, +battered and selfish and too indolent to love her--say, as Gwyllem +loved her. I did well to kill that Gwyllem. I am profoundly glad I +killed him, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it; but, after all, the man +loved her in his fashion, and to the uttermost reach of his gross +nature. I love her in a rather more decorous and acceptable fashion, +it is true, but only a half of me loves her. The other half of me +remembers that I am aging, that Caradawc's hut is leaky, that, in +fine, bodily comfort is the single luxury of which one never tires. I +am a very contemptible creature, the empty scabbard of a man, +precisely as Owain said." This settled, Richard whistled to his dog. + +The sun had set. There were no shadows anywhere as Richard and his +sheep went homeward, but on every side the colors of the world were +more sombre. Twice his flock roused a covey of partridges which had +settled for the night. The screech-owl had come out of his hole, and +bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. There was +as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and this was +very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical that he +trudged away from this star. + +Next morning the Welshmen came, and now the trap was ready for Henry +of Lancaster. + +It befell just two days later, about noon, that while Richard idly +talked with Branwen a party of soldiers, some fifteen in number, rode +down the river's bank from the ford above. Their leader paused, then +gave an order. The men drew rein. He cantered forward. + +"God give you joy, fair sir," said Richard, when the cavalier was near +him. + +The new-comer raised his visor. "God give you eternal joy, my fair +cousin," he said, "and very soon. Now send away this woman before that +happens which must happen." + +"Do you plan," said Richard, "to disfigure the stage of our quiet +pastorals with murder?" + +"I design my own preservation," King Henry answered, "for while you +live my rule is insecure." + +"I am sorry," Richard said, "that in part my blood is yours." + +Twice he sounded his horn, and everywhere from rustling underwoods +arose the half-naked Welshmen. Said Richard: "You should read history +more carefully, Cousin Henry. You might have profited, as I have done, +by considering the trick which our grandfather, old Edward Longshanks, +played on the French King at Mezelais. As matters stand, your men are +one to ten. You are impotent. Now, now we balance our accounts! These +persons here will first deal with your followers. Then they will +conduct you to Glyndwyr, who has long desired to deal with you +himself, in privacy, since that Whit-Monday when you murdered his +son." + +The King began, "In mercy, sire--!" and Richard laughed a little, +saying: + +"That virtue is not overabundant among us of Oriander's blood, as we +both know. No, cousin, Fate and Time are merry jesters. See, now, +their latest mockery! You the King of England ride to Sycharth to your +death, and I the tender of sheep depart into London, without any +hindrance, to reign henceforward over these islands. To-morrow you are +worm's-meat, Cousin Henry: to-morrow, as yesterday, I am King of +England." + +Then Branwen gave one sharp, brief cry, and Richard forgot all things +saving this girl, and strode to her. He had caught up her hard, lithe +hands; against his lips he strained them close and very close. + +"Branwen--!" he said. His eyes devoured her. + +"Yes, King," she answered. "O King of England! O fool that I have been +to think you less!" + +In a while Richard said: "Well, I at least am not fool enough to think +of making you a king's whore. So I must choose between a peasant wench +and England. Now I choose, and how gladly! Branwen, help me to be more +than King of England!" + +Low and very low he spoke, and long and very long he gazed at her, and +neither seemed to breathe. Of what she thought I cannot tell you; but +in Richard there was no power of thought, only a great wonderment. +Why, between this woman's love and aught else there was no choice for +him, he knew upon a sudden. Perhaps he would thus worship her always, +he reflected: and then again, perhaps he would be tired of her before +long, just as all other persons seemed to abate in these infatuations: +meanwhile it was certain that he was very happy. No, he could not go +back to the throne and to the little French girl who was in law his +wife. + +And, as if from an immense distance, came to Richard the dogged voice +of Henry of Lancaster. "It is of common report in these islands that I +have a better right to the throne than you. As much was told our +grandfather, King Edward of happy memory, when he educated you and had +you acknowledged heir to the crown, but his love was so strong for his +son the Prince of Wales that nothing could alter his purpose. And +indeed if you had followed even the example of the Black Prince you +might still have been our King; but you have always acted so +contrarily to his admirable precedents as to occasion the rumor to be +generally believed throughout England that you were not, after all, +his son--" + +Richard had turned impatiently. "For the love of Heaven, truncate your +abominable periods. Be off with you. Yonder across that river is the +throne of England, which you appear, through some lunacy, to consider +a desirable possession. Take it, then; for, praise God! the sword has +found its sheath." + +The King answered: "I do not ask you to reconsider your dismissal, +assuredly--Richard," he cried, a little shaken, "I perceive that until +your death you will win contempt and love from every person." + +"Yes, yes, for many years I have been the playmate of the world," said +Richard; "but to-day I wash my hands, and set about another and more +laudable business. I had dreamed certain dreams, indeed--but what had +I to do with all this strife between the devil and the tiger? No, +Glyndwyr will set up Mortimer against you now, and you two must fight +it out. I am no more his tool, and no more your enemy, my +cousin--Henry," he said with quickening voice, "there was a time when +we were boys and played together, and there was no hatred between us, +and I regret that time!" + +"As God lives, I too regret that time!" the bluff, squinting King +replied. He stared at Richard for a while wherein each understood. +"Dear fool," Sire Henry said, "there is no man in all the world but +hates me saving only you." Then the proud King clapped spurs to his +proud horse and rode away. + +More lately Richard dismissed his wondering marauders. Now he and +Branwen were alone and a little troubled, since each was afraid of +that oncoming moment when their eyes must meet. + +So Richard laughed. "Praise God!" he wildly cried, "I am the greatest +fool unhanged!" + +She answered: "I am the happier for your folly. I am the happiest of +God's creatures." + +And Richard meditated. "Faith of a gentleman!" he declared; "but you +are nothing of the sort, and of this fact I happen to be quite +certain." Their lips met then and afterward their eyes; and each of +these ragged peasants was too glad for laughter. + +THE END OF THE EIGHTH NOVEL + + + + +IX + +THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE + + + "J'ay en mon cueur joyeusement + Escript, afin que ne l'oublie, + Ce refrain qu'ayme chierement, + C'estes vous de qui suis amye." + +THE NINTH NOVEL.--JEHANE OF NAVARRE, AFTER A WITHSTANDING OF ALL OTHER +ASSAULTS, IS IN A LONG DUEL, WHEREIN TIME AND COMMON-SENSE ARE +FLOUTED, AND KINGDOMS ARE SHAKEN, DETHRONED AND RECOMPENSED BY AN +ENDURING LUNACY. + + + + +_The Story of the Navarrese_ + + +In the year of grace 1386, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew (thus +Nicolas begins), came to the Spanish coast Messire Peyre de Lesnerac, +in a war-ship sumptuously furnished and manned by many persons of +dignity and wealth, in order suitably to escort the Princess Jehane +into Brittany, where she was to marry the Duke of that province. There +were now rejoicings throughout Navarre, in which the Princess took but +a nominal part and young Antoine Riczi none at all. + +This Antoine Riczi came to Jehane that August twilight in the hedged +garden. "King's daughter!" he sadly greeted her. "Duchess of Brittany! +Countess of Rougemont! Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of +Toufon and Guerche!" + +She answered, "No, my dearest,--I am that Jehane, whose only title is +the Constant Lover." And in the green twilight, lit as yet by one +low-hanging star alone, their lips and desperate young bodies clung, +now, it might be, for the last time. + +Presently the girl spoke. Her soft mouth was lax and tremulous, and +her gray eyes were more brilliant than the star yonder. The boy's arms +were about her, so that neither could be quite unhappy, yet. + +"Friend," said Jehane, "I have no choice. I must wed with this de +Montfort. I think I shall die presently. I have prayed God that I may +die before they bring me to the dotard's bed." + +Young Riczi held her now in an embrace more brutal. "Mine! mine!" he +snarled toward the obscuring heavens. + +"Yet it may be I must live. Friend, the man is very old. Is it wicked +to think of that? For I cannot but think of his great age." + +Then Riczi answered: "My desires--may God forgive me!--have clutched +like starving persons at that sorry sustenance. Friend! ah, fair, +sweet friend! the man is human and must die, but love, we read, is +immortal. I am wishful to kill myself, Jehane. But, oh, Jehane! dare +you to bid me live?" + +"Friend, as you love me, I entreat you to live. Friend, I crave of the +Eternal Father that if I falter in my love for you I may be denied +even the one bleak night of ease which Judas knows." The girl did not +weep; dry-eyed she winged a perfectly sincere prayer toward +incorruptible saints. Riczi was to remember the fact, and through long +years of severance. + +For even now, as Riczi went away from Jehane, a shrill singing-girl +was rehearsing, yonder behind the yew-hedge, the song which she was to +sing at Jehane's bridal feast. + +Sang this joculatrix: + + "When the Morning broke before us + Came the wayward Three astraying, + Chattering in babbling chorus, + (Obloquies of Aether saying),-- + Hoidens that, at pegtop playing, + Flung their Top where yet it whirls + Through the coil of clouds unstaying, + For the Fates are captious girls!" + +And upon the next day de Lesnerac bore young Jehane from Pampeluna and +presently to Saille, where old Jehan the Brave took her to wife. She +lived as a queen, but she was a woman of infrequent laughter. + +She had Duke Jehan's adoration, and his barons' obeisancy, and his +villagers applauded her passage with stentorian shouts. She passed +interminable days amid bright curious arrasses and trod listlessly +over pavements strewn with flowers. She had fiery-hearted jewels, and +shimmering purple cloths, and much furniture adroitly carven, and many +tapestries of Samarcand and Baldach upon which were embroidered, by +brown fingers that time had turned long ago to Asian dust, innumerable +asps and deer and phoenixes and dragons and all the motley inhabitants +of air and of the thicket; but her memories, too, she had, and for a +dreary while she got no comfort because of them. Then ambition +quickened. + +Young Antoine Riczi likewise nursed his wound as best he might; but at +the end of the second year after Jehane's wedding his uncle, the +Vicomte de Montbrison--a gaunt man, with preoccupied and troubled +eyes--had summoned Antoine into Lyonnois and, after appropriate +salutation, had informed the lad that, as the Vicomte's heir, he was +to marry the Demoiselle Gerberge de Nerac upon the ensuing Michaelmas. + +"That I may not do," said Riczi; and since a chronicler that would +tempt fortune should never stretch the fabric of his wares too thin +(unlike Sir Hengist), I merely tell you these two dwelt together at +Montbrison for a decade: and the Vicomte swore at his nephew and +predicted this or that disastrous destination as often as Antoine +declined to marry the latest of his uncle's candidates,--in whom the +Vicomte was of an astonishing fertility. + +In the year of grace 1401 came the belated news that Duke Jehan had +closed his final day. "You will be leaving me!" the Vicomte growled; +"now, in my decrepitude, you will be leaving me! It is abominable, and +I shall in all likelihood disinherit you this very night." + +"Yet it is necessary," Riczi answered; and, filled with no unhallowed +joy, he rode for Vannes, in Brittany, where the Duchess-Regent held +her court. Dame Jehane had within that fortnight put aside her +mourning. She sat beneath a green canopy, gold-fringed and powdered +with many golden stars, when Riczi came again to her, and the rising +saps of spring were exercising their august and formidable influence. +She sat alone, by prearrangement, to one end of the high-ceiled and +radiant apartment; midway in the hall her lords and divers ladies were +gathered about a saltatrice and a jongleur, who were diverting the +courtiers, to the mincing accompaniment of a lute; but Jehane sat +apart from these, frail, and splendid with many jewels, and a little +sad. + +And Antoine Riczi found no power of speech within him at the first. +Silent he stood before her, still as an effigy, while meltingly the +jongleur sang. + +"Jehane!" said Antoine Riczi, in a while, "have you, then, forgotten, +O Jehane?" + +The resplendent woman had not moved at all. It was as though she were +some tinted and lavishly adorned statue of barbaric heathenry, and he +her postulant; and her large eyes appeared to judge an immeasurable +path, beyond him. Now her lips fluttered somewhat. "I am the Duchess +of Brittany," she said, in the phantom of a voice. "I am the Countess +of Rougemont. The Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of +Toufon and Guerche!... Jehane is dead." + +The man had drawn one audible breath. "You are that Jehane, whose only +title is the Constant Lover!" + +"Friend, the world smirches us," she said half-pleadingly, "I have +tasted too deep of wealth and power. I am drunk with a deadly wine, +and ever I thirst--I thirst--" + +"Jehane, do you remember that May morning in Pampeluna when first I +kissed you, and about us sang many birds? Then as now you wore a gown +of green, Jehane." + +"Friend, I have swayed kingdoms since." + +"Jehane, do you remember that August twilight in Pampeluna when last I +kissed you? Then as now you wore a gown of green, Jehane." + +"But I wore no such chain as this about my neck," the woman answered, +and lifted a huge golden collar garnished with emeralds and sapphires +and with many pearls. "Friend, the chain is heavy, yet I lack the will +to cast it off. I lack the will, Antoine." And now with a sudden shout +of mirth her courtiers applauded the evolutions of the saltatrice. + +"King's daughter!" said Riczi then; "O perilous merchandise! a god +came to me and a sword had pierced his breast. He touched the gold +hilt of it and said, 'Take back your weapon.' I answered, 'I do not +know you.' 'I am Youth' he said; 'take back your weapon.'" + +"It is true," she responded, "it is lamentably true that after +to-night we are as different persons, you and I." + +He said: "Jehane, do you not love me any longer? Remember old years +and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God abhors nothing +so much as unfaith. For your own sake, Jehane,--ah, no, not for your +sake nor for mine, but for the sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, so +you tell me, time has slain!" + +Once or twice she blinked, as if dazzled by a light of intolerable +splendor, but otherwise she stayed rigid. "You have dared, messire, to +confront me with the golden-hearted, clean-eyed Navarrese that once +was I! and I requite." The austere woman rose. "Messire, you swore to +me, long since, eternal service. I claim my right in domnei. +Yonder--gray-bearded, the man in black and silver--is the Earl of +Worcester, the King of England's ambassador, in common with whom the +wealthy dowager of Brittany has signed a certain contract. Go you, +then, with Worcester into England, as my proxy, and in that island, as +my proxy, become the wife of the King of England. Messire, your +audience is done." + +Riczi said this: "Can you hurt me any more, Jehane?--no, even in hell +they cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face +I fling faith like a glove--old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,--and +I will go, Jehane." + +Her heart raged. "Poor, glorious fool!" she thought; "had you but the +wit even now to use me brutally, even now to drag me from this +dais--!" Instead he went away from her smilingly, treading through the +hall with many affable salutations, while the jongleur sang. + +Sang the jongleur: + + "There is a land those hereabout + Ignore ... Its gates are barred + By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt. + These mercifully guard + That land we seek--the land so fair!-- + And all the fields thereof, + Where daffodils flaunt everywhere + And ouzels chant of love,-- + Lest we attain the Middle-Land, + Whence clouded well-springs rise, + And vipers from a slimy strand + Lift glittering cold eyes. + + "Now, the parable all may understand, + And surely you know the name of the land! + Ah, never a guide or ever a chart + May safely lead you about this land,-- + The Land of the Human Heart!" + +And the following morning, being duly empowered, Antoine Riczi sailed +for England in company with the Earl of Worcester; and upon Saint +Richard's day the next ensuing was, at Eltham, as proxy of Jehane, +married in his own person to the bloat King Henry, the fourth of that +name to reign. This king was that same squinting Harry of Derby +(called also Henry of Lancaster and Bolingbroke) who stole his +cousin's crown, and about whom I have told you in the preceding story. +First Sire Henry placed the ring on Riczi's finger, and then spoke +Antoine Riczi, very loud and clear: + +"I, Antoine Riczi,--in the name of my worshipful lady, Dame Jehane, +the daughter of Messire Charles until lately King of Navarre, the +Duchess of Brittany and the Countess of Rougemont,--do take you, Sire +Henry of Lancaster, King of England and in title of France, and Lord +of Ireland, to be my husband; and thereto I, Antoine Riczi, in the +spirit of my said lady"--the speaker paused here to regard the gross +hulk of masculinity before him, and then smiled very sadly--"in +precisely the spirit of my said lady, I plight you my troth." + +Afterward the King made him presents of some rich garments of scarlet +trimmed with costly furs, and of four silk belts studded with silver +and gold, and with valuable clasps, of which the owner might well be +proud, and Riczi returned to Lyonnois. "Depardieux!" his uncle said; +"so you return alone!" + +"I return as did Prince Troilus," said Riczi--"to boast to you of +liberal entertainment in the tent of Diomede." + +"You are certainly an inveterate fool," the Vicomte considered after a +prolonged appraisal of his face, "since there is always a deal of +other pink-and-white flesh as yet unmortgaged--Boy with my brother's +eyes!" the Vicomte said, in another voice; "I have heard of the task +put upon you: and I would that I were God to punish as is fitting! But +you are welcome home, my lad." + +So these two abode together at Montbrison for a long time, and in the +purlieus of that place hunted and hawked, and made sonnets once in a +while, and read aloud from old romances some five days out of the +seven. The verses of Riczi were in the year of grace 1410 made public, +not without acclamation; and thereafter the stripling Comte de +Charolais, future heir to all Burgundy and a zealous patron of rhyme, +was much at Montbrison, and there conceived for Antoine Riczi such +admiration as was possible to a very young man only. + +In the year of grace 1412 the Vicomte, being then bedridden, died +without any disease and of no malady save the inherencies of his age. +"I entreat of you, my nephew," he said at last, "that always you use +as touchstone the brave deed you did at Eltham. It is necessary for a +gentleman to serve his lady according to her commandments, but you +performed the most absurd and the most cruel task which any woman ever +imposed upon her lover and servitor in domnei. I laugh at you, and I +envy you." Thus he died, about Martinmas. + +Now was Antoine Riczi a powerful baron, but he got no comfort of his +lordship, because that old incendiary, the King of Darkness, daily +added fuel to a smouldering sorrow until grief quickened into vaulting +flames of wrath and of disgust. + +"What now avail my riches?" said the Vicomte. "How much wealthier was +I when I was loved, and was myself an eager lover! I relish no other +pleasures than those of love. I am Love's sot, drunk with a deadly +wine, poor fool, and ever I thirst. All my chattels and my acres +appear to me to be bright vapors, and the more my dominion and my +power increase, the more rancorously does my heart sustain its +bitterness over having been robbed of that fair merchandise which is +the King of England's. To hate her is scant comfort and to despise her +none at all, since it follows that I who am unable to forget the +wanton am even more to be despised than she. I will go into England +and execute what mischief I may against her." + +The new Vicomte de Montbrison set forth for Paris, first to do homage +for his fief, and secondly to be accredited for some plausible mission +into England. But in Paris he got disquieting news. Jehane's husband +was dead, and her stepson Henry, the fifth monarch of that name to +reign in Britain, had invaded France to support preposterous claims +which the man advanced to the crown of that latter kingdom; and as the +earth is altered by the advent of winter, so was the appearance of +France transformed by King Henry's coming, and everywhere the nobles +were stirred up to arms, the castles were closed, the huddled cities +were fortified, and on every side arose entrenchments. + +Thus through this sudden turn was the new Vicomte, the dreamer and the +recluse, caught up by the career of events, as a straw is borne away +by a torrent, when the French lords marched with their vassals to +Harfleur, where they were soundly drubbed by the King of England; as +afterward at Agincourt. + +But in the year of grace 1417 there was a breathing space for +discredited France, and presently the Vicomte de Montbrison was sent +into England, as ambassador. He got in London a fruitless audience of +King Henry, whose demands were such as rendered a renewal of the war +inevitable; and afterward got, in the month of April, about the day of +Palm Sunday, at the Queen's dower-palace of Havering-Bower, an +interview with Queen Jehane.[*] + +[*Nicolas unaccountably omits to mention that during the French +wars she had ruled England as Regent with signal capacity,--although +this fact, as you will see more lately, is the pivot of his +chronicle.] + +A curled pert page took the Vicomte to where she sat alone, by +prearrangement, in a chamber with painted walls, profusely lighted by +the sun, and made pretence to weave a tapestry. When the page had gone +she rose and cast aside the shuttle, and then with a glad and wordless +cry stumbled toward the Vicomte. "Madame and Queen--!" he coldly said. + +His judgment found in her a quite ordinary, frightened woman, aging +now, but still very handsome in these black and shimmering gold robes; +but all his other faculties found her desirable: and with a contained +hatred he had perceived, as if by the terse illumination of a +thunderbolt, that he could never love any woman save the woman whom he +most despised. + +She said: "I had forgotten. I had remembered only you, Antoine, and +Navarre, and the clean-eyed Navarrese--" Now for a little, Jehane +paced the gleaming and sun-drenched apartment as a bright leopardess +might tread her cage. Then she wheeled. "Friend, I think that God +Himself has deigned to avenge you. All misery my reign has been. First +Hotspur, then prim Worcester harried us. Came Glyndwyr afterward to +prick us with his devils' horns. Followed the dreary years that linked +me to the rotting corpse which God's leprosy devoured while the poor +furtive thing yet moved, and endured its share in the punishment of +Manuel's poisonous blood. All misery, Antoine! And now I live beneath +a sword." + +"You have earned no more," he said. "You have earned no more, O +Jehane! whose only title is the Constant Lover!" He spat it out. + +She came uncertainly toward him, as though he had been some not +implacable knave with a bludgeon. "For the King hates me," she +plaintively said, "and I live beneath a sword. The big, fierce-eyed +boy has hated me from the first, for all his lip-courtesy. And now he +lacks the money to pay his troops, and I am the wealthiest person +within his realm. I am a woman and alone in a foreign land. So I must +wait, and wait, and wait, Antoine, till he devises some trumped-up +accusation. Friend, I live as did Saint Damoclus, beneath a sword. +Antoine!" she wailed--for now the pride of Queen Jehane was shattered +utterly--"I am held as a prisoner for all that my chains are of gold." + +"Yet it was not until of late," he observed, "that you disliked the +metal which is the substance of all crowns." + +And now the woman lifted toward him her massive golden necklace, +garnished with emeralds and sapphires and with many pearls, and in the +sunlight the gems were tawdry things. "Friend, the chain is heavy, and +I lack the power to cast it off. The Navarrese we know of wore no such +perilous fetters. Ah, you should have mastered me at Vannes. You could +have done so, very easily. But you only talked--oh, Mary pity us! you +only talked!--and I could find only a servant where I had sore need to +find a master. Let all women pity me!" + +But now came many armed soldiers into the apartment. With spirit Queen +Jehane turned to meet them, and you saw that she was of royal blood, +for now the pride of many emperors blazed and informed her body as +light occupies a lantern. "At last you come for me, messieurs?" + +"Whereas," the leader of these soldiers read from a +parchment--"whereas the King's stepmother, Queen Jehane, is accused by +certain persons of an act of witch-craft that with diabolical and +subtile methods wrought privily to destroy the King, the said Dame +Jehane is by the King committed (all her attendants being removed) to +the custody of Sir John Pelham, who will, at the King's pleasure, +confine her within Pevensey Castle, there to be kept under Sir John's +control: the lands and other properties of the said Dame Jehane being +hereby forfeit to the King, whom God preserve!" + +"Harry of Monmouth!" said Jehane,--"ah, my tall stepson, could I but +come to you, very quietly, with a knife--!" She shrugged her +shoulders, and the gold about her person glittered in the sunlight. +"Witchcraft! ohime, one never disproves that. Friend, now are you +avenged the more abundantly." + +"Young Riczi is avenged," the Vicomte said; "and I came hither +desiring vengeance." + +She wheeled, a lithe flame (he thought) of splendid fury. "And in the +gutter Jehane dares say what Queen Jehane upon the throne might never +say. Had I reigned all these years as mistress not of England but of +Europe,--had nations wheedled me in the place of barons,--young Riczi +had been none the less avenged. Bah! what do these so-little persons +matter? Take now your petty vengeance! drink deep of it! and know that +always within my heart the Navarrese has lived to shame me! Know that +to-day you despise Jehane, the purchased woman! and that Jehane loves +you! and that the love of proud Jehane creeps like a beaten cur toward +your feet, in the sight of common men! and know that Riczi is +avenged,--you milliner!" + +"Into England I came desiring vengeance--Apples of Sodom! O bitter +fruit!" the Vicomte thought; "O fitting harvest of a fool's assiduous +husbandry!" + +They took her from him: and that afternoon, after long meditation, the +Vicomte de Montbrison entreated a second private audience of King +Henry, and readily obtained it. "Unhardy is unseely," the Vicomte said +at this interview's conclusion. The tale tells that the Vicomte +returned to France and within this realm assembled all such lords as +the abuses of the Queen-Regent Isabeau had more notoriously +dissatisfied. + +The Vicomte had upon occasion an invaluable power of speech; and now, +so great was the devotion of love's dupe, so heartily, so hastily, did +he design to remove the discomforts of Queen Jehane, that now his +eloquence was twin to Belial's insidious talking when that fiend +tempts us to some proud iniquity. + +Then presently these lords had sided with King Henry, as did the +Vicomte de Montbrison, in open field. Next, as luck would have it, +Jehan Sans-Peur was slain at Montereau; and a little later the new +Duke of Burgundy, who loved the Vicomte as he loved no other man, had +shifted his coat, forsaking France. These treacheries brought down the +wavering scales of warfare, suddenly, with an aweful clangor; and now +in France clean-hearted persons spoke of the Vicomte de Montbrison as +they would speak of Ganelon or of Iscariot, and in every market-place +was King Henry proclaimed as governor of the realm. + +Meantime Queen Jehane had been conveyed to prison and lodged therein. +She had the liberty of a tiny garden, high-walled, and of two scantily +furnished chambers. The brace of hard-featured females whom Pelham had +provided for the Queen's attendance might speak to her of nothing that +occurred without the gates of Pevensey, and she saw no other persons +save her confessor, a triple-chinned Dominican; had men already lain +Jehane within the massive and gilded coffin of a queen the outer world +would have made as great a turbulence in her ears. + +But in the year of grace 1422, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew, +and about vespers--for thus it wonderfully fell out,--one of those +grim attendants brought to her the first man, save the fat confessor, +whom the Queen had seen within five years. The proud, frail woman +looked and what she saw was the inhabitant of all her dreams. + +Said Jehane: "This is ill done. Time has avenged you. Be contented +with that knowledge, and, for Heaven's sake, do not endeavor to +moralize over the ruin which Heaven has made, and justly made, of +Queen Jehane, as I perceive you mean to do." She leaned backward in +the chair, very coarsely clad in brown, but knowing that her coloring +was excellent, that she had miraculously preserved her figure, and +that she did not look her real age by a good ten years. Such +reflections beget spiritual comfort even in a prison. + +"Friend," the lean-faced man now said, "I do not come with such +intent, as my mission will readily attest, nor to any ruin, as your +mirror will attest. Instead, madame, I come as the emissary of King +Henry, now dying at Vincennes, and with letters to the lords and +bishops of his council. Dying, the man restores to you your liberty +and your dower-lands, your bed and all your movables, and six gowns of +such fashion and such color as you may elect." + +Then with hurried speech he told her of five years' events: of how +within that period King Henry had conquered France, and had married +the French King's daughter, and had begotten a boy who would presently +inherit the united realms of France and England, since in the supreme +hour of triumph King Henry had been stricken with a mortal sickness, +and now lay dying, or perhaps already dead, at Vincennes; and of how +with his penultimate breath the prostrate conqueror had restored to +Queen Jehane all properties and all honors which she formerly enjoyed. + +"I shall once more be Regent," the woman said when the Vicomte had +made an end; "Antoine, I shall presently be Regent both of France and +of England, since Dame Katharine is but a child." Jehane stood +motionless save for the fine hands that plucked the air. "Mistress of +Europe! absolute mistress, and with an infant ward! now, may God have +mercy on my unfriends, for they will soon perceive great need of it!" + +"Yet was mercy ever the prerogative of royal persons," the Vicomte +suavely said, "and the Navarrese we know of was both royal and very +merciful, O Constant Lover." + +The speech was as a whip-lash. Abruptly suspicion kindled in her +shrewd gray eyes. "Harry of Monmouth feared neither man nor God. It +needed more than any death-bed repentance to frighten him into +restoring my liberty." There was a silence. "You, a Frenchman, come as +the emissary of King Henry who has devastated France! are there no +English lords, then, left alive of his, army?" + +The Vicomte de Montbrison said; "There is at all events no person +better fitted to patch up this dishonorable business of your +captivity, in which no clean man would care to meddle." + +She appraised this, and said with entire irrelevance: "The world has +smirched you, somehow. At last you have done something save consider +how badly I treated you. I praise God, Antoine, for it brings you +nearer." + +He told her all. King Henry, it appeared, had dealt with him at +Havering in perfect frankness. The King needed money for his wars in +France, and failing the seizure of Jehane's enormous wealth, had +exhausted every resource. "And France I mean to have," the King said. +"Now the world knows you enjoy the favor of the Comte de Charolais; so +get me an alliance with Burgundy against my imbecile brother of +France, and Dame Jehane shall repossess her liberty. There you have my +price." + +"And this price I paid," the Vicomte sternly said, "for 'Unhardy is +unseely,' Satan whispered, and I knew that Duke Philippe trusted me. +Yea, all Burgundy I marshalled under your stepson's banner, and for +three years I fought beneath his loathed banner, until at Troyes we +had trapped and slain the last loyal Frenchman. And to-day in France +my lands are confiscate, and there is not an honest Frenchman but +spits upon my name. All infamy I come to you for this last time, +Jehane! as a man already dead I come to you, Jehane, for in France +they thirst to murder me, and England has no further need of +Montbrison, her blunted and her filthy instrument!" + +The woman nodded here. "You have set my thankless service above your +life, above your honor. I find the rhymester glorious and very vile." + +"All vile," he answered; "and outworn! King's daughter, I swore to +you, long since, eternal service. Of love I freely gave you yonder in +Navarre, as yonder at Eltham I crucified my innermost heart for your +delectation. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face I fling +faith like a glove--outworn, it may be, and God knows, unclean! Yet I, +at least, keep faith! Lands and wealth have I given, up for you, O +king's daughter, and life itself have I given you, and lifelong +service have I given you, and all that I had save honor; and at the +last I give you honor, too. Now let the naked fool depart, Jehane, for +he has nothing more to give." + +While the Vicomte de Montbrison spoke thus, she had leaned upon the +sill of an open casement. "Indeed, it had been better," she said, +still with her face averted, and gazing downward at the tree-tops +beneath, "it had been far better had we never met. For this love of +ours has proven a tyrannous and evil lord. I have had everything, and +upon each feast of will and sense the world afforded me this love has +swept down, like a harpy--was it not a harpy you called the bird in +that old poem of yours?--to rob me of delight. And you have had +nothing, for he has pilfered you of life, giving only dreams in +exchange, my poor Antoine, and he has led you at the last to infamy. +We are as God made us, and--I may not understand why He permits this +despotism." + +Thereafter, somewhere below, a peasant sang as he passed supperward +through the green twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging star alone. + +Sang the peasant: + + "King Jesus hung upon the Cross, + 'And have ye sinned?' quo' He,--. + 'Nay, Dysmas, 'tis no honest loss + When Satan cogs the dice ye toss, + And thou shall sup with Me,-- + Sedebis apud angelos, + Quia amavisti!' + + "At Heaven's Gate was Heaven's Queen, + 'And have ye sinned?' quo' She,-- + 'And would I hold him worth a bean + That durst not seek, because unclean, + My cleansing charity?-- + Speak thou that wast the Magdalene, + Quia amavisti!'" + +"It may be that in some sort the jingle answers me!" then said Jehane; +and she began with an odd breathlessness, "Friend, when King Henry +dies--and even now he dies--shall I not as Regent possess such power +as no woman has ever wielded in Europe? can aught prevent this?" + +"It is true," he answered. "You leave this prison to rule over England +again, and over conquered France as well, and naught can prevent it." + +"Unless, friend, I were wedded to a Frenchman. Then would the stern +English lords never permit that I have any finger in the government." +She came to him with conspicuous deliberation and rested her hands +upon his breast. "Friend, I am weary of these tinsel splendors. What +are this England and this France to me, who crave the real kingdom?" + +Her mouth was tremulous and lax, and her gray eyes were more brilliant +than the star yonder. The man's arms were about her, and of the man's +face I cannot tell you. "King's daughter! mistress of half Europe! I +am a beggar, an outcast, as a leper among honorable persons." + +But it was as though he had not spoken. "Friend, it was for this I +have outlived these garish, fevered years, it was this which made me +glad when I was a child and laughed without knowing why. That I might +to-day give up this so-great power for love of you, my all-incapable +and soiled Antoine, was, as I now know, the end to which the Eternal +Father created me. For, look you," she pleaded, "to surrender absolute +dominion over half Europe is a sacrifice. Assure me that it is a +sacrifice, Antoine! O glorious fool, delude me into the belief that I +surrender much in choosing you! Nay, I know it is as nothing beside +what you have given up for me, but it is all I have--it is all I have, +Antoine!" + +He drew a deep and big-lunged breath that seemed to inform his being +with an indomitable vigor; and grief and doubtfulness went quite away +from him. "Love leads us," he said, "and through the sunlight of the +world Love leads us, and through the filth of it Love leads us, but +always in the end, if we but follow without swerving, Love leads +upward. Yet, O God upon the Cross! Thou that in the article of death +didst pardon Dysmas! as what maimed warriors of life, as what bemired +travellers in muddied byways, must we presently come to Thee!" + +"Ah, but we will come hand in hand," she answered; "and He will +comprehend." + +THE END OF THE NINTH NOVEL + + + + +X + +THE STORY OF THE FOX-BRUSH + + + "Dame serez de mon cueur, sans debat, + Entierement, jusques mort me consume. + Laurier souef qui pour mon droit combat, + Olivier franc, m'ostant toute amertume." + +THE TENTH NOVEL.--KATHARINE OF VALOIS IS LOVED BY A HUNTSMAN, AND +LOVES HIM GREATLY; THEN FINDS HIM, TO HER HORROR, AN IMPOSTOR; AND FOR +A SUFFICIENT REASON CONSENTS TO MARRY QUITE ANOTHER PERSON, NOT ALL +UNWILLINGLY. + + + + +_The Story of the Fox-Brush_ + + +In the year of grace 1417, about Martinmas (thus Nicolas begins), +Queen Isabeau fled with her daughter the Lady Katharine to Chartres. +There the Queen was met by the Duke of Burgundy, and these two laid +their heads together to such good effect that presently they got back +into Paris, and in its public places massacred some three thousand +Armagnacs. That, however, is a matter which touches history; the root +of our concernment is that, when the Queen and the Duke rode off to +attend to this butcher's business, the Lady Katharine was left behind +in the Convent of Saint Scholastica, which then stood upon the +outskirts of Chartres, in the bend of the Eure just south of that +city. She dwelt for a year in this well-ordered place. + +There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint John the +Baptist, the fine August morning that starts the tale. Katharine the +Fair, men called her, with considerable show of reason. She was very +tall, and slim as a rush. Her eyes were large and black, having an +extreme lustre, like the gleam of undried ink,--a lustre at some times +uncanny. Her abundant hair, too, was black, and to-day seemed doubly +sombre by contrast with the gold netting which confined it. Her mouth +was scarlet, all curves, and her complexion was famous for its +brilliancy; only a precisian would have objected that she possessed +the Valois nose, long and thin and somewhat unduly overhanging the +mouth. + +To-day as she came through the orchard, crimson garbed, she paused +with lifted eyebrows. Beyond the orchard wall there was a hodgepodge +of noises, among which a nice ear might distinguish the clatter of +hoofs, a yelping and scurrying, and a contention of soft bodies, and +above all a man's voice commanding the turmoil. She was seventeen, so +she climbed into the crotch of an apple-tree and peered over the wall. + +He was in rusty brown and not unshabby; but her regard swept over this +to his face, and there noted how his eyes shone like blue winter stars +under the tumbled yellow hair, and noted the flash of his big teeth as +he swore between them. He held a dead fox by the brush, which he was +cutting off; two hounds, lank and wolfish, were scaling his huge body +in frantic attempts to get at the carrion. A horse grazed close at +hand. + +So for a heart-beat she saw him. Then he flung the tailless body to +the hounds, and in the act spied two black eyes peeping through the +apple-leaves. He laughed, all mirth to the heels of him. +"Mademoiselle, I fear we have disturbed your devotions. But I had not +heard that it was a Benedictine custom to rehearse aves in tree-tops." +Then, as she leaned forward, both elbows resting more comfortably upon +the wall, and thereby disclosing her slim body among the foliage like +a crimson flower green-calyxed, he said, "You are not a nun--Blood of +God! you are the Princess Katharine!" + +The nuns, her present guardians, would have declared the ensuing +action horrific, for Katharine smiled frankly at him and asked how +could he thus recognise her at one glance. + +He answered slowly: "I have seen your portrait. Hah, your portrait!" +he jeered, head flung back and big teeth glinting in the sunlight. +"There is a painter who merits crucifixion." + +She considered this indicative of a cruel disposition, but also of a +fine taste in the liberal arts. Aloud she stated: + +"You are not a Frenchman, messire. I do not understand how you can +have seen my portrait." + +The man stood for a moment twiddling the fox-brush. "I am a harper, my +Princess. I have visited the courts of many kings, though never that +of France. I perceive I have been woefully unwise." + +This trenched upon insolence--the look of his eyes, indeed, carried it +well past the frontier,--but she found the statement interesting. +Straightway she touched the kernel of those fear-blurred legends +whispered about Dom Manuel's reputed descendants. + +"You have, then, seen the King of England?" + +"Yes, Highness." + +"Is it true that in him, the devil blood of Oriander has gone mad, and +that he eats children--like Agrapard and Angoulaffre of the Broken +Teeth?" + +His gaze widened. "I have heard a deal of scandal concerning the man. +But certainly I never heard that." + +Katharine settled back, luxuriously, in the crotch of the apple-tree. +"Tell me about him." + +Composedly he sat down upon the grass and began to acquaint her with +his knowledge and opinions concerning Henry, the fifth of that name to +reign in England, and the son of that squinting Harry of Derby about +whom I have told you so much before. + +Katharine punctuated the harper's discourse with eager questionings, +which are not absolutely to our purpose. In the main, this harper +thought the man now buffeting France a just king, and he had heard, +when the crown was laid aside, Sire Henry was sufficiently jovial, and +even prankish. The harper educed anecdotes. He considered that the +King would manifestly take Rouen, which the insatiable man was now +besieging. Was the King in treaty for the hand of the Infanta of +Aragon? Yes, he undoubtedly was. + +Katharine sighed her pity for this ill-starred woman. "And now tell me +about yourself." + +He was, it appeared, Alain Maquedonnieux, a harper by vocation, and by +birth a native of Ireland. Beyond the fact that it was a savage +kingdom adjoining Cataia, Katharine knew nothing of Ireland. The +harper assured her that in this she was misinformed, since the kings +of England claimed Ireland as an appanage, though the Irish themselves +were of two minds as to the justice of these pretensions; all in all, +he considered that Ireland belonged to Saint Patrick, and that the +holy man had never accredited a vicar. + +"Doubtless, by the advice of God," Alain said: "for I have read in +Master Roger de Wendover's Chronicles of how at the dread day of +judgment all the Irish are to muster before the high and pious +Patrick, as their liege lord and father in the spirit, and by him be +conducted into the presence of God; and of how, by virtue of Saint +Patrick's request, all the Irish will die seven years to an hour +before the second coming of Christ, in order to give the blessed saint +sufficient time to marshal his company, which is considerable." +Katharine admitted the convenience of this arrangement, as well as the +neglect of her education. Alain gazed up at her for a long while, as +if in reflection, and presently said: "Doubtless the Lady Heleine of +Argos also was thus starry-eyed and found in books less diverting +reading than in the faces of men." It flooded Katharine's cheeks with +a livelier hue, but did not vex her irretrievably; if she chose to +read this man's face, the meaning was plain enough. + +I give you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is +trivial. But it was a day when one entered love's wardship with a +plunge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by bit, as +though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a long while, +with laughter mutually provoked and shared, with divers eloquent and +dangerous pauses. The harper squatted upon the ground, the Princess +leaned over the wall; but to all intent they sat together upon the +loftiest turret of Paradise, and it was a full two hours before +Katharine hinted at departure. + +Alain rose, approaching the wall. "To-morrow I ride for Milan to take +service with Duke Filippo. I had broken my journey these three days +past at Chateauneuf yonder, where this fox has been harrying my host's +chickens. To-day I went out to slay him, and he led me, his murderer, +to the fairest lady earth may boast. Do you not think that, in +returning good for evil, this fox was a true Christian, my Princess?" + +Katharine said: "I lament his destruction. Farewell, Messire Alain! +And since chance brought you hither--" + +"Destiny brought me hither," Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his +eyes. "Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she +continue so." But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be, +Alain shook his tawny head. "Presently you shall know, Highness, but +not now. I return to Chateauneuf on certain necessary businesses; +to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti's livery. +Farewell!" He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the +hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus +Tristran de Leonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, +thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. +She went to her apartments, singing an inane song about the amorous +and joyful time of spring when everything and everybody is happy,-- + + "El tems amoreus plein de joie, + El tems ou tote riens s'esgaie,--" + +and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were born every day, +she reflected, such hosts of women-children, who were not princesses, +and therefore compelled to marry detestable kings. + +Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a +cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant +trees. In the slaty twilight the garden's verdure was lustreless, the +grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed +like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere +a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, +two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers +swaddled by ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional +scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest +as much; and presently came a singing, less musical than that of many +a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart +in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely. + +Sang Alain: + + "O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, + Be not too obdurate to us who pray + That this our transient grant of youth be spent + In laughter as befits a holiday, + From which the evening summons us away, + From which to-morrow wakens us to strife + And toil and grief and wisdom,--and to-day + Grudge us not life! + + "O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, + Why need our elders trouble us at play? + We know that very soon we shall repent + The idle follies of our holiday, + And being old, shall be as wise as they: + But now we are not wise, and lute and fife + Plead sweetlier than axioms,--so to-day + Grudge us not life! + + "O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, + You have given us youth--and must we cast away + The cup undrained and our one coin unspent + Because our elders' beards and hearts are gray? + They have forgotten that if we delay + Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife + Or cord or fever flouts the prayer we pray-- + 'Grudge us not life!' + + "Madam, recall that in the sun we play + But for an hour, then have the worm for wife, + The tomb for habitation--and to-day + Grudge us not life!" + +Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the crotch +of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but the +Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort. + +"You came!" this harper said, transfigured; and then again, "You +came!" + +She breathed, "Yes." + +So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found +adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man's mind not +a grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to leer at his +unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man and woman, +meeting, knew no sweeter terror. + +It was by the minstrel that a familiar earth and the grating speech of +earth were earlier regained. "The affair is of the suddenest," Alain +observed, and he now swung the lute behind him. He indicated no +intention of touching her, though he might easily have done so as he +sat there exalted by the height of his horse. "A meteor arrives with +more prelude. But Love is an arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has +seized it, and accordingly I would now brave hell to come to you, and +finding you there, would esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already +made my prayer to Destiny that she concede me love. Now of God, our +Father and Master, I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For, +God willing, I shall come to you again, even if in order to do this I +have to split the world like a rotten orange." + +"Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!" Katharine said. "You are a +minstrel and I am a king's daughter." + +"Is it madness? Why, then, I think sane persons are to be +commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this some design. Across half +the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Hey, God's face!" Alain swore; +"the foxes which Samson, that old sinewy captain, loosed among the +corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as this fox has set +afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and olives spoilt, a bushel +or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin. +There will be martial argument shortly if you bid me come again." + +"I bid you come," said Katharine; and after they had stared at each +other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It was through a dank +and tear-flawed world that she stumbled conventward, while out of the +east the sun came bathed in mists, a watery sun no brighter than a +silver coin. + +And for a month the world seemed no less dreary, but about Michaelmas +the Queen-Regent sent for her. At the Hotel de Saint-Pol matters were +much the same. Katharine found her mother in foul-mouthed rage over +the failure of a third attempt to poison the Dauphin of Vienne, as +Queen Isabeau had previously poisoned her two elder sons; I might here +trace out a curious similitude between the Valois and that +dragon-spawned race which Jason very anciently slew at Colchis, since +the world was never at peace so long as any two of them existed. But +King Charles greeted his daughter with ampler deference, esteeming her +to be the wife of Presbyter John, the tyrant of Aethiopia. However, +ingenuity had just suggested card-playing for King Charles' amusement, +and he paid little attention nowadays to any one save his opponent at +this new game. + +So the French King chirped his senile jests over the card-table, while +the King of England was besieging the French city of Rouen sedulously +and without mercy. In late autumn an armament from Ireland joined +Henry's forces. The Irish fought naked, it was said, with long knives. +Katharine heard discreditable tales of these Irish, and reflected how +gross are the exaggerations of rumor. + +In the year of grace 1419, in January, the burgesses of Rouen, having +consumed their horses, and finding frogs and rats unpalatable, yielded +the town. It was the Queen-Regent who brought the news to Katharine. + +"God is asleep," the Queen said; "and while He nods, the Butcher of +Agincourt has stolen our good city of Rouen." She sat down and +breathed heavily. "Never was any poor woman so pestered as I! The +puddings to-day were quite uneatable, as you saw for yourself, and on +Sunday the Englishman entered Rouen in great splendor, attended by his +chief nobles; but the Butcher rode alone, and before him went a page +carrying a fox-brush on the point of his lance. I put it to you, is +that the contrivance of a sane man? Euh! euh!" Dame Isabeau squealed +on a sudden; "you are bruising me." + +Katharine had gripped her by the shoulder. "The King of England--a +tall, fair man? with big teeth? a tiny wen upon his neck--here--and +with his left cheek scarred? with blue eyes, very bright, bright as +tapers?" She poured out her questions in a torrent, and awaited the +answer, seeming not to breathe at all. + +"I believe so," the Queen said, "and they say, too, that he has the +damned squint of old Manuel the Redeemer." + +"O God!" said Katharine. + +"Ay, our only hope now. And may God show him no more mercy than has +this misbegotten English butcher shown us!" the good lady desired, +with fervor. "The hog, having won our Normandy, is now advancing on +Paris itself. He repudiated the Aragonish alliance last August; and +until last August he was content with Normandy, they tell us, but now +he swears to win all France. The man is a madman, and Scythian +Tamburlaine was more lenient. And I do not believe that in all France +there is a cook who understands his business." She went away +whimpering, and proceeded to get tipsy. + +The Princess remained quite still, as Dame Isabeau had left her; you +may see a hare crouch so at sight of the hounds. Finally the girl +spoke aloud. "Until last August!" Katharine said. "Until last August! +_Poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin, now that you bid me come +to you again_. And I bade this devil's grandson come to me, as my +lover!" Presently she went into her oratory and began to pray. + +In the midst of her invocation she wailed: "Fool, fool! How could I +have thought him less than a king!" + +You are to imagine her breast thus adrum with remorse and hatred of +herself, the while that town by town fell before the invader like +card-houses. Every rumor of defeat--and the news of some fresh defeat +came daily--was her arraignment; impotently she cowered at God's +knees, knowing herself a murderess, whose infamy was still afoot, +outpacing her prayers, whose victims were battalions. Tarpeia and +Pisidice and Rahab were her sisters; she hungered in her abasement for +Judith's nobler guilt. + +In May he came to her. A truce was patched up, and French and English +met amicably in a great plain near Meulan. A square space was staked +out and on three sides boarded in, the fourth side being the river +Seine. This enclosure the Queen-Regent, Jehan of Burgundy, and +Katharine entered from the French side. Simultaneously the English +King appeared, accompanied by his brothers the Dukes of Clarence and +Gloucester, and followed by the Earl of Warwick. Katharine raised her +eyes with I know not what lingering hope; but it was he, a young Zeus +now, triumphant and uneager. In his helmet in place of a plume he wore +a fox-brush spangled with jewels. + +These six entered the tent pitched for the conference--the hanging of +blue velvet embroidered with fleurs-de-lys of gold blurred before the +girl's eyes,--and there the Earl of Warwick embarked upon a sea of +rhetoric. His French was indifferent, his periods were interminable, +and his demands exorbitant; in brief, the King of England wanted +Katharine and most of France, with a reversion at the French King's +death of the entire kingdom. Meanwhile Sire Henry sat in silence, his +eyes glowing. + +"I have come," he said, under cover of Warwick's oratory--"I have come +again, my lady." + +Katharine's gaze flickered over him. "Liar!" she said, very softly. +"Has God no thunders remaining in His armory that this vile thief +still goes unblasted? Would you steal love as well as kingdoms?" + +His ruddy face was now white. "I love you, Katharine." + +"Yes," she answered, "for I am your pretext. I can well believe, +messire, that you love your pretext for theft and murder." + +Neither spoke after this, and presently the Earl of Warwick having +come to his peroration, the matter was adjourned till the next day. +The party separated. It was not long before Katharine had informed her +mother that, God willing, she would never again look upon the King of +England's face uncoffined. Isabeau found her a madwoman. The girl +swept opposition before her with gusts of demoniacal fury, wept, +shrieked, tore at her hair, and eventually fell into a sort of +epileptic seizure; between rage and terror she became a horrid, +frenzied beast. I do not dwell upon this, for it is not a condition in +which the comeliest maid shows to advantage. But, for the Valois, +insanity always lurked at the next corner, and they knew it; to save +the girl's reason the Queen was forced to break off all discussion of +the match. Accordingly, the Duke of Burgundy went next day to the +conference alone. Jehan began with "ifs," and over these flimsy +barriers Henry, already fretted by Katharine's scorn, presently +vaulted to a towering fury. + +"Fair cousin," the King said, after a deal of vehement bickering, "we +wish you to know that we will have the daughter of your King, and that +we will drive both him and you out of this kingdom." + +The Duke answered, not without spirit, "Sire, you are pleased to say +so; but before you have succeeded in ousting my lord and me from this +realm, I am of the opinion that you will be very heartily tired." + +At this the King turned on his heel; over his shoulder he flung: "I am +tireless; also, I am agile as a fox in the pursuit of my desires. Say +that to your Princess." Then he went away in a rage. + +It had seemed an approvable business to win love incognito, according +to the example of many ancient emperors, but in practice he had +tripped over an ugly outgrowth from the legendary custom. The girl +hated him, there was no doubt about it; and it was equally certain he +loved her. Particularly caustic was the reflection that a twitch of +his finger would get him Katharine as his wife, for before long the +Queen-Regent was again attempting secret negotiations to bring this +about. Yes, he could get the girl's body by a couple of pen-strokes, +and had he been older that might have contented him: as it was, what +he wanted was to rouse the look her eyes had borne in Chartres orchard +that tranquil morning, and this one could not readily secure by +fiddling with seals and parchments. You see his position: this +high-spirited young man now loved the Princess too utterly to take her +on lip-consent, and this marriage was now his one possible excuse for +ceasing from victorious warfare. So he blustered, and the fighting +recommenced; and he slew in a despairing rage, knowing that by every +movement of his arm he became to her so much the more detestable. + +Then the Vicomte de Montbrison, as you have heard, betrayed France, +and King Henry began to strip the French realm of provinces as you +peel the layers from an onion. By the May of the year of grace 1420 +France was, and knew herself to be, not beaten but demolished. Only a +fag-end of the French army lay entrenched at Troyes, where King +Charles and his court awaited Henry's decision as to the morrow's +action. If he chose to destroy them root and branch, he could; and +they knew such mercy as was in the man to be quite untarnished by +previous using. Sire Henry drew up a small force before the city and +made no overtures toward either peace or throat-cutting. + +This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday after +Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in his +apartments at the Hotel de Ville. The King was pursing his lips over +an alternative play, when somebody began singing below in the +courtyard. + +Sang the voice: + + "I can find no meaning in life, + That have weighed the world,--and it was + Abundant with folly, and rife + With sorrows brittle as glass, + And with joys that flicker and pass + Like dreams through a fevered head; + And like the dripping of rain + In gardens naked and dead + Is the obdurate thin refrain + Of our youth which is presently dead. + + "And she whom alone I have loved + Looks ever with loathing on me, + As one she hath seen disproved + And stained with such smirches as be + Not ever cleansed utterly; + And is both to remember the days + When Destiny fixed her name + As the theme and the goal of my praise; + And my love engenders shame, + And I stain what I strive for and praise. + + "O love, most perfect of all, + Just to have known you is well! + And it heartens me now to recall + That just to have known you is well, + And naught else is desirable + Save only to do as you willed + And to love you my whole life long;-- + But this heart in me is filled + With hunger cruel and strong, + And with hunger unfulfilled. + + "Fond heart, though thy hunger be + As a flame that wanders unstilled, + There is none more perfect than she!" + +Malise now came into the room, and, without speaking, laid a fox-brush +before the Princess. + +Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered table. +"So you are in his pay, Malise? I am sorry. But you know that your +employer is master here. Who am I to forbid him entrance?" The girl +went away silently, abashed, and the Princess sat quite still, tapping +the brush against the table. + +"They do not want me to sign another treaty, do they?" her father +asked timidly. "It appears to me they are always signing treaties, and +I cannot see that any good comes of it. And I would have won the last +game, Katharine, if Malise had not interrupted us. You know I would +have won." + +"Yes, Father, you would have won. Oh, he must not see you!" Katharine +cried, a great tide of love mounting in her breast, the love that +draws a mother fiercely to shield her backward boy. "Father, will you +not go into your chamber? I have a new book for you, Father--all +pictures, dear. Come--" She was coaxing him when Sire Henry appeared +in the doorway. + +"But I do not wish to look at pictures," Charles said, peevishly; "I +wish to play cards. You are an ungrateful daughter, Katharine. You are +never willing to amuse me." He sat down with a whimper and began to +pluck at his dribbling lips. + +Katharine had moved a little toward the door. Her face was white. "Now +welcome, sire!" she said. "Welcome, O great conqueror, who in your +hour of triumph can find no nobler recreation than to shame a maid +with her past folly! It was valorously done, sire. See, Father; here +is the King of England come to observe how low we sit that yesterday +were lords of France." + +"The King of England!" echoed Charles, and he rose now to his feet. "I +thought we were at war with him. But my memory is treacherous. You +perceive, brother of England, I am planning a new mouse-trap, and my +mind is somewhat preempted. I recall now that you are in treaty for my +daughter's hand. Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but +I suppose--" He paused, as if to regard and hear some invisible +counsellor, and then briskly resumed: "Yes, I suppose policy demands +that she should marry you. We trammelled kings can never go free of +policy--ey, my compere of England? No; it was through policy I wedded +her mother; and we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in +your ear, son-in-law: Madame Isabeau's soul formerly inhabited a sow, +as Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the +influence of the moon drew it hither." + +Henry did not say anything. Steadily his calm blue eyes appraised Dame +Katharine. And King Charles went on, very knowingly: + +"Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, though by +ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy again, +son-in-law: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the great +hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten flies-- +very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of parricides,--and +afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the Mediterranean hath its +sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at cards. Cheats, sir!--and +I her father!" The incessant peering, the stealthy cunning with which +Charles whispered this, the confidence with which he clung to his +destroyer's hand, was that of a conspiring child. + + +"Come, Father," Katharine said. "Come away to bed, dear." + +"Hideous basilisk!" he spat at her; "dare you rebel against me? Am I +not King of France, and is it not blasphemy for a King of France to be +mocked? Frail moths that flutter about my splendor," he shrieked, in +an unheralded frenzy, "beware of me, beware! for I am omnipotent! I am +King of France, Heaven's regent. At my command the winds go about the +earth, and nightly the stars are kindled for my recreation. Perhaps I +am mightier than God, but I do not remember now. The reason is written +down and lies somewhere under a bench. Now I sail for England. Eia! +eia! I go to ravage England, terrible and merciless. But I must have +my mouse-traps, Goodman Devil, for in England the cats of the +middle-sea wait unfed." He went out of the room, giggling, and in the +corridor began to sing: + + "A hundred thousand times good-bye! + I go to seek the Evangelist, + For here all persons cheat and lie ..." + +All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon +Katharine. Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the +boulder, and they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But +she turned and met his gaze squarely. She noted now for the first time +how oddly his left eyebrow drooped. Katharine said: "And that is the +king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable conquest to overcome +so wise a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? There are cut-throats +in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would scorn the action. Now shall +I fetch my mother, sire? the commander of that great army which you +overcame? As the hour is late, she is by this time tipsy, but she will +come. Or perhaps she is with some paid lover, but if this conqueror, +this second Alexander, wills it she will come. O God!" the girl +wailed, on a sudden; "O just and all-seeing God! are not we of Valois +so contemptible that in conquering us it is the victor who is shamed?" + +"Flower of the marsh!" he said, and his voice pulsed with tender +cadences--"flower of the marsh! it is not the King of England who now +comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry Plantagenet God has led +hither by the hand to punish the sins of this realm, and to reign in +it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet will cast out the Valois from +the throne they have defiled, as Darius cast out Belshazzar, for such +is the desire and the intent of God. But to you comes Alain the +harper, not as a conqueror but as a suppliant,--Alain who has loved +you whole-heartedly these two years past, and who now kneels before +you entreating grace." + +Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he had +fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood that he +believed France to be his by Divine favor and Heaven's peculiar +intervention. He thought himself God's factor, not His rebel. He was +rather stupid, this huge, handsome, squinting boy; and as she +comprehended this, her hand went to his shoulder, half maternally. + +"It is nobly done, sire. But I understand. You must marry me in order +to uphold your claim to France. You sell, and I with my body purchase, +peace for France. There is no need of a lover's posture when hucksters +meet." + +"So changed!" he said, and he was silent for an interval, still +kneeling. Then he began: "You force me to point out that I do not need +any pretext for holding France. France lies before me prostrate. By +God's singular grace I reign in this fair kingdom, mine by right of +conquest, and an alliance with the house of Valois will neither make +nor mar me." She was unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact. +"But I love you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you +not understand that there can be between us no question of expediency? +Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know of; +now in Troyes they meet again,--not as princess and king, but as man +and maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your heart, I think. +And now in all the world there is one thing I covet--to gain for the +poor king some portion of that love you would have squandered on the +harper." His hand closed upon her hand. + +At his touch the girl's composure vanished. "My lord, you woo too +timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced advocates. I am +daughter to the King of France, and next to my soul's salvation I +esteem the welfare of France. Can I, then, fail to love the King of +England, who chooses the blood of my countrymen as a judicious garb to +come a-wooing in? How else, since you have ravaged my native land, +since you have besmirched the name I bear, since yonder afield every +wound in my dead and yet unburied Frenchmen is to me a mouth which +shrieks your infamy?" + +He rose. "And yet, for all that, you love me." + +She could not at the first effort find words with which to answer him, +but presently she said, quite simply, "To see you lying in your coffin +I would willingly give up my hope of heaven, for heaven can afford no +sight more desirable." + +"You loved Alain." + +"I loved the husk of a man. You can never comprehend how utterly I +loved him." + +"You are stubborn. I shall have trouble with you. But this notion of +yours is plainly a mistaken notion. That you love me is indisputable, +and this I propose to demonstrate. You will observe that I am quite +unarmed except for this dagger, which I now throw out of the +window--" with the word it jangled in the courtyard below. "I am in +Troyes alone among some thousand Frenchmen, any one of whom would +willingly give his life for the privilege of taking mine. You have but +to sound the gong beside you, and in a few moments I shall be a dead +man. Strike, then! For with me dies the English power in France. +Strike, Katharine! If you see in me but the King of England." + +She was rigid; and his heart leapt when he saw it was because of +terror. + +"You came alone! You dared!" + +He answered, with a wonderful smile, "Proud spirit! How else might I +conquer you?" + +"You have not conquered!" Katharine lifted the baton beside the gong, +poising it. God had granted her prayer--to save France. Now the past +and the ignominy of the past might be merged in Judith's nobler guilt. +But I must tell you that in the supreme hour, Destiny at her beck, her +main desire was to slap the man for his childishness. Oh, he had no +right thus to besot himself with adoration! This dejection at her feet +of his high destiny awed her, and pricked her, too, with her inability +to understand him. Angrily she flung away the baton. "Go! Ah, go!" she +cried, like one strangling. "There has been enough of bloodshed, and I +must spare you, loathing you as I do, for I cannot with my own hand +murder you." + +But the King was a kindly tyrant, crushing independence from his +associates as lesser folk squeeze water from a sponge. "I cannot go +thus. Acknowledge me to be Alain, the man you love, or else strike +upon the gong." + +"You are cruel!" she wailed, in her torture. + +"Yes, I am cruel." + +Katharine raised straining arms above her head in a hard gesture of +despair. "You have conquered. You know that I love you. Oh, if I could +find words to voice my shame, to shriek it in your face, I could +better endure it! For I love you. With all my body and heart and soul +I love you. Mine is the agony, for I love you! and presently I shall +stand quite still and see little Frenchmen scramble about you as +hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill you. And after that I +shall live! I preserve France, but after I have slain you, Henry, I +must live. Mine is the agony, the enduring agony." She stayed +motionless for an interval. "God, God! Let me not fail!" Katharine +breathed; and then: "O fair sweet friend, I am about to commit a vile +action, but it is for the sake of the France that I love next to God. +As Judith gave her body to Holofernes, I crucify my heart for the +preservation of France." Very calmly she struck upon the gong. + +If she could have found any reproach in his eyes during the ensuing +silence, she could have borne it; but there was only love. And with +all that, he smiled like one who knew the upshot of this matter. + +A man-at-arms came into the room. "Germain--" said Katharine, and then +again, "Germain--" She gave a swallowing motion and was silent. When +she spoke it was with crisp distinctness. "Germain, fetch a harp. +Messire Alain here is about to play for me." + +At the man's departure she said: "I am very pitiably weak. Need you +have dragged my soul, too, in the dust? God heard my prayer, and you +have forced me to deny His favor, as Peter denied Christ. My dear, be +very kind to me, for I come to you naked of honor." She fell at the +King's feet, embracing his knees. "My master, be very kind to me, for +there remains only your love." + +He raised her to his breast. "Love is enough," he said. + +She was conscious, as he held her thus, of the chain mail under his +jerkin. He had come armed; he had his soldiers no doubt in the +corridor; he had tricked her, it might be from the first. But that did +not matter now. + +"Love is enough," she told her master docilely. + +Next day the English entered Troyes and in the cathedral church these +two were betrothed. Henry was there magnificent in a curious suit of +burnished armor; in place of his helmet-plume he wore a fox-brush +ornamented with jewels, which unusual ornament afforded great matter +of remark among the busybodies of both armies. + +THE END OF THE TENTH NOVEL + + + + +THE EPILOGUE + + + "Et je fais scavoir a tous lecteurs de ce Livret que les choses que + je dis avoir vues et sues sont enregistres icy, afin que vous pouviez + les regarder selon vostre bon sens, s'il vous plaist." + +HERE IS APPENDED THE EPILOGUE THAT MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN AFFIXED TO +THE BOOK WHICH HE HAD MADE ACCORDING TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY; AND +WHICH (IN CONSEQUENCE) HE DARED NOT APPRAISE. + + + + +_The Epilogue_ + + +_A Son Livret_ + + +Intrepidly depart, my little book, into the presence of that most +illustrious lady who bade me compile you. Bow down before her +judgment. And if her sentence be that of a fiery death, I counsel you +not to grieve at what cannot be avoided. + +But, if by any miracle that glorious, strong fortress of the weak +consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pass thence, my little +book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live out your +little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your appointed +season perish and be forgotten. Thus may you share your betters' fate, +and be at one with those famed comedies of Greek Menander and all the +poignant songs of Sappho. _Et quid Pandoniae_--thus, little book, I +charge you to poultice your more-merited oblivion--_quid Pandoniae +restat nisi nomen Athenae?_ + +Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with those who +will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and protest +assertions which are only fables. To these you will reply that I, your +maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of the most high and +noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at and about her house of +Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person with Dame Katharine, then +happily remarried to a private gentleman of Wales; and so obtained the +matter of the ninth story and of the tenth authentically. You will say +also that Messire de Montbrison afforded me the main matter of the +sixth and seventh stories, and many of the songs which this book +contains; and that, moreover, I once journeyed to Caer Idion and +talked for some two hours with Richard Holland (whom I found a very +old and garrulous and cheery person), and got of him the matter of the +eighth tale in this dizain, together with much information as concerns +the sixth and the seventh. And you will add that the matter of the +fourth and fifth tales was in every detail related to me by my most +illustrious mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this +information from her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady, +and one that was in youth Dame Philippa's most dear associate. For the +rest you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book +to be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say) +even in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd +times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always +endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me. + +I have pieced together these tales about the women who intermarried, +not very enviably, with the demon-tainted blood of Edward Longshanks, +because it seems to me that these tales, when they are rightly +considered, compose the initial portion of a troubling history. +Whether (as some declare) the taint came from Manuel of Poictesme, or +whether (as yet others say) this poison was inherited from the demon +wife whom Foulques Plantagenet fetched out of hell, the blood in these +men was not all human. These men might not tread equally with human +beings: their wives suffered therefor, just as they that had inherited +this blood suffered therefor, and all England suffered therefor. And +the upshot of it I have narrated elsewhere, in the book called and +entitled _The Red Cuckold_, which composes the final portion of this +history, and tells of the last spilling and of the extinction of this +blood. + +Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people who +will jeer at you, and will say that you and I have cheated them of +your purchase-money. To these you will reply, with Plutarch, _Non mi +aurum posco, nec mi pretium_. Secondly you will say that, of +necessity, the tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; and that +he cannot undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering Orion suitably +when the resources of his shop amount to only a few yards of cambric. +Indeed had I the power to make you better, my little book, I would +have exercised that power to the utmost. A good conscience is a +continual feast, and I summon high Heaven to be my witness that had I +been Homer you had awed the world, another Iliad. I lament your +inability to do this, as heartily as any person living; yet Heaven +willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven these aforementioned +cavillers should rightfully complain. + +So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless indeed +you should elect to answer them by repetition of this song which I now +make for you, my little book, at your departure from me. And the song +runs in this fashion: + + Depart, depart, my book! and live and die + Dependent on the idle fantasy + Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I. + + For I am fond, and willingly mistake + My book to be the book I meant to make, + And cannot judge you, for that phantom's sake. + + Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill + In making you, that never spared the will + To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill. + + Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I + Had wrought in you some wizardry so high + That no man but had listened ... + + They pass by, + And shrug--as we, who know that unto us + It has been granted never to fare thus, + And never to be strong and glorious. + + Is it denied me to perpetuate + What so much loving labor did create?-- + I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate, + And acquiesce, not all disconsolate. + + For I have got such recompense + Of that high-hearted excellence + Which the contented craftsman knows, + Alone, that to loved labor goes, + And daily does the work he chose, + And counts all else impertinence! + +EXPLICIT DECAS REGINARUM + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIVALRY*** + + +******* This file should be named 11752.txt or 11752.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/1/7/5/11752 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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