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Chivalry: Dizain des Reines

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Title: Chivalry: Dizain des Reines

Author: James Branch Cabell

Author of introduction, etc.: Burton Rascoe


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #11752]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIVALRY: DIZAIN DES REINES ***

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 s

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