Life on a Mediaeval Barony
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Title: Life on a Mediaeval Barony
Author: William Stearns Davis
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE ON A MEDIAEVAL BARONY ***
[Illustration: LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES]
Life on a
Mediaeval Barony
A Picture of a Typical
Feudal Community in the
Thirteenth Century
By
William Stearns Davis, Ph.D.
_Professor of History in the
University of Minnesota_
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London
MCMXXIII
LIFE ON A MEDIÆVAL BARONY
Copyright, 1922
By Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U. S. A.
_First Edition_
G-1
To Ephraim Emerton
Master Interpreter of Mediæval History
this book is dedicated by
an ever-grateful pupil.
Table of Contents
Chapter Page
I. The Fief of St. Aliquis; Its History and
Denizens 1
II. The Castle of St. Aliquis 16
III. How the Castle Wakes. Baronial Hospitality 41
IV. Games and Diversions. Falconry and
Hunting. The Baroness's Garden 51
V. The Family of the Baron. Life of the
Women 70
VI. The Matter of Clothes. A Feudal Wedding 88
VII. Cookery and Mealtimes 113
VIII. The Jongleurs and Secular Literature and
Poetry 132
IX. The Feudal Relationship. Doing Homage 146
X. Justice and Punishments 159
XI. The Education of a Feudal Nobleman 176
XII. Feudal Weapons and Horses. Dubbing a
Knight 189
XIII. The Tourney 208
XIV. A Baronial Feud. The Siege of a Castle 224
XV. A Great Feudal Battle--Bouvines 241
XVI. The Life of the Peasants 253
XVII. Charity. Care of the Sick. Funerals 275
XVIII. Popular Religion. Pilgrimages. Superstitions.
Relic Worship 286
XIX. The Monastery of St. Aliquis: Buildings,
Organization. An Ill-Ruled Abbey 312
XX. The Monastery of St. Aliquis: The Activities
of Its Inmates. Monastic Learning 330
XXI. The "Good Town" of Pontdebois: Aspect
and Organization 343
XXII. Industry and Trade in Pontdebois. The
Great Fair 357
XXIII. The Lord Bishop. The Canons. The Parish
Clergy 373
XXIV. The Cathedral and Its Builders 393
Illustrations
Life in the Middle Ages Frontispiece
The Castle of St. Aliquis Page xiv
Typical Castle of the Middle Ages " 17
View of the Court and the Donjon " 25
Upper Hall of the Donjon " 31
Interior of a Thirteenth-century Apartment Facing p. 36
A Thirteenth-century Bed Page 39
A Game of Chess " 54
A Game of Ball " 57
Lady with a Falcon on Her Wrist " 58
The Falcon Hunt " 59
Noble Holding a Falcon in Each Hand " 61
A Hunter " 63
The Stag Hunt " 66
Coiffure of a Noblewoman " 71
Cradle " 81
A King in the Twelfth Century Wearing Pellison " 90
Wreath Made of Metal Flowers Sewed on Braid " 91
Felt Shoe " 93
Winter Costume in the Twelfth Century " 94
Headdress of a Man " 95
Costume of a Nobleman " 96
Coiffure of a Woman " 97
A Royal Marriage in the Thirteenth Century " 99
Cooks " 114
Pork Butchers (Bourges) " 115
Servants Bringing the Food to the Table " 123
Young Girls of the Nobility Serving at the Table " 126
A Feast of Ceremony in the Twelfth Century Facing p. 128
Small Portable Organ of the Thirteenth Century Page 132
Acrobats Page 134
Dancer of the Twelfth Century " 137
Thirteenth-century Harp " 139
Listening to a Trouvère in a Château of the
Thirteenth Century Facing p. 140
Banner of the Thirteenth Century Page 147
The Coat of Arms of the Dukes of Bretagne
(Thirteenth Century) " 148
Seal of the Duke Jean of Bretagne (Thirteenth and
Fourteenth Centuries) " 149
Homage in the Twelfth Century Facing p. 156
Costume of a Nobleman (Thirteenth Century) Page 177
Gothic Writing " 179
A Teacher Holding a Ferule in His Hand " 180
Maneuvering with a Lance in the Thirteenth Century " 185
A Knight at the End of the Thirteenth Century " 190
German Helmets of the Thirteenth Century " 192
A Thirteenth-century Shield " 193
Thirteenth-century Swords " 194
Horse Trappings " 196
A Knight of the Thirteenth Century " 198
A Thirteenth-century Knight " 199
A Thirteenth-century Knight " 200
A Beggar " 201
A Tournament in the Twelfth Century Facing p. 214
Knightly Combat on Foot Page 219
A Combat in the Twelfth Century " 221
A Catapult " 236
An Attack with the Aid of a Tower " 237
A Mantelet in Wood " 238
Attack on a Wall with the Aid of the Sap " 239
Group of Peasants and of Shepherds " 255
Peasants at Work " 260
A Laborer (Thirteenth Century) " 264
Peasant Shoes " 265
A Reaper " 265
A Marriage in the Thirteenth Century " 266
A Plow " 267
A Leper " 278
A Thirteenth-century Doctor " 281
A Thirteenth-century Burial Scene Page 284
A Group of Priests (Thirteenth Century) " 287
A Shrine in the Form of an Altar
(Thirteenth Century) in the Cathedral at Rheims " 299
Richard Coeur de Lion Facing p. 302
View of an Abbey of the Thirteenth Century Page 313
The Galleries of the Cloister of the Abbey
of Mont-Saint-Michel (Thirteenth Century) " 316
The Refectory at the Abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel
(Thirteenth Century) " 318
A Benedictine Monk (Thirteenth Century) " 320
A Piece of Furniture Serving as a Seat and a
Reading Desk " 335
Cloth Merchants " 358
A Commoner (Thirteenth Century) " 362
Money-changers (Chartres) " 365
A Fair in Champagne in the Thirteenth
Century Facing p. 366
The Sale of Peltries (Bourges) Page 370
Episcopal Throne of the Thirteenth Century " 374
A Bishop of the Twelfth Century " 376
A Bishop of the Thirteenth Century " 379
A Deacon (Thirteenth Century) " 388
Notre Dame and the Bishop's Palace at the
Beginning of the Thirteenth Century " 395
Thirteenth-century Window in the Cathedral of Chartres,
Representing Saint Christopher Carrying Christ " 400
Preface
This book describes the life of the Feudal Ages in terms of the
concrete. The discussions center around a certain seigneury of St.
Aliquis. If no such barony is easily identifiable, at least there were
several hundred second-grade fiefs scattered over western Christendom
which were in essential particulars extremely like it, and its Baron
Conon and his associates were typical of many similar individuals, a
little worse or a little better, who abounded in the days of Philip
Augustus.
No custom is described which does not seem fairly characteristic of
the general period. To focus the picture a specific region, northern
France, and a specific year, A.D. 1220, have been selected. Not many
matters have been mentioned, however, which were not more or less
common to contemporaneous England and Germany; nor have many usages
been explained which would not frequently have been found as early as
A.D. 1100 or as late as 1300.
Northern France was _par excellence_ the homeland of Feudalism and
hardly less so of Chivalry, while by general consent the years around
1220 mark one of the great turning epochs of the Middle Ages. We are at
the time of the development of French kingship under Philip Augustus,
of the climax and the beginning of the waning of the crusading spirit,
of the highest development of Gothic architecture, of the full
blossoming of the popular Romance literature, and of the beginning of
the entirely dissimilar, but even more important, Friar movement.
To make the life of the Middle Ages live again in its pageantry and
its squalor, its superstition and its triumph of Christian art and
love, is the object of this study. Many times has the author been
reminded of the _intense contrasts_ between sublime good and extreme
evil everywhere apparent in the Feudal Epoch. With every effort at
impartiality, whether praising or condemning, it is dangerously easy to
write in superlatives.
Although the preparation of this book was not undertaken without that
knowledge and investigation of those mediæval authors, ecclesiastics,
and laymen upon which every significant study of this kind must
rest, every scholar will recognize the author's debt to many modern
specialists. To Th. Wright, Lacroix, Luchaire, Justin H. Smith,
Viollet-le-Duc, and Chéruel the acknowledgments are very specific. To
Leon Gautier they must be more specific still. It is a great misfortune
that his masterpiece, _Le Chivalrie_, is no longer current in a good
English translation. The words in quotation, sprinkled through the
text, are usually from pertinent mediæval writers, except where they
purport to be direct snatches of conversation.
To my colleague in this university, Prof. August C. Krey, who has read
and criticized the manuscript with friendly fidelity and professional
alertness and acumen, there are due many hearty thanks.
W. S. D.
The University of Minnesota.
Minneapolis, Minn.
Life on a
Mediaeval Barony
[Illustration]
Chapter I: The Fief of St. Aliquis: Its History and Denizens.
In the duchy of Quelqueparte there lay, in the later days of the great
King Philip Augustus, the barony of St. Aliquis. Perhaps you may have
trouble in finding any such places upon the maps of Mediæval France. In
that case, I must tell you that they did not lie so far from Burgundy,
Champagne, and Blois that the duke and his vassal, the baron, could not
have many brave feuds with the seigneurs of those principalities, nor
so far from Paris that peddlers and pilgrims could not come hence or go
thither pretty often, nor the baron of St. Aliquis sometimes journey to
the king's court, to do his loyal devoir to his high suzerain, or to
divert himself with many lordly pleasures.
About A.D. 1220, when King Philip Augustus was near his end, there was
exceptional peace in northern France, and conditions around St. Aliquis
were entirely normal. We purpose, therefore (with the help of Our Lady,
of holy St. Aliquis himself, and perhaps also of that very discreet
_fée_ Queen Morgue, "the wife of Julius Cæsar and the mother of King
Oberon"), to visit the aforesaid barony as it existed at that time. We
shall look around us unseen by the inhabitants, but able to ask many
questions and to get pertinent answers. Thereby shall we gather much
knowledge, and that, too, not about St. Aliquis only; for this little
world by itself is a cross-section, as it were, of a great part of
France; nay, of all feudal Europe.
It is fortunate that we are suffered, when we make this return journey
to the Middle Ages, to arrive not long after the year 1200. A century
or two earlier one might have found conditions decidedly more crude,
semi-barbarous, disgusting; one would have indeed been tempted to
doubt whether from so lawless and uncultivated a world any progressive
civilization could really develop. On the other hand, had we postponed
the excursion until, say, A.D. 1400, we would have found a society
already becoming sophisticated and to no slight extent modernized. The
true mediæval flavor would have been partially lost. But A.D. 1220
represents the epoch when the spirit of the Middle Ages had reached
its full development. The world was still full of ignorance, squalor,
and violence, yet there were now plenty of signs of a nobler day.
France was still scattered with feudal castles and tales of baronial
ruthlessness abounded, but the rise of the royal power and the growth
of the chartered communal towns were promising a new political era.
The bulk of the people were still illiterate peasants, and many of
the nobility even felt very awkward when fumbling over books; but the
monasteries had never been so full of worthy activities and of very
genuine learning. Thousands of scholars were trudging to the University
of Paris; and meantime, even in the more starving towns were rising
Gothic churches and cathedrals, combining in their soaring fabrics
not merely the results of supreme architectural genius, but a wealth
of masterpieces of sculpture and of colored glass which were to draw
visitors of later days from the very ends of the earth.
The crusading fervor had somewhat waned, but around the castles there
were still elderly knights who had once followed Richard the Lion
Hearted or Philip Augustus upon the great Third Crusade to Palestine,
likewise a good many younger cavaliers who had shared the military
glory and moral disgrace of the Fourth Crusade, which had ended not
with the recovery of Jerusalem, but the sack and seizure of Christian
Constantinople. At Rome the great and magnanimous Pope Innocent III had
hardly ceased to reign (1216); while the founders of the remarkable
Friar movement--that new style of monasticism which was to carry the
message of the Church closer to the people--St. Francis, the apostle of
love, and St. Dominic, the apostle of learning, were still alive and
active. The world, therefore, was looking forward. The Middle Ages were
close to apogee.
[Sidenote: The Fief of St. Aliquis]
We purpose to tell what may be found on the barony of St. Aliquis,
first at the castle itself and in the household of Messire the
Seigneur, then in the villages of peasants round about; next in the
abbey slightly removed; and lastly in the chartered town and cathedral
seat of the bishop a few miles further off. But first one must ask
about the origin of the principality and how there came to be any
such barony at all, for St. Aliquis would have been an exceptional
seigneury if it had not had considerable history behind it, and had not
represented the growth of several different elements.
The castle of St. Aliquis lies at the junction of two rivers. The
smaller of these, the Rapide, tumbles down from some hills, cutting a
gorge through the dense beech forest until it runs under a precipitous
slope, then dashes into the greater, more placid current of the Claire.
The Claire is an affluent, perhaps of the Seine, perhaps of the Loire.
It is navigable for flat barges a good many miles above its junction
with the Rapide, and the tolls upon this commerce swell the baron's
revenue.
At the triangle formed by the converging streams rises an abrupt rocky
plateau practically inaccessible from the banks of either river and
which can be approached only from the third side, where the land slopes
gently away from the apex of the triangle. Here rise some jagged crags
marking out the place as a natural fortress. Most castles which dot
feudal Europe are thus located in the most advantageous spot in their
respective regions.
Possibly human habitations have existed upon this promontory ever since
God drove Adam and Eve out of Eden. If we consult Brother Boniface,
the librarian at the local monastery, the best-read person in the
district, the good old man will tell us that long before the Romans
came, the ancient Druids ("now in hell") had their pagan altars here,
and sacrificed human victims under a great oak. Some chiseled masonry
found on the spot also indicates an extensive settlement in Roman days,
when Gaul was a province of the Cæsars. Of course, all the pious people
know that under the persecuting Emperor Diocletian, the holy Aliquis
himself, a centurion in the Legions, was shot to death with burning
arrows because he preferred Christ to Jupiter, and that the place
of his martyrdom is at the new abbey church about a league from the
castle.
[Sidenote: Founding of the Castle]
Nevertheless, secular history is not precise until after the time of
the mighty Charlemagne. Under his feeble successor, Charles the Bald,
tradition affirms that the vikings, Scandinavian barbarians, came up
the greater river, ascended the Claire in their long dragon ships; then
on the site of the present castle they established a stockaded camp,
whence they issued to ravage the country. This was about A.D. 870, but
after a year they departed, leaving desolation behind them. About A.D.
880 another band of vikings came with similar foul intent, but they met
a different reception. The saints had raised up a brave protector for
the Christian folk of those lands.
Very uncertain is the ancestry of the redoubtable warrior Heribert, who
about A.D. 875 seized the rocky triangle at the mouth of the Rapide,
and built the first castle of St. Aliquis. Perhaps he was descended
from one of Charlemagne's famous Frankish "counts." He did, indeed,
only what was then being done everywhere to check the Scandinavian
hordes: he built a castle and organized the levies of the region,
hitherto footmen, into an effective cavalry force. This castle was
anything save the later majestic fortress. It was merely a great square
tower of rough masonry, perched on the crag above the streams. Around
it was a palisade of heavy timbers, strengthened on the landward side
by a ditch. Inside this compound were huts for refugees, storehouses
for fodder, and rude stalls for the cattle. To stop passage up the
Claire a heavy chain of iron was stretched across the river and stone
piers were sunk at shallow places, thus forcing boats to pass close
under the fortress in range of descending missiles. Where the chain was
landed there was built another smaller stone tower. All the crossing
then had to be by skiffs, although somewhat later an unsteady bridge
was thrown over the stream.
The second expedition of vikings found that these precautions had
ruined their adventure. They lost many men and a dragon ship when
they tried to force the iron chain. Heribert's new cavalry cut off
their raiding parties. Finally they departed with thinned numbers and
scant spoils. Heribert was hailed as savior of the region, just as
other champions, notably the great Count Odo at the siege of Paris,
won similar successes elsewhere on a larger scale. The vikings had
departed, but Heribert's tower remained. So began the castle of St.
Aliquis.
Heribert had taken possession ostensibly as the king's "man," claiming
some royal commission, but as the power of Charlemagne's feeble
rulers dwindled, Heribert's heirs presently forgot almost all their
allegiance to their distant royal "master." This was merely as seemed
the case about A.D. 900 all through the region then coming to be called
"France." Castles were rising everywhere, sometimes to repel the
vikings, sometimes merely to strengthen the power of some local chief.
Once erected, the lords of those castles were really little princes,
able to defy the very weak central authority. To capture a considerably
less formidable fortalice than St. Aliquis implied a tedious siege,
such as few kings would undertake save in an emergency.
The result was that ere A.D. 1000 Heribert's great-grandsons had almost
ceased to trouble about the king. The person they genuinely feared
was the local Duke of Quelqueparte, another feudal seigneur with more
followers and more castles than they. Partly from prudence, partly from
necessity, they had "done homage" to him, become "his men," and as
his vassals rode to his wars. The dukes, in turn, full of their own
problems, and realizing the strength of St. Aliquis, seldom interfered
in the fief, save on very serious occasions. The barons of St. Aliquis
therefore acted very nearly like sovereign princes. They, of course,
had their own gallows with power of life and death, waged their own
personal wars, made treaties of peace, and even coined a little
ill-shapen money with their own superscription.[1] "Barons by the Grace
of God," they boasted themselves, which meant that they obeyed the duke
and _his_ suzerain, the king, very little, and, we fear, God not a
great deal.
[Sidenote: Turbulent Barons]
In the recent centuries, however, the barony had changed hands several
times. About 1070 the lord had the folly to refuse his ordinary
feudal duty to the Duke of Quelqueparte. The latter roused himself,
enlisted outside aid, and blockaded and starved out the castle of St.
Aliquis. The unfortunate baron--duly adjudged "traitor and felon" by
his "peers," his fellow vassals--was beheaded. The duke then bestowed
the fief, with the hand of the late owner's niece, upon Sire Rainulf,
a younger son of a south-country viscount, who had visited the duke's
court, bringing with him an effective battle-ax and fifty sturdy
followers. Sire Rainulf, however, died while in the First Crusade.
The reigning duke next tried to give the barony to another favorite
warrior, but the son of the late baron proved himself of sturdy stuff.
He fought off his suzerain and enlisted allies from Burgundy. The duke
was forced, therefore, to leave him in peace.
Presently, about 1140, another baron died, survived only by a
daughter. Her uncles and cousins did their best to expel this poor lady
and induced the suzerain duke to close his eyes to their deeds, but,
fortunately, the new baroness had been very pious. The influence of the
great St. Bernard of Clairvaux was exerted, thereby persuading King
Louis VII to warn the duke that if he could not protect his vassals
"the king would do justice." So the Lady Bertrada was given in marriage
to a respectable Flemish cavalier Gui, who ruled the barony with only
the usual wars. He left two sons, Garnier and Henri. Sire Henri, the
younger, lived at the inferior castle of Petitmur, went on the Fourth
Crusade (1203-04), and perished in the fighting around Constantinople
ere the French and Venetians sacked the city. Garnier, the elder,
received, of course, the great castle. He was the uncle of the Baron
Conon III, the son of Henri, and the present lord of St. Aliquis.
It is well said by the monks that the blessed feel joys in paradise all
the keener because a little earlier they have escaped from the pangs
and fires of purgatory. Certes, for all laymen and clerics on the St.
Aliquis fiefs, there was purgatory enough in Baron Garnier's day to
make the present "sage" rule of Baron Conon seem tenfold happy.
The late seigneur ruled about twenty years, filled up with one round of
local wars, oppression of the small, and contentions with the great.
Baron Garnier was assuredly a mighty warrior. Never was he unhorsed in
jousting or in mêlée. His face was one mass of scars and he had lost an
ear. Plenty of landless knights and wolfish men at arms rioted around
his donjon. His provosts and foresters knew how to squeeze the poor
of the seigneury, and by this income and by the ransoms from numerous
captives he was able to rebuild the castle of St. Aliquis according to
the first military art of the day.
[Sidenote: Crimes of Baron Garnier]
But his sins were more than the hairs of his grizzled head. Having
taken dislike to his wife, and the bishop refusing an annulment,
he kept the poor Lady Ada mewed up in one chamber for years, and,
according to many stories, loaded her with chains and spared not
tortures, until in mercy she died. However, he had plenty of less
regular consorts. The castle courts had swarmed with loud women,
the favorites of himself and his familiars, and with their coarse,
unacknowledged brats. No pretty peasant girl's honor was safe in those
parts. As for the prisoners--after Messire Conon came into power it
was a marvel the quantity of human bones, gnawed by the rats, which
they took out of the lower dungeons, as well as how they released four
wretches who had been incarcerated in the dark so long that they were
blinded. Needless to say, the compartments of the gallows never lacked
their swinging skeletons. Women still hush their squalling children
with, "Be silent--or Baron Garnier will get you!"
Yet with all these deeds this baron affected great hospitality. He kept
a roaring hall, with ready welcome for any cavalier who enjoyed deep
drinking and talking of horses, women, falcons, and forays; and a good
many seigneurs found his alliance useful. So he continued his evil ways
until (praised be Our Lady of Mercies) he came to a fit end. Thrice he
had been excommunicated by the bishop. Thrice he had been readmitted
to ghostly favor, thanks to large gifts toward the new cathedral at
Pontdebois. Then he let his men murder a priest who was traveling with
a precious chalice. So he was excommunicated a fourth time. While in
this perilous state (though boasting that he would soon make his new
terms with the Church) his companion in sin, Suger of the Iron Arm,
quarreled with him over their cups and ran him through with a boar
spear. The baron lived just long enough to see Suger hewn in pieces
by his comrades. Then he died (priestless, of course, and unabsolved)
cursing God and crying piteously for help from the devil. Christians
cross themselves when they think of his fate hereafter.
Garnier left no legitimate children. He was on very cold terms with his
brother's widow, the Lady Odelina, who was rearing her two sons and
daughter at Petitmur; but Odelina had faced her brother-in-law down
and clung tightly to her own little fief. She had given her children
a "courteous" and pious education, and induced a neighboring seigneur
to take her eldest son, Conon, to "nourish" as his squire, and rear to
be a knight. At length came her reward. The youth was knighted by the
Count of Champagne three weeks before his evil uncle perished. Then
the suzerain duke was glad to have St. Aliquis pass to so competent a
vassal as young Sire Conon.
This is a bare suggestion of the contentions, feuds, and downright
wars of which the barony has been the scene, and yet St. Aliquis has
probably been freer from such troubles than most of its neighbors.
[Sidenote: Baronial Fiefs and Vassals]
Although this castle is the center of Baron Conon's power, it is by
no means his only strong place. He has three other smaller castles
(besides Petitmur, which will go to his brother) that he sometimes
inhabits, but which he ordinarily rules through castellans. In the
twenty-odd villages upon the fief there are some ten thousand peasants
whom he governs through his provosts.[2] Also, there depend on him
his own "noble" vassals--about twelve "sires," petty nobles each
with his own small castle or tower, hamlet of peasants, and right
to "low justice." These vassals follow the St. Aliquis banner and
otherwise contribute to the baron's glory. That seigneur himself is
likewise "advocate" (secular guardian) of the neighboring Abbey of St.
Aliquis--an honorable post involving delicate dealings with the lord
abbot. Also, a few leagues away lies the "good town" of Pontdebois. The
baron, as will be explained, has very important relations with that
city. In addition he "holds" of the bishop there resident some farms
with hunting and fishing rights. For this inferior fief he does homage,
of course, not to the Duke of Quelqueparte, but to the Bishop of
Pontdebois. Some years previous, when the duke and bishop were at war,
the baron was obligated to send twenty knights to fight for the duke,
but also six to fight for the bishop. The Scriptures warn us against
trying "to serve two masters"; but the baron happily made shift to keep
the two contingents of his little array from engaging with one another
until his two overlords had made peace!
In addition to all the above, Conon holds still another small castle at
quite a distance, for which he does homage to the Duke of Burgundy--a
fact promising more complications when Quelqueparte and Burgundy (as
is most likely) go to war. Finally, he holds a large farm from his
otherwise equal, the Baron of Harcourt. Here he is sure to cut his
feudal devoir to a minimum, and leave the Lord of Harcourt to consider
whether to pocket his pride, risk a "private war," or attempt a lawsuit
before their mutual suzerain, the Duke of Quelqueparte.[3]
The Baron Conon would gladly be the direct vassal of the king. The
higher your suzerain the higher, on the whole, your own glory in the
feudal firmament; but the duke would resent bitterly any attempt to get
his vassals away and all the other first-class nobles would support
him. Baron Conon must wait, therefore, perhaps until the present
elderly duke is dead and the duchy falls under feeble heirs. Then he
will find the astute king, if Philip Augustus is still reigning, only
too willing and able to meet him halfway. At present, however, Conon
is on good terms with the duke, although he is just as jealous himself
to prevent his own sires from "holding" directly from the duke as the
latter is to check the baron's going over to the king. Everywhere there
is this friction over "subinfeudation." "The vassal of my vassal is
_not_ my vassal": that is the angry comment daily.
All in all, the seigneury of St. Aliquis thus covers three hundred
square miles, whereof about one-third is controlled by the baron as his
personal domain and the remainder by his vassals. Perhaps there are two
hundred similar baronies and countships dotting France, some larger,
some smaller, but in their histories, feudal relationships, and general
problems much alike. This fief, however, is especially fortunate in
that the baron possesses an old charter, wrung from some tottering
Carolingian king, giving him the right to collect a sack of grain, a
large truss of hay, or a similar quota in kind from every loaded barge
traversing down the navigable Claire; also to levy a copper obol for
every Christian foot passenger, and three obols for every mounted
traveler or Jew (mounted or walking) crossing the very important bridge
by the castle. These tolls give messire many fine suits of armor, buy
silk gowns for the baroness, and make all the local seigneurs anxious
to marry their daughters to the baron's sons as soon as the boys can be
knighted.
[Sidenote: A Superior Type of Baron]
St. Aliquis, we have said, is happy in its present seigneur. Monks,
villeins, and petty nobles agree in praising Baron Conon. When a
seigneur is practically a sovereign, everything depends upon his
character. If the saints desire to punish certain Christians for their
sins, let them merely send them an evil, or only an inefficient,
quarrelsome baron! Like the unlamented Garnier, he can soon make their
lives into a perfect Gehenna.
Conon III has now ruled for more than ten years. He has kept out of
all private wars but one, a feat almost exceptional; but in that
one war he struck so hard and so skillfully that his opponent, the
Viscount of Foretvert, swore on the relics to a peace which cost him
a village of peasants and the transfer of two petty sires to the St.
Aliquis fealty. Conon fought also in the great battle of Beauvais so
as to win the personal praise of the king himself. He compounded with
the abbey over the division of the income of a farm in a manner which
left him and the abbot firm friends--a singular piece of diplomacy.
Better still, he held to his point about some hunting rights with the
Bishop of Pontdebois, and finally won most of his claims without being
even temporarily subjected to excommunication. His peasants pay their
imposts loyally, for the baron not merely protects them from the raids
of brigands and rival feudatories; he also represses worse pillagers
still, his own seigneurial officers, who were ravaging harpies in all
the little thatched villages through Baron Garnier's day. Therefore,
Conon is called "a very gentle seigneur," which means that he is every
inch a lord and which term does not prevent him from swinging a heavy
sword, and from knocking down a villein with his own fist when there is
need of teaching a lesson.
[Sidenote: A Baronial Family]
As for Conon's family, his good mother, Lady Odelina, is now resting
under the stones of the abbey church; but she lived to see her
first-born wedded to Adela, the daughter of a rich Picard sire, a dame
of many virtues. The marriage has been blessed with two healthy sons,
François and Anseau--the pampered tyrants of all the castle folk.
The baron's household also includes his younger brother Aimery, who
has just reached the age for knighthood, and his marriageable sister
Alienor. So far the family had been marvelously harmonious. There has
been none of those passages at arms between elder and younger brothers
which often make a castle the antechamber to hell. Adela is "the very
_gentle_ dame"--beloved of husband and revered by vassals and villeins,
but whose "gentleness," like her husband's, by no means keeps her from
flogging her maids when their sins deserve it. Alienor is already going
to tourneys and has presented at least three young knights with her
stockings to tie to their lances; but she knows that it is a brother's
duty to find a husband for one's sister, and Conon has promised that
whoever he selects will be young, brave, and kindly. Therefore Alienor
is not borrowing trouble. As for Aimery, he is proud of being almost
as good a hawker and jouster as his brother. He will soon be knighted
and rule over Petitmur, but his head is full of a visit to the king's
court, of winning vast favor, and finally of being given the only
daughter and heiress of a great count--in short, of possessing a fief
bigger than St. Aliquis.
There, then, is the little world, ruled by persons perhaps a little
more honorable and kindly than the run of North French barons, but by
no means of impossible virtue.
It is June, A.D. 1220. The sun is just rising. Let us enter St. Aliquis
as the warders unbar the gates; for the castle is the heart of the
feudal civilization.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Long before the assigned date of this narrative, some king
or other potentate had assuredly given the lords of St. Aliquis
_immunity_--_i.e._, exemption from ordinary jurisdiction, taxation,
etc., by outside powers, with corresponding privileges for the local
seigneurs themselves.
[2] On some fiefs, as on the royal domain at this time, there would be
a higher seigneurial officer, the _bailli_, set over the provosts.
[3] The Baron of St. Aliquis was fortunate if his feudal relationships,
conflicting overlords, etc., were not even more complicated than here
indicated. There was nothing "simple" about the composition of a feudal
barony!
Chapter II: The Castle of St. Aliquis.
The castle makes the feudal ages possible. It is because western Europe
is covered with thousands of strongholds, each of which can stand off
a considerable army, that we have the secular institutions of the
thirteenth century. To be the owner and lord of at least one castle is
the dream of every nobleman, and in fact until he can hoist his own
banner from his own donjon he hardly has a defined place in the feudal
hierarchy.
[Sidenote: The Castle of St. Aliquis]
As we have seen, the castle of St. Aliquis is now nearly three hundred
and fifty years old. Since it has been continuously inhabited by
enterprising owners, its structure has been as continuously changing.
However, if we had come to the barony only fifty years ago, we would
have found a decidedly primitive structure. The general plan of
Heribert's original stronghold was then still retained: first, on the
landward side of the triangle above the two converging rivers there
was a rather deep moat, next a parapet whereof the lower part was made
of earth taken from this same moat, and upon the mound rose a strong
palisade of tree trunks. Within the palisade were barns, outbuildings,
and barracks for such of the baron's men as did not live in the inner
stronghold. Then last of all was the donjon, the castle proper--a huge
square tower built with little art, but which defied attack by mere
solidity. The entrance to this grim tower was by a steep inclined plane
leading to a small door in the second story. In case of danger, if
the palisade were forced, the seigneur and his men retreated into the
tower, knocked down the wooden gangway, and shouted defiance to the
enemy. The mass and height of the donjon baffled any ordinary methods
of attack save that of blockade and starvation--and there would be six
months' supply of wheat, salt beef, and ale in the tower vaults.
[Illustration: TYPICAL CASTLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
(Without large barbican court)]
Nevertheless, this seemingly impenetrable fortress did not suffice. In
the first place, superior methods of siege warfare were developing: the
stoutest fortifications could be cracked.[4] In the next place, if the
donjon were hard to enter, it was almost equally hard to sally forth
from it. No rapid sortie could be made from the door in the second
story; the defense must be wholly passive. Finally, this stark masonry
tower was a most uncomfortable place, with its cavernous "halls" barely
lighted by tiny loopholes, frigid in winter, stifling in summer,
unsanitary--in short, almost intolerable for habitation by a large body
of men. After the First Crusade (1094-99) numerous cavaliers came home
with great tales of the fortresses of the Byzantines and the Saracens.
During the twelfth century, consequently, castle architecture underwent
a remarkable transformation. Richard the Lion Hearted built Château
Gaillard in Normandy. His mighty rival, Philip Augustus, built the
famous Louvre to dominate Paris, and erected other new-style castles
with cylindrical towers at Montargis, Poissy, Dourges, and elsewhere.
Already by 1220 the plans are being drawn for a great castle at Coucy
(built between 1223 and 1230) which is to be almost a model for all
subsequent fortress builders, until the advent of gunpowder.
[Sidenote: Castle Rebuilt Scientifically]
Baron Garnier, whatever his crimes, had certainly understood the art
of war. He rebuilt St. Aliquis in a thoroughly scientific manner,
employing a learned masterbuilder and "sage," an elderly Fleming who
had seen the best fortifications of the Infidels and had lived long
in those famous Syrian-Christian fortresses like Krak des Chevaliers,
which by the mere excellence of construction had enabled small
garrisons of western "Franks" to defy the full power of Saladin.
Instead of a mere ditch, palisade, and then a single vast tower, St.
Aliquis has consequently become a huge complex of defenses within
defenses, each line of resistance a little harder to penetrate and
with every outwork commanded by an inner fortification. If at last you
come to the central donjon, it still looms up above you--defiant and
formidable, and you can have your fill of desperate fighting, only
perhaps to be bloodily repulsed in the end. Of course, the donjon can
indeed be starved out, but it is not very often that any enemy of St.
Aliquis will have resources and persistence enough to keep his troops
together until the castle supplies are exhausted. He must either
get possession pretty quickly or not at all--and Garnier's Fleming
certainly took pains he should not get in quickly!
In examining St. Aliquis or its rivals, one must remember that they
are the creations of men who have devoted most of their thought to the
problems of war. Every possible contingency has been anticipated. The
architect and his employer have practically spent their lives studying
"how can a castle be made to hold out as long as possible?" Being,
despite their sins, highly intelligent men, it is not surprising that
they produce remarkable results.
We are approaching the castle as the morning mists are lifting from
the Claire and the Rapide. Ahead of us, out of the dispersing fog, is
rising what seems a bewildering mass of towers, walls, battlements gray
and brown, with here and there a bit of green, where a little earth
has been allowed to lodge and a few weeds shoot forth. High above all
soars the mass of the great central tower, the donjon, from the summit
of which Baron Conon's banner is now idly trailing.
We come down a road that takes us over the toll bridge across the
Rapide and find ourselves in a kind of parade ground where there are
only a few cattle sheds and possibly a rude cabin or two for such
of the baron's herdsmen as must sleep outside overnight. This open
ground is the scene for martial exercises, rallyings of the vassals,
and even for tournaments. Many people are headed toward the castle,
mostly from the village of peasants just westward across the river;
but there is also the subprior on a mule, riding over from the abbey,
and also a messenger who has spurred down very early from Pontdebois
with a communication from the bishop. As we near the castle its tower
and inner and outer wards become more distinct. We readily believe
that it took Garnier's architect three years to carry through the
work; that all the peasants of the barony had been put to grievous
_corvées_ (forced labor) digging, hewing and dragging stone, or working
the great derricks; and that ten expert stonecutters and fully eighty
less skilled masons had been hired in from Paris, Rheims, and Orléans,
besides a master mason who demanded rewards that seemed outrageous for
a mere villein and not for a belted knight.
[Sidenote: The Barbican and Lists]
These speculations end as we come, not to the castle, but to a
semicircular palisade inclosing the regular gate on the landward side.
This palisade is too high to scramble over; the piles are too sharply
pointed and stout enough to stand considerable battering. This outwork
is the barbican--the first of the long series of obstacles awaiting
the foe. Of course, it could not be defended in a regular siege, but
its purpose is to stop any surprise attack long enough to enable the
garrison to rally, close the great gate, and man the walls. The whole
crowd of folk now entering make for the heavy wooden barrier which is
just being thrown open by a rather sleepy porter. Since it is a time
of profound peace, he lets them all stream inside, merely requiring
everyone to leave his weapons in his custody. We pass unchallenged,
thanks to the kind _fée_ aforementioned, who has rendered us as
invisible as the owner of Gyges's ring. If, however, we had been guests
of noble rank, we would have proceeded onward to the inner gate and
rung loudly on a heavy metal gong hanging there. One of the baron's
squires would then have greeted us. If we had been the baron's equal
or superior in the social scale, Conon himself would next have come
down to lead us in; if somewhat inferior, we would have been conducted
by the squire to the great hall, where we would have removed hood
and gloves before the magnate presented himself. But we have much to
examine ere we penetrate the seigneurial hall.
Once inside the barbican, one discovers that between this extreme
barrier and the fortress proper there is another open space with a
road, and another place for equestrian exercises extending from the
Claire straight over to the abrupt slopes of the Rapide. The palisades
run all the way from river to river. This space within the barbican
forms the lists, where two young sergeants are breaking in a balky
stallion. The lists are a great convenience in peace time, but the real
utility is in war, and they are even more important in the castles that
have land on every side. They supply a good road by which men can be
hurried round the castle circuit in reasonable safety. On the other
hand, if the enemy suddenly forces the barriers, he finds himself most
awkwardly in a limited space between the palisade and the castle moat,
with all the arbalists (crossbows) playing on him from the walls above.
Inside the lists and next to the masonry walls runs the moat. It is
some twenty feet wide, partly filled now with scum-covered rain water.
In the spring the varlets have great joy here hunting frogs, but as the
year advances it assuredly breeds mosquitoes. It constitutes, however,
another formidable barrier to an enemy, and that is its sole object.
After crossing these lists, the path leads straight to the drawbridge.
This has just been lowered by means of heavy counterpoises swung on
a kind of trestle overhead, for even in peace times no seigneur will
sleep soundly before the drawbridge is up. The portcullis, the frame
of iron bars which is lowered whenever the bridge is raised, has also
been hoisted in its groove by the gateway. The heavy oaken gates, faced
with metal, have not been unbarred, however. A smaller door, just big
enough for a horse, has been opened in one of them, admitting to the
castle proper. Despite the earlier scrutiny at the barbican, one now
catches a watchful eye at the small window in the turret close beside
the portcullis. The chief porter has a very responsible position. Many
a fortress has been lost because he has been careless or unfaithful. He
would, in any case, be chargeable if he admitted unwelcome guests or
idle rascals. Porters are often accused of being gruff, insolent, fat,
and lazy, but part of their bad name comes because they have to repel
bad characters.
[Sidenote: The Bailey, Gates and Towers]
And now we are about to enter the outer ward, or bailey, of the
castle of St. Aliquis. The walls and towers of these outer defenses
are less formidable than those of the inner ward; yet they seem of
massive thickness and imposing altitude. There is a solid round tower
covering either side of the gate; to about fifteen feet these twain
rise above the moat naked and sheer, then are pierced with narrow
slits intended, not to let in light, but to permit archers to cover
every inch of the way from the barbican to the drawbridge. Even if the
foe should cross the moat, shatter the portcullis, and split open the
heavy doors, he would be merely at the beginning of terrible hours of
ax- and sword-play. He would be in a narrow and low vaulted passage,
with many loopholes on either side for archers, and also with slits
in the ceiling for pouring down boiling oil, seething pitch, molten
lead, and other pleasantries; and if he rushed past all these forms of
death into the courts, there, behind him, capable still of very stout
defense, would rise the two strong gate towers, rendering every attempt
to re-enforce the original attacking party a dice-throwing with death,
and making retreat equally dangerous. Few leaders, therefore, will be
foolish enough to try to storm St. Aliquis simply by a desperate rush
against the gate.
From the two gate towers, right and left, there extends a considerable
stretch of sheer wall terminating at either extremity with two more
towers which mark the corners on the landward side of the fortress.
These four towers, of course, by projecting far beyond this curtain
wall, are posted so as to permit a steady fire of missiles on any
enemy who may somehow ensconce himself close under the wall. The two
sections of curtain wall themselves are some dozen feet thick, with a
firm walk along their summit, protected by a stone parapet. To enable
the defenders, however, to drop stones and other forms of destruction
upon attackers who may be under the very base of the wall and defying
the bolts from the towers, a structure of heavy timbers can be built
out all along the wall overhanging the moat. These wooden hordings
are strong enough to withstand many stones from the casting engines,
but they can sometimes be set on fire. In a siege, therefore, they
will be covered with raw hides. The same will also be put over the
conical wooden roofs which cap the towers. Since this is a time of
peace, however, the hordings stand weather-stained and bare. To cover
the entire woodwork with hides will be one of the first tasks of the
garrison in case of a serious alarm.
As we survey the outer walls of the castle, it is clear that no enemy
will try to batter down the towers. Even if he could penetrate their
shells, he would merely find himself in a dark, cavernous, vaulted
chamber, with the defenders flinging down death from above. He would
then have to bore through the inner wall, nearest the court, under
every disadvantage. The towers are built so completely of masonry that
it is impossible to burn them. Winding stairs, leading up through the
stonework, conduct from one stage to another; and these staircases are
so narrow and tortuous that a single warrior with an ordinarily lively
ax can stop a hundred men ascending.[5] The attack, therefore, must
be on the curtain walls. But even here, supposing one has scaled the
battlements, more troubles are awaiting. The only way downward from
the curtain walls is through the towers at the end of the parapets. To
leap into the court inside means broken bones. The gangways along the
parapet are intercepted at several points by wooden bridges. These
can be easily knocked away, leaving yawning gaps defying any leaper.
If you reach the towers they are all barred, and the arbalists are
shooting down on the captured gangways from a dozen loopholes. Finally,
be it said, each tower is a little fortress by itself. It has its own
cistern, fireplace for cooking, and storeroom. Even if isolated, its
garrison can hold out stoutly. So much for the task of attacking merely
the outer ward of St. Aliquis.
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE COURT AND THE DONJON]
[Sidenote: Inner Court and Donjon]
The problems of the towers and the curtain wall detain one long,
for they sum up the fundamental principles of thirteenth-century
fortifications. But now before us opens the broad court of the bailey
itself, the scene of much of the homely life of the castle; in fact,
the place now swarms with people busy with all kinds of activities.
The pavement is none too clean. There are large muck piles, and one
sees hens and a few pigs and dogs foraging everywhere. A genuine
village really exists inside the bailey. To the right of the gate is
a rambling, thatched-roof stable where in a long row of stalls the
fifty-odd horses of the seigneur are champing their morning fodder.
Near the stables stand tall ricks of hay. Behind these are a second
line of inelegant wooden structures: they are the barracks for the less
favored castle servitors, and for a part of the heavy-handed men at
arms whom Baron Conon keeps for instant duty.
[Sidenote: Buildings and Life in the Bailey]
On the left side of the gate are several more buildings. To be noted
are a commodious carpenter shop where saw and hammer are already
plying; a well-appointed smithy where at one ringing forge the
baroness's white palfrey is being reshod, and at another the master
armorer is putting a new link into a mail shirt. The castle smith's
position is no sinecure. He has to keep a great quantity of weapons
and armor in constant order; he has to do all the recurring small
jobs around the great establishment; and in emergency to manufacture
quantities of lance heads and arbalist bolts, as well as perhaps to
provide the metal work for siege engines on which may rest the fate
of the castle. Conon's first armorer is accordingly one of the most
important and best rewarded of all the servitors.
Besides these workshops there is a long storehouse, a repository for
not merely the food, but all other kinds of supplies needful in a
siege. Near by stands a smaller, shedlike structure, puzzling at first
to strangers, but which explains itself by the shrill screams and cries
issuing thence. It is the baron's hawk house, the mews, where the chief
falconer is now feeding the raw meat to the great hawks and falcons in
which his noble masters take delight. Close to these secular buildings,
however, there rises somewhat incongruously an elegant Gothic chapel,
with soaring pinnacles, a rose window at the end of the small nave,
sculptured saints flanking the portal, and within one finds glorious
stained glass, more saints' images and carvings, and a rich altar. This
is the little castle church to which very many dwellers of St. Aliquis,
including messire and madame, had repaired piously at gray dawn, and
where now good Father Grégoire has just finished a rather hasty mass.
The bailey, in short, is overrunning with activities. Horses are
neighing, cows are being milked, an overladen donkey is braying.
Yonder in one corner is a small building with a tall chimney. Here is
the seigneur's great oven, whither not merely the castle folk, but a
great number of the peasants, resort to bake their bread. In front of
the chapel bubbles a little fountain, and chattering women, scantily
attired, are filling their water pots. Children in various degrees of
nakedness and dirtiness play everywhere. Noises of every kind blend
in a hubbub. Lastly we notice, close to the inner drawbridge, another
building again with a tall chimney. This is the castle cookhouse,
where the dinners are prepared for the great hall within. A glance
through the door shows the vast fireplace where one can roast a whole
sheep or a small beef entire. The cookhouse is located here because
of the danger of fire in the inner castle, and because the position
is convenient for the great number of the servitors who must eat in
their barracks. When it is mealtime, however, this arrangement compels
a prodigious running to and fro all through the dinner hour between
kitchen and hall on the part of the twenty-odd sergeants and squires
who serve Baron Conon's guests and family. It bothers not the appetites
of pious Christians that their food is cooked amid contending odors
and that many of the doings near the cookhouse make its condition
extraordinarily unsanitary.
We have now crossed the bailey and its teeming life. Before us rises
the inner ward of the castle. Here are the gate and the walls of the
bailey over again, but far more pretentious and formidable. There is
another moat filled with muddy water; another drawbridge larger than
the outer one. The two gate towers are higher; their structures are
thicker, more solid. The curtain walls are so lofty that arbalistiers
thereon can pick off the enemy who may have gained the parapet of the
outer defenses. Finally, between the gate towers and the towers at
the end of the curtains, both to right and left, there is interposed
an extra tower, making the flanking fire much more close and deadly.
Consequently, the foe who could force his way into the bailey would
thus probably find it merely a bloody cockpit. The retreating garrison
would set fire to all the rude wooden buildings, and rake the outer
court with their bows and engines. If it would cost dearly to win the
bailey, what would it not cost to storm the castle proper?
[Sidenote: Inner Court, Donjon and Palais]
The gate to the inner ward is flung wide, but the portcullis still
slides in its grooves, being dropped every night to make sure that low
fellows from the barracks do not prowl around the seigneurial residence
in the darkness. Just at present swarms of people are going to and fro
between the two great sections of the castle, and jostling and laughing
in the narrow passages. As we pass through to the inner ward we realize
a certain touch of refinement. The pavement is cleaner. Most of the
servitors are better dressed and better mannered. Before us opens the
great court of the castle, set with stone flags and reasonably well
swept. Here the baron and his brother will practice their martial
exercises when the weather is bad and they must avoid the tilting
grounds. Here the horses will be mounted when Conon, Adela, and all
their noble friends assemble to ride out for hunting or hawking. On
either side the stately towers set into the walls frown downward, but
our gaze is ahead. Straight before one rises first a rather elegant
stone building with large pointed windows and a high sloping roof, and
then looming before that an enormous round citadel--one that dwarfs all
the other towers. It stands at the apex of the triangle; on one side
is the castle court, but to right and left the crags at its base are
falling precipitously away to the Rapide and the Claire.
The stone building is the _palais_, the actual residence of the baron.
The giant tower is the donjon, the great keep of the castle, built on
the site of Heribert's old stronghold, but twenty times as formidable.
The _palais_ is nearest to us, but since the apartments of the seigneur
are there, and we wish to examine these later, it is best to pass
around one end thereof and visit the donjon first.
Baron Garnier had built his donjon about one hundred and ten feet high
and some fifty-five feet in diameter, with walls a dozen feet thick.
This size is large, but not extraordinary. At Coucy they are planning
a tower two hundred and twenty-five feet high and ninety-five feet in
diameter. If Garnier had built a little earlier he would have made it
square, like that pitiless tower at Loches, which is only one hundred
feet high, but is seventy-six feet on its longest side. To enter the
donjon we go over still another drawbridge, although the ditch below
is dry, and on penetrating a small door in the masonry we wind up a
passageway through the thick wall. Passing from the bright morning
light of the court, one seems plunged into pitchy darkness. Strangers
stumble up steep stairways, with here and there a twinkle of light from
loopholes a couple of feet high, although barely wide enough at their
openings to allow the free flight of an arrow. Far below may be caught
glimpses of the twinkling, rushing Rapide, and of the bright green
country stretching away in the distance.
[Sidenote: The Donjon]
When St. Aliquis was rebuilt by Baron Garnier's architect, although
the donjon was greatly improved, much of the old masonry of the
original tower was retained, as well as the general arrangement of the
staircases, loopholes, and succession of _halls_, chambers, and lofts.
We see what the castle resembled in Heribert's day. By a turn or two in
the gaunt entrance we come to the original great hall of the castle.
It is offensively dark; the windows are mere loopholes at the end
of deep, cone-shaped passages let into the walls. Even on this balmy
June morning the atmosphere is clammy. As our eyes adjust themselves,
however, we see that we are in a huge vaulted chamber with a great
fireplace, and with a kind of wooden gallery about eight feet above
the floor, around the entire circuit. In this great chamber can be
assembled a good fraction of the entire garrison. The seigneur or his
spokesmen standing in the center or near the fireplace can give orders
which every man present can understand. Directions can thus be given
for any move needful for the defense of the castle.
[Illustration: UPPER HALL OF THE DONJON]
As we shall see, there is now a newer and better hall in the more
modern and airy _palais_, but the older hall is still used at great
feasts for the overflow of guests. Even now are standing long oaken
tables, duly hacked by the trencher knives of many boisterous diners;
and on the walls--blackened by the smoke from the great fireplace--are
hanging venerable trophies of the chase, antlers, the head of a bear,
great boar tusks, as well as an array of all kinds of hunting weapons
used by departed generations.
If we were to follow the staircase down from the hall we would come
to an even darker vaulted apartment used sometimes as a supplementary
dormitory for the humbler guests, but also (to the astonishment of
later-day medical usage) with small rooms set off to be used as a kind
of sick ward; because every physician, whether schooled at Salerno,
Cordova, or Montpellier, will tell you that darkness is the friend of
health and that few invalids can hope to get better unless they are
kept as shaded and sequestered as possible.
[Sidenote: The Prison and the Watch Tower]
If we wished to pursue still lower, descending a black staircase with
lanterns, the rocks would begin to drip dampness. We could hear the
rushing of the Rapide against the base of the castle. The journey would
end at a barred iron door. Within would be a fetid, reeking chamber lit
only by two or three tiny chinks in the masonry, and with the bare rock
for the floor. Here is Baron Conon's prison. He is counted a merciful
seigneur, yet he thinks nothing of thrusting genuine offenders therein
and keeping them for weeks, if not months, before releasing or hanging.
Lucky if Maître Denis, the turnkey, remembers to bring down a coarse
loaf each day, and if the rats do not devour the prisoners' toes; but
we shall consider all such nice matters later[6].
It is alleged that from these lower vaults there is an underground
passage leading from the castle to a secret sallyport at the foot
of the precipice by the Rapide. If a passage exists, however, it is
known only to Conon and a very few trusted retainers. But not all such
stories are false; many castles have such secret passages; and at Coucy
they are quietly planning to introduce a rather elaborate system of the
same. Quite possibly St. Aliquis possesses something of this nature.
Far pleasanter is it now to ascend from the main hall through a couple
of stages of upper and airier chambers (now used as apartments by part
of the castle folk) until by a dizzy ladder we reach the summit of the
donjon itself. Here on one edge of the broad platform is a little round
turret carrying us still higher. From the turret flutters the orange
banner of St. Aliquis, with some kind of a black dragon (in memory,
possibly, of the viking raid) broidered upon it, and the arrogant
legend of the noble family, "Rather break than bend." To lower this
banner were a horrid disgrace. Never is it to be struck unless the
castle surrenders, when it will be sadly flung into the moat.
Under the flagstaff is a stout projecting beam rigged with a pulley.
Here is a gibbet in case the baron wishes to hang offenders as a
warning for the countryside. Fortunately, however, Adela has a dislike
to seeing the corpses dangling, and has persuaded Conon to order his
recent hangings at the ordinary gallows across the Claire by the
village. On the flag turret is always a watchman; day or night some
peasant must take his turn, and even in peace he has no sinecure. He
must blow on his great horn at sunrise, at "cover fire" at night,
when the baron's hunt rides out and returns, and again when a strange
retinue approaches the gate. The whole wide countryside spreads in a
delightful panorama below him at present, but on winter nights, when
every blast is howling around the donjon, the task is less grateful. No
wonder that peasants impressed for this service complain that "watchmen
have the lot of the damned."
So back through the donjon and again to the castle court. The donjon is
purely military. In times of peace it is a mere storehouse, prison, and
supplementary barrack for the seigneur's people. In war it is the last
position where the garrison can stand desperately at bay. A hundred
years earlier Adela and her sister-in-law, Alienor, would have lived
out most of their days in the cheerless dark chambers directly above
the main hall. Now they are more fortunate. They dwell in the elegant
Gothic arched _palais_.
[Sidenote: Great Hall of the Palais]
The _palais_ consists of a long, somewhat narrow building thrusting
out into the inner court, and of other structures resting against the
western curtain wall on one side, but with their larger inner windows
looking also into the court. The rooms are high, with enormous
fireplaces where great logs can warm the apartments in winter. The
ceilings are ribbed and vaulted like a church, and some of the masonry
is beautifully carved. Where the bare walls are exposed they are often
covered with a stucco on which are sketched fresco scenes somewhat
after the style of stiff Byzantine paintings, or the famous tapestry of
Queen Mathilde at Bayeux. All the tints are flat red, yellow, or brown,
without perspective or fine lines, and in a kind of demi-silhouette.
Little touches of green, violet, and blue relieve the bareness, and
despite many awkward outlines and other limitations many of the scenes
are spirited as well as highly decorative. Some of the pictures are
religious. We notice "Christ on the Cross" between the "Synagogue" and
the "New Law," a "Last Judgment," an episode in the life of St. Aliquis
himself; also many secular pictures based often on the jongleur's
epics. Thus from the "Song of Roland" there is the tearing by wild
horses of the traitor Ganelon.
The windows in this _palais_ betray the luxury of the owner. They are
not closed by wooden shutters, as are most other apertures in the
castle. They are of glass, with very small panes set in lead. The panes
in the smaller rooms are uncolored, although hardly of transparent
whiteness, but in the huge dining hall they are richly colored as in
a church, giving a jewel-set galaxy of patron saints (_e.g._, St.
Martin, the warrior saint of France) and of knights and paladins from
Charlemagne and King Artus down, gazing benignantly upon the feasters
below.
This new hall is, of course, the finest apartment in the castle. Here
amid wood- and stone-work deeply carved the baron's household sits down
to dinner. It is, however, more than a mere dining room. Great feudal
ceremonies, such as the receiving of homage, here take place. Hither
also in bad weather or on winter evenings nearly all the castle folk
will resort. Messire will sit on the dais upon his canopied chair;
everybody else will wedge in as closely as possible, and after infinite
chatter, jesting, dice playing, and uproar the ever-popular jongleurs
will take station near the fireplace, do their tricks, sing songs, or
recite romances. The hall is, in short, the focus of the peaceful life
of the castle.
There are other rooms in the _palais_, but, considering the number
of people who have to live therein, they seem rather few. There is
little real privacy in St. Aliquis. The baron has a special closet
indeed, where he can retire and hope that he is not overheard, but
the great chamber for himself and the baroness is ordinarily full of
servitors. Next to the chamber is a second room where the baron's sons
sleep while they are little, and where honored guests can be lodged.
Conon's brother and sister have each a large apartment, but there seems
a singular lack of anterooms, boudoirs, and other retiring rooms. It
is perfectly good manners to ask noble guests to share the same rooms
with the family; and a couple of the baroness's maids will sleep on
pallets within her chamber, with the baron's favorite squire just
outside the door. As for the lesser folk at night, they often stretch
unceremoniously on the tables or even on the floor in the main hall.
The possession of a strictly private room is indeed a decided luxury;
even a great noble is often able to go without it.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A THIRTEENTH-CENTURY APARTMENT
From the restoration by Viollet-Le-Duc. At the left the chair where
sits the seigneur, the bed separated by a screen from the rest of the
hall; at the back, between the two windows, a cupboard; opposite the
fireplace, a large table. Tapestries ornament the walls.]
[Sidenote: Tables, Rushes and Tapestries in Hall]
The furniture of these apartments seems scanty, but it is at least very
solid. In the hall there are lines of tables set upon trestles, faced
by long backless seats. Here it is often needful to remove these tables
to arrange for a feudal ceremony or for a dance; but at one end
of the apartment is a raised dais, and at right angles to the others
runs the ponderous oaken table of the master. Conon faces the hall
from a high carved chair under a wooden canopy. The other seats on the
dais have the luxury of backs and arms. The fireplace is an enormous
construction, thrusting far into the room, where long logs on high
andirons can heat the stonework so it will glow furiously for hours.
To keep off the heat in winter there are fire screens of osier, but of
course in summer these disappear. Every festival day the paved floors
of the rooms in the _palais_ are strewn, if possible, with new rushes
and flowers--roses and lilies, flags and mint, making a soft crackling
mass under one's feet. They are fragrant and pleasant while fresh, and
even through the winter are allowed to remain to protect against the
chill of the floor. By springtime they are dried and are very filthy,
for the diners throw their bones and bits of bread and meat into them,
and the dogs and cats roaming about cannot devour all of such refuse.
Certain seigneurs, indeed are introducing the use of "Saracen carpets,"
gorgeous rugs either imported from the East or made up in France after
imported patterns; but these are an expensive innovation, and Conon as
yet keeps to his river rushes.
Of another luxury, however, he is rightly proud. Stowed away
in carefully guarded cupboards is a quantity of admirable wall
tapestries, some of the precious sendal (taffeta) silk, some of hardly
less valuable Sicilian woolen stuff. Their designs are of blazing
magnificence. There is one of great elaboration showing "The Seven
Virtues and the Seven Vices," another giving a whole sequence of scenes
concerning Charlemagne. But such precious ornaments must be kept for
great occasions. The order, "Hang the tapestries," is a sign to the
servitors that Conon contemplates a tourney or a great feast or a visit
from the duke. For to-day the _palais_ contents itself with its simple
fresco decoration.
The bedroom furniture is equally simple. The chamber of the baron and
his wife is lit by three windows with arched tops pierced into the
masonry, overlooking the castle court. There is a little table by the
fireplace holding a board of chessmen and there are a few backless
stools and long narrow benches. In the window places are comfortably
upholstered "She and I" seats facing one another. Opposite the
fireplace is a chair of state for the baron, with high carved back and
arms, a wooden canopy of equally heavy carving, and a footstool covered
with red silk. There are several ponderous wardrobes, and especially a
number of very massive iron-bound chests containing valuable garments,
jewels, and the like. Bureaus and chests of drawers hardly exist in
this age, and ordinary chests take their place. Indeed, no bedroom is
fitted properly unless it has a solid chest at the foot of the bed
for the prompt reception of any guest's belongings. When a castle is
taken the cry, "Break open the chests!" is equivalent to calling to the
victors, "Scatter and pillage!"
Near one of the windows in the wall there is also a large crucifix
carved of dark wood, and beneath it on a shelf is a small silver box
richly chased with figures of saints and angels. This is a reliquary
containing a trophy brought from the Holy Land by a crusader--a cluster
of hair of St. Philip the Apostle, likewise some ravelings of the robe
of St. Anna, mother of the Virgin. Before these sacred objects the
baron and baroness kneel on red-silk cushions and say their prayers
morning and night.
[Illustration: A THIRTEENTH CENTURY BED
Reconstructed by Viollet-Le-Duc, from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque
nationale.]
[Sidenote: Furniture and Beds]
But the central object of the chamber is the bed. To have a fine bed
for the master and mistress is the ambition of every feudal household.
It stands under a great canopy, with heavy curtains of blue taffeta.
The bed itself, a great mass of feather mattresses and gorgeously
embroidered coverlets, projects its intricately carved footboard far
into the room. The whole structure is set upon a platform. When the
baron and baroness have retired, their attendants will pull the thick
curtains and practically inclose them in their own secluded bedroom.
The curtains cut off air, but that is no disadvantage, because every
physician tells you that night air is most unhealthful.
This nearly completes the furnishings of the chamber, save for various
perches, wooden hooks, and racks set here and there for clothes and
sometimes for the baroness's hunting hawks, and two bronze lamps
swinging on chains, which give a very imperfect illumination. If more
brilliance is needed (and if the great fireplace is not throwing out a
glare) one can do as they do in the great hall for extra lighting--set
resinous torches in metal holders along the walls. However, for
ordinary purposes the baron and baroness prefer the less odorous wax
candles. In fact, a very tall wax candle stands near to the bed and is
allowed to burn all night. This keeps away pixies and the Devil, and
makes things generally more cheerful for Christians.
The other apartments of the castle are similarly furnished, although
with less magnificence. Of course, in the barracks for the lower
servitors and the men at arms each man is lucky if he has a large bag
crammed with straw for a bed, a solid blanket, and a three-legged stool
whereon to sit by day.
Thus have been inspected exterior, the stone, and the wooden aspects of
St. Aliquis. The task is next to see the doings of the people who give
to the unyielding fortress its significance and life.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] See chap. xiv.
[5] Often at dark turns in these towers the floor would be made of
wooden scaffolding, easy to destroy; and the attacker would (if not
wary) suddenly tumble to the cellar of the tower.
[6] See ch. x.
Chapter III: How the Castle Wakes. Baronial Hospitality.
Whatever the sins of the men of the thirteenth century, they are not
late risers. The lamps and candles are so poor that only rarely, when
there is a great festival or imperative work to be performed, do
persons remain about many hours after sunset. In winter the castle
folks possibly spend nearly half of their entire time in bed; in
summer, thanks to the long evenings, they would hardly get sufficient
sleep save for a noon siesta.
Some seigneurs will actually rise considerably before sunup, hear mass,
mount their high turret, survey the landscape, then descend to order
the washing horn to be blown. We hear, too, of ladies who rise at dusk,
have chaplains chant matins while they are throwing on some clothes,
then go to the regular chapel mass, next complete their toilet and
take a walk in their garden, all before breakfast. There are, indeed,
stories of noble folk sleeping even in summer right up to 6 A.M., but
these backslidings follow only a deplorable carouse. Conon and Adela
are neither indefatigable risers, nor among the slothful. They are
seldom found in bed at cock-crow, and the baron is already warning his
young sons that "he who sleeps too long in the morning becomes thin and
lazy." So at gray dawn William, Conon's first body squire, has yawned
on his pallet by the chamber door, tugged on his own clothes, then
hastened to the great bed to assist his master to dress. This is one
of a good squire's prime duties, but he need not divest his lord of any
nightgown. Nightdresses are no more used in the thirteenth century than
are table forks. Conon has been sleeping between the sheets, with only
the clothing of a newborn babe, although, curiously enough, he wraps
around his head a kind of napkin, precursor of the later nightcap.
When the baron has donned a part of his clothes Gervais, the second
squire, brings in a metal basin of water and a white towel. The age
is one of great contradictions in matters of cleanliness. Baron Conon
washes his face and hands carefully and frequently. He also takes
complete baths pretty often, using large wooden tubs filled with hot
perfumed water. Personally he seems an extraordinarily neat man, and
so are all the higher-rank people. But the age has never heard of
polluted wells and other breeding spots for malignant fevers. Flies
are harmless annoyances. Numerous evil smells can hardly be prevented,
any more than cold weather--the saints give us grace to bear them! In
short, cleanliness stops with care of the person. Preventive sanitation
is as unknown as are the lands which may lie across the storm-tossed
Atlantic--"the Sea of Darkness."
There is an old rhyme which is supposed to give the right times for the
routine of the day:
"Rise at five, dine at nine,
Sup at five, to bed at nine,
Is the way to live to be ninety and nine."
Sometimes dinner came later than nine, but never, if possible, much
after ten. People have sometimes become distressed because the meal had
to be postponed until noon. This was natural, for everybody is stirring
at daybreak and for breakfast probably has had only a few morsels of
bread washed down with thin wine--a poor substitute even for the
coffee and rolls of the later continental breakfast.
[Sidenote: A Baron's Routine Business and Diversions]
Having dressed and washed, the baron goes down to mass at the chapel.
Attending daily mass is a duty for every really pious seigneur. One
of Garnier's infamies had been his gross irregularity in this matter.
If there had been no chapel in the bailey, the service could have
been held in a vestibule to the hall of the _palais_. After mass
is over, Conon is ready for business or pleasures. It is a time of
peace; and, truth to tell, the baron would really be not a little
glad of the excitement, bustle, and strenuous preparation which come
with the outbreak of war. The list of things he can do to divert
himself in times of public quiet seems limited: He can hunt, fish,
fence, joust, play chess, eat and drink, listen to the songs of the
jongleurs, hold his court, walk in the meadows, talk with the ladies,
warm himself, have himself cupped and bled, and watch the snow fall.
This last amusement is hardly practicable in June. Being bled is not
commonly reckoned a regular sport in other ages! Neither can he hold
court--receive his vassals and dispense justice--save at intervals.
The jongleurs ordinarily reserve themselves for the evenings. Conon's
secret hankering for a war is, therefore, somewhat explicable.
If this is a fortunate day, however, the horn on the turret will blow,
and then the gong at the bailey gate will reverberate. A visitor of
noble rank has arrived. Nothing can ordinarily be more welcome in
castle communities. Little isolated fractions of humanity as they are,
with the remainder of the world seemingly at an extreme distance, the
coming of a stranger means a chance to hear news of the king's court,
of the doings of the Emperor Frederick II, of the chances of another
crusade, of the latest fashions in armor, of the newest methods of
training hawks, nay, possibly of rumors of another brave war like
that which culminated in the glorious battle of Bouvines. Unknightly,
indeed, is the seigneur who does not offer profuse hospitality to a
noble visitor; and any priest, monk, or law-abiding merchant will be
given a decent, though less ceremonious, welcome. No wonder the inns
everywhere are so bad, when the lords of so many castles grow actually
angry if a traveler will not tarry perhaps for days.
[Sidenote: Hospitality to Guests]
There are stories of knights who have deliberately caused the roads to
be diverted to compel travelers to come close to their castles, where
they can be politely waylaid and compelled to linger. Conon is not so
absurd, but if to-day a guest of noble rank approaches the castle, all
the ordinary routine ceases. At the outer gate the strangers are met by
William, the first squire. If he reports that their chief is a baron,
the visitors have the gates unbarred before them; they ride straight
over both drawbridges to the inner court. Conon himself leads in the
horse of his chief guest, and when the visiting nobleman dismounts he
usually kisses him upon mouth and chin, although, if the strange knight
is an elderly man, or of very exalted rank, he shows his respect by
kissing only his shoulders. Adela and her maidens at once conduct the
visitors to a chamber, where the best feather beds are piled high in
their honor, and next skillfully take off their armor, bathe their
feet,[7] and even assist them to don loose clean clothes--a kind of
wrapper very pleasant for indoor wear. Meantime their horses are
being stabled and given every attention. Only after the visitors are
dressed, refreshed, bathed, and perhaps fed, will Conon courteously
inquire for how long he is to enjoy their company and whether they
are making St. Aliquis merely a stopping point or have come to him on
business.
Non-noble guests do not receive such ceremony, unless they are high
churchmen--bishops, abbots, and their direct subordinates--but even a
poor villein, if he appears on a fit errand, is welcome to a solid meal
and a bed on the rushes in one of the halls.[8] A jongleur is always
received heartily and entertained with the best; the payment will be
in songs and tricks after supper. On most feast days, furthermore,
the gates of St. Aliquis will open wide. Conon's servitors will say
to everyone, "If you are hungry, eat what you please!" There will be
simply enormous gorging and guzzling at the baron's expense.
Yet if there are no outside guests the baron is far from being an idle
man. Since he has been stirring at 4 A.M. he is able to accomplish
a great deal during the morning. All the stables must be inspected;
directions are given about a brood mare; the noisy falcon house is
surveyed; various stewards, bailiffs, and provosts come in with reports
about the peasants, the baron's farms, and especially the contention
with a neighboring seigneur's woodcutters about the right to take
timber in a disputed forest land--a case calling for major diplomacy
to avoid a brisk private war. Then, too, although this is not a court
day, the baron as the dispenser of justice has to order two brawling
peasants to be clapped in the stocks until sundown, and to direct that
an ill-favored lad who had been caught in an honest villein's corn bin
shall have his ears cropped off.
The castle is, in fact, an economic unit all by itself. If the baron is
idle or preoccupied he leaves its management to deputies; but a good
seigneur knows about everything. The estate has its own corn lands and
pasture, its stacks of hay, its granaries and storehouses, its mills,
cattle byres, slaughter houses, and salting sheds. Practically every
scrap of food actually needed in the castle is grown locally. The
innumerable women and varlets wear coarse woolen cloth made from wool
raised, sheared, carded, spun and woven on the seigneury. The ordinary
weapons and tools required in war are made at the smithy in the bailey.
The result is that the castle people do very little buying and selling.
Conon has a certain income in silver deniers, but, except for the
important sums he is laying by for a tournament, his sister's marriage,
perhaps a private war, and other like occasions, he spends it almost
entirely on the finer articles of clothing, for superior weapons, for
cookery spices, and for a few such luxuries as foreign wines. These can
be bought from visiting packmen or by a visit to Pontdebois during the
fair seasons.[9] St. Aliquis therefore presents what is to us a curious
spectacle--a sizable community wherein many of its members seldom
handle that thing called "money" from one month to another.[10]
[Sidenote: Comradery and Organization of Castle Folk]
Conon, on many mornings, is thus kept busy adjusting petty matters
concerning the estate. The seigneur is the center, the disposing
power for the whole seigneury, but he is not the despot. The castle
is one huge family, and shares its joys and troubles together. The
upper servitors hold their position by a kind of hereditary right.
Guilbert, who presides over the smithy, is son of the smith before
him. In similar case are the chief cook, the master huntsman, and many
others. Even the dubious post of baronial executioner is transmitted
by a kind of hereditary prerogative. For Conon to dismiss any of these
subordinates save for very obvious reasons would be resented by all
their fellows and produce a passive rebellion unwelcome to the most
arbitrary seigneur. Even tyrannous Baron Garnier had to wait a suitable
opportunity ere changing an unwelcome servitor. Every person has his
own little sphere of influence and privilege. The successful baron
respects all these "rights" and handles each inferior tactfully. The
result is that there is a great deal of comradery and plain speaking.
The baron and baroness must listen to flat contradictions every day.
"You are absolutely wrong, Messire," says Herbert, the cowherd, to-day,
when Conon directs him to wean certain calves. "I shall execute no
such order." And the baron (who would have fought a mortal duel with
a fellow noble ere accepting such language) wisely acquiesces, with a
laugh. Herbert is "his man" and as such has his own sphere of action,
and, besides, Herbert and all his fellows will fight for their seigneur
to the last drop of their blood, and obey all strictly military orders
with touching fidelity.
Indeed, the St. Aliquis people are somewhat like grown-up children.
They are often angry, turbulent, obstinate, contentious, even
exchanging cuffs and blows. The women are almost as passionate as
the men. But tempers cool with equal rapidity. Two varlets who
almost drew knives this morning will be communing like twin brothers
this afternoon. Furthermore, despite much apparent friction, the
three-hundred-odd people who sleep behind the walls of St. Aliquis are
fairly well organized. First of all the baron has his three squires,
youths of friendly baronial families who are being "nourished" by
Conon preparatory to knighthood and whose education will be described
later.[11] They are, of course, "noble," and are looking forward to
ruling their own castles. Noble, too, is Sire Eustace, the seneschal,
the baron's old companion in arms, who carries the great gonfalon of
St. Aliquis into battle, and who, in peace times, is chief factotum
and superintendent of almost everything about the fief. The marshal
who has charge of the stables is also "the son of a good house," and
the chamberlain, who has oversight over all that interior economy
which does not pertain to food, drink, and mealtimes, is an elderly,
childless knight who became lamed in the service of the baron's father,
and who really holds an honorable sinecure. There are, besides these,
four other petty nobles, whose estates are so small that they find it
pleasantest to live at St. Aliquis, ride in the baron's hunts, and
command his men at arms.
The remainder of the castle servants are indeed non-noble; but there
is nothing dishonorable in personal service, provided you serve a lord
higher than yourself. Conon would feel complimented if, on a visit
to Paris, he were asked to carry a great pasty and set it before the
queen. The importance of a baron is somewhat gauged by the number of
his squires and noble servitors. Many a poor sire has to put up with
only one squire, and perhaps a seneschal. As for Conon and Adela,
they have a cherished ambition that in their sons' day, at least, the
St. Aliquis butler, cellarer, dispenser, and even the master falconer
should be of gentle blood also; but that would be putting their
household practically on an equality with the duke's.
[Sidenote: Dinner, Supper and Nightfall]
When dinnertime comes there will be a great rush for the hall, but
the ceremonies of the table will be told later.[12] Of course, on
common days one will not expect a banquet--only one or two plates of
meat, some fish, a few vegetables, bread, and common wine, but all in
abundance. Hunger seldom troubles St. Aliquis. If the weather is fine,
very likely dinner and supper will be served in the garden, outside
the barbican, under pleasant shade trees, close to the purling Rapide.
There will be long tables covered with linen dyed with Montpellier
scarlet. The honored guests will have cushioned benches; the remainder
will sit on almost anything.[13] Supper may be either in the hall or
in the garden, according to circumstances. It is a long time between
dinner and supper, and appetites are again keen. After supper, if by
the presence of jongleurs there are excuses for torches and music, the
castle folk join in diversions or even in dancing, until a large silver
cup is solemnly handed to the baron. He drinks deeply. All his guests
are similarly served. Then he rises and the company goes to bed. If
there are honored visitors, Conon will escort them to their chambers
himself, and take another sup of wine with them ere parting for the
night.
The seneschal meantime makes a careful round of the walls, to satisfy
himself that the outer drawbridge is raised, the sentries posted, and
that everything is safe. Then he will transmit the ponderous keys to be
taken to the baron's room till dawn. The seigneur is undressed by his
squires and reposes under an avalanche of feather beds thick enough to
provide a vapor bath. Soon all the lights are extinguished throughout
the whole black mass of the castle, save only the tall taper in the
master's apartment. So the castle sleeps through the darkness, unbroken
save for the occasional "All is well!" from the yawning sentry on the
turret, until the thrushes and blackbirds begin their noise in the
garden and in the trees by the rivers. Then again St. Aliquis resumes
its daytime business.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Hospitality sometimes went to such a point that we are told the
ladies of the castle assisted a visiting knight to take a complete
bath--a service quite innocently rendered and accepted. Similar
customs, of course, obtained among the Greeks of the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_.
[8] See ch. xvii.
[9] See ch. xxii.
[10] Even when sums of money are mentioned in connection with peasants'
dues, etc., one may guess that often payments in kind are really in
question.
[11] See ch. xi.
[12] See ch. vii.
[13] Mediæval men did not use the floor to the extent of the Chinese
and Japanese, but they were certainly often willing to dispense with
seats even indoors, and to sit on their haunches upon the pavement or
rushes, "Turk fashion."
Chapter IV: Games and Diversions. Falconry and Hunting. The Baroness'
Garden.
If Baron Conon has been fortunate enough to receive a noble guest,
almost the first question is how to divert the stranger. The inevitable
program will be to constrain the visitor to tarry at least long enough
to cast hawks or to chase down a deer. If that is not possible, at
least he will be courteously urged to attempt some game, and it will be
most "ungentle" of him to refuse.
Indoor games are in great demand where bad weather often makes open
sports impossible and where bookish diversions are limited. The baron
frequently plays with his own family when there are no outside guests,
and all the household are more or less expert. To understand them is
part of a gentle education for both sexes. Indeed, there is no better
way for a noble dame and a cavalier to begin a romance than to sit
through a long afternoon studying one another's faces no less than the
gaming table.
Some of these diversions are decidedly like those of a later age. For
example, if all present are reasonably literate they can play "ragman's
roll"! Burlesque verses--some suitable for men, some for women, and all
often deplorably coarse--are written on slips of parchment wound in a
roll. On each slip is a string with some sign showing for which sex it
is intended. Everybody has to draw a roll, then open and read it aloud
to the mirthful company. The verses are supposed to show the character
of the person drawing the same. Also, even grown-up folk are not above
"run around" games which are later reserved for children. High barons
play blind-man's buff; seigneurs and dames sometimes join in the
undignified "hot cockles." A blindfolded player kneels with his face
on the knee of another and with his hands held out behind him. Other
players in turn strike him on the hand, and he tries to guess who has
hit him. If he is correct, the person last striking takes his place.
Of course, a large part of the sport is to deliver very shrewd blows.
The fact that such a game can be in vogue shows again that even the
high and mighty are often like hot-blooded children abounding in animal
spirits.
These games Conon will not press upon his guests. He will urge on them
backgammon, checkers, chess or, if they seem young and secular, perhaps
dice. Backgammon is called "tables." It is a combination of dice
playing plus the motion of pieces on a board which goes back to Roman
times. The boards and methods of play are so like those of a later age
that one need not comment thereon.
Backgammon is a popular diversion, but hardly more so than checkers
(Anglice "draughts") known in France as "dames." Here also is a game
that hardly changes essentially from age to age. The checkermen at St.
Aliquis are square, not round. Otherwise, no explanation is needed.
[Sidenote: Backgammon, Checkers and Dice]
What men like Conon really enjoy, however, are games of dice.
Nevertheless, since the Church has often censured these cubes of ivory,
he and his baroness do not dare to use them too often; besides, they
realize the havoc often wrought among the young by dice throwing,
and wish to keep their own sons from temptation. In parts of France
there are laws reading: "Dice shall not be made in this dominion, and
those using them shall be looked upon as suspicious characters."[14]
All such enactments are usually dead letters, and a high justiciar
can ordinarily punish merely the manufacture and use of loaded dice.
Although church prelates rail vigorously, their complaints are not
merely that games of chance are, _ipso facto_, sinful, but that the
blasphemies constantly uttered by losing dice players form a means of
populating hell.
Dice playing assuredly is extremely common. It is even impiously
called "the game of God," because the regulation of chance belongs
to Providence. Did not the Holy Apostles cast lots between Justus
and Matthias to select a successor to the wicked Judas; and can good
Christians question means acceptable to St. John and St. Peter? So
gamesters will quiet their consciences. Vainly does King Philip
Augustus command that any person swearing over dice in his royal
presence, no matter how high his rank, shall be cast into the river.
Dice are everywhere--in the travelers' and pilgrims' wallets and in
almost every castle, hut, or town dwelling. Let any three or four men
come together for an idle hour and fortunate it is if a set of dice
does not appear to while away the time. The thirteenth century is
innocent of cards; dice form the substitute.
The swearing is evil, but the gambling is worse. There are at least
ten gambling games, some with three dice, some needing six. Adela has
been warning François, her eldest son, concerning a recent instance of
reckless playing. A young squire, whose father held lands of Conon,
set forth to seek his fortune at the king's court. He halted at
Pontdebois, where he met an older soldier of fortune at the tavern. The
poor young man was induced "to try a few casts." Soon he had lost his
travel money; next his horse; next his armor. In desperation he began
pledging his ordinary vesture to the tavern keeper (who acted as a kind
of pawnbroker). Ill luck still pursued, and he was reduced to his bare
shirt[15] before a friend of his father's, chancing about the inn,
recovered his necessary clothes between them and sent him home, utterly
humiliated. Such calamities are constant. Dice are daily the ruin of
countless nobles and villeins--but the accursed gaming continues. It is
even rumored that in certain disorderly monasteries these tools of the
devil often intrude further to demoralize the brethren.
[Illustration: THE GAME OF CHESS
An ivory plaque of the fourteenth century (Musée du Louvre).]
[Sidenote: Chess in Great Esteem]
No such ill odor, however, attends that game in which Conon delights
most. To play at chess is part of an aristocratic education. In a
jongleur's romance we hear of a young prince who was brought up "first
to know his letters," and then "to play at tables (backgammon), and
at chess; and soon he learned these games so well that no man in this
world could 'mate' him." François and Anseau, the baron's sons, make
no such boasts, but both know the moves, and François takes great
pride in having lately forced a visiting knight to a stalemate. Great
seigneurs and kings carry chessboards around with them on campaigns
and are said to amuse themselves with chess problems immediately
before or after desperate battles. Plenty of other anecdotes tell of
short-tempered nobles who lost self-control when checkmated, broke the
chessboards over their opponents' heads, and ended the contest in a
regular brawl.
This royal game has doubtless come from the Orient. Caliphs of the
Infidels have long since boasted their skill in taking rooks and
pawns, but in western lands about the first record comes from the time
of Pope Alexander II (1061-73), to whom complaint was made that a
bishop of Florence was "spending his evenings in the vanity of chess
playing." The bishop's enemies alleged that this was forbidden by
the canons prohibiting dice. But the bishop retorted that "dice and
chess were entirely different things: the first sinful; the second a
most honorable exercise for Christians." The Pope tactfully refrained
from pressing the matter. Nevertheless, austere churchmen regarded
the game as worldly, and impetuous religious reformers insisted on
confounding it with games of chance. It was only in 1212 that a Council
of Paris forbade French clerics to play chess, just as it (for about
the thousandth time) forbade dice--despite which fact the Bishop of
Pontdebois spent a whole afternoon over the chessboard the last time he
visited the castle and could test his skill on the baron.
As for the nobility, no one thinks of refusing to play, although
naturally it is the older knights who have the patience for long
contests. According to the _Song of Roland_, after Charlemagne's host
had taken Cordova the Emperor and all his knights rested themselves
in a shady garden. The more sedate leaders immediately played chess,
although the younger champions selected the more exciting backgammon.
The chessmen are often made of whalebone and imported from Scandinavia.
They are models of warriors. The kings have their swords drawn; the
knights are on horseback; in place of castles we have "warders," a
kind of infantrymen; the bishops hold their croziers; and the queens
upbear drinking horns like the great ladies in a northern house. Conon,
however, has a fine ivory set made in the East; and Oriental models
differ from the Norse. The Infidels, of course, have no bishops;
instead there is a _phil_--a carved elephant; and since Moslems despise
women, instead of a queen there is a _phrez_, or counselor. Chessboards
are usually made of inlaid woods, or even metals, and Conon has an
elegant one with squares of silver and gilt, the gift of a count whose
life he once saved in battle.
Needless to say, chess is a game in which the women can excel. Alienor
is well able to defeat her brother, despite his boasting; and among the
duties of the ladies of a castle is to teach the young squires who are
being "nourished" by its lord how to say "check."
Chess is supposed to be a game of such worth and intricacy as not to
need the stimulus of wagering. But, alas! such is the old Adam in
mankind that scandalous gambling often goes on around a chessboard.
At festivals when nobles assemble, if two distinguished players match
their skill, there is soon an excited, if decently silent, crowd around
their table. Soon one spectator after another in whispers places wagers
to support a contestant; the players themselves begin to bet on their
own skill. The final result may leave them almost as poverty-stricken
as the dicers in the tavern, as well as compromising salvation by awful
oaths.
[Illustration: A GAME OF BALL (STRUTT)]
Young nobles also kill much time with out-of-door games resembling
tennis and billiards. The tennis is played without rackets, by merely
striking the ball with the open hand. The billiards require no tables,
but are played on level ground with wooden balls struck with hooked
sticks or mallets, somewhat resembling the hockey of another age. Here
again reckless youths often wager and lose great sums. Lads and young
maidens are fond, too, of guilles--a game resembling ninepins, although
the pins are knocked down, not with balls, but with a stick thrown
somewhat like a boomerang. Of course, they also enjoy tossing balls,
and young ladies no less than their brothers practice often with the
arbalist, shooting arrows with large heads for bringing down birds
which take refuge in bushes when pursued by the hawks.
[Sidenote: Hawking]
But chess, dice and every other game indoors or outdoors pales
before the pleasure of hawking or hunting. There is no peace-time
sensation like the joy of feeling a fast horse whisk you over the
verdant country, leaping fences, and crashing through thickets with
some desperate quarry ahead. It is even a kind of substitute for the
delights of war. If a visiting knight shows the least willingness, the
baron will certainly urge him to tarry for a hunting party. It will
then depend on the season, the desire of the guests, and reports from
the kennels and mews and the forest whether the chase will be with
hawks or with hounds.
Master huntsmen and falconers are always at swords' points. Their
noble employers also lose their tempers in the arguments as to venery
and falconry, but the truth is that both sports are carried on
simultaneously at every castle. If fresh meat is needed, if most of the
riders are men, if time is abundant, probably the order is "bring out
the dogs." If only the sport is wanted, and the ladies can ride out
merely for an afternoon, the call is for the hawks.
[Illustration: LADY WITH A FALCON ON HER WRIST
From a thirteenth-century seal (Archives nationales).]
Hunting hawks are everywhere. Last Sunday Adela and Alienor rode over
to mass at the abbey church. The good brethren chanting the service
were nowise disturbed when each of their high-born worshipers kept a
great hooded hawk strapped to her wrist during the whole service.[16]
It is well to take your hawks everywhere with you, especially when
there are crowds of people, to accustom them to bustle and shouting;
but we suspect another reason for always taking hawks about is that
the carrying of a hunting bird on your wrist is a recognized method of
saying, "I am of gentle blood and need not do any disagreeable work
with my hands."
[Sidenote: Complicated Art of Falconry]
Falcons are counted "noble birds"; they rank higher in the social
hierarchy of beasts than even eagles. If one cannot afford large hawks
and falcons one can at least keep sparrow hawks; and "sparrow hawk"
is the nickname for poor sires who only maintain birds large enough
to kill partridges and quails. In short, the possession of a hawk of
_some_ kind is almost as necessary for a nobleman as wearing a sword,
even with knights who can seldom go out hunting. However, it takes
a rich noble like Conon to possess a regular falconry with special
birds, each trained for attacking a certain kind of game--hares, kites,
herons--with the expert attendants to care for them.
[Illustration: THE FALCON HUNT
Thirteenth century; from a German manuscript in the Bibliothèque de
Bruxelles.]
Falconry has become a complicated art. Very possibly the good folk in
St. Aliquis will have their bodies physicked or bled by physicians
much less skillful in treating human ills than Conon's falconers are
in treating birds. To climb high trees or crags and steal the young
hawk out of the nest is itself no trifling undertaking.[17] Then the
prizes must be raised to maturity, taught to obey whistles and calls,
and to learn instantly to do the bidding of the master. In the baron's
mews are more than a score of birds; gerfalcons, saker hawks, lanners,
merlins, and little sparrow hawks squawk, peck, and squabble along with
huge goshawks. The male birds are generally smaller than the female,
and the latter are reserved for striking the swiftest game, such as
herons. Some birds will return of their own accord to the hand of the
master after taking game, but many, including all sparrow hawks, have
to be enticed back by means of a lure of red cloth shaped like a bird.
The falconer swings his lure by a string, and whistles, and, since the
falcon is accustomed to find a bit of meat attached to the lure, he
will fly down promptly and thus be secured.
Conon's head falconer is only a villein, but he is such an expert
that recently the Count of Champagne offered a hundred Paris livres
for him. This important personage is himself the son of a falconer,
for the science runs in families. He is a man of shrewd knowledge and
a real wizard at breaking in young birds, teaching them to strike
dummies and decoys, to remain contented in their cages or hooded on
their perches, and yet not lose their hunting spirit. He has precise
methods of feeding--so much meat, preferably poultry, and so much of
vegetables, preferably fresh fruit. He takes long counsel with Conon
how a recalcitrant goshawk can be induced to sit quietly on the baron's
fist. He also teaches young François to carry his little sparrow hawk
so it will not be incommoded by any horse motion or be beaten upon
unpleasantly by the wind, and how to adjust its hood.
[Sidenote: Professional Jargon of Falconry]
There are few more acceptable presents to a nobleman or, better still,
to a lady, than a really fine bird. Abbots send five or six superior
hawks to the king when craving protection for their monasteries.
Foreign ambassadors present His Royal Grace with a pair of birds
as the opening wedge to negotiations. The "reception of hawks" is
indeed a regular ceremony at the Paris court. Most of Conon's hawks
have come from fellow cavaliers who craved his favor. The St. Aliquis
gentry pride themselves on understanding all the professional jargon
of falconry. Only peasant clowns would confess themselves ignorant
thereof; yet even among nobles few speak it really well. The other day
a pretentious knight dined at the castle. He put his gerfalcon on the
perch provided in the hall for such use by the guests. But, thunder of
heaven! how great seemed his foolishness when Conon courteously led the
subject around to falconry! "He said: 'The _hand_ of the bird' instead
of 'the talon'; 'the _talon_' instead of 'the claw'; 'the _claw_'
instead of 'the nail.' It was most distressing to find such a man with
a claim to courteous treatment!"
[Illustration: NOBLE HOLDING A FALCON IN EACH HAND
Thirteenth century; restored by Viollet-Le-Duc, from a manuscript in
the Bibliothèque de Bruxelles.]
Of course, at some excesses in falconry Conon draws the line. He
considers impious his neighbor the Viscount of Foretvert, who sprinkles
his hawks with holy water prior to every hunt, and says a prayer over
them adjuring, "You, O Eagles, by the True God, the Holy Virgin, and
the holy prophets, to leave the field clear for our birds and not to
molest them in their flight." The church has never authorized this,
though the viscount's worldly chaplain certainly condones the practice.
Everything about falcons must be compatible with their nobility. The
glove on which they are carried is embroidered with gold. The hood
which keeps them blindfolded is likewise adorned with gold thread,
pearls, and bright feathers. Every bird has attached to his legs two
little bells engraved with his owner's name. High in the air they can
be heard tinkling. If the bird is lost the peasants discovering it can
return it to the owner--and woe to the villein who retains a falcon
found in the forest! The local law provides that either he must pay a
ruinous fine or let the falcon eat six ounces of flesh from his breast.
As for stealing a hunting bird outright, there is hardly a speedier
road to the gallows; it is what horse stealing some day will become in
communities very far from France.
Assuredly it is an exhilarating sight to see the castle folk go hawking
on a fine morning. The baron, baroness, and all their older relatives
and guests, each with bird on gauntlet, are on tall horses; the squires
and younger people have sparrow hawks to send against the smaller
prey, but the leaders of the sport will wait until they can strike a
swift duck or heron. Dogs will race along to flush the game. Horns are
blowing, young voices laughing, all the horses prancing. Conon gives
the word. Away they go--racing over fences, field and fallow, thicket
and brook, until fate sends to view a heron. Then all the hawks are
unhooded together; there are shouts, encouragement, merry wagers, and
helloing as the birds soar in the chase. The heron may meet his fate
far in the blue above. Then follow more racing and scurrying to recover
the hawks. So onward, covering many miles of country, until, with blood
tingling, all canter back to St. Aliquis in a determined mood for
supper.
[Sidenote: Hunting Serious Business]
Hunting is more serious business than falconry. The castle folk do
not care much for beef and mutton; they prefer venison and boar's
meat, and the great woods to the east of the castle supply food no
less than diversion. Hunting is a pursuit quite allowable to pious
laymen, and in moderation is even commended by the Church. By hunting
one benefits one's soul, for thus we "avoid the sin of indolence, and,
according to our faith, he who avoids the seven mortal sins will be
saved; therefore, the good sportsmen will be saved." The huntsmen's
saints--St. Germain, St. Martin, and above all St. Hubert of Liège, a
renowned hunter of the eighth century[18]--are invoked in countless
castles oftener, one fears, than such greater saints as St. Peter and
St. Paul.
[Illustration: A HUNTER
From a seal of the thirteenth century (Archives nationales).]
There are many dangerous beasts in the great forests spread over
France. Charlemagne (the tale runs) was once nearly hugged to death by
a hard-pressed bear. Every nobleman has met with very ugly boars and
also powerful stags who fought desperately.
As for the ladies (who, after all, are of one blood with their
brothers) the hunt is almost the closest they can come to martial
pleasures. Adela and her sister-in-law can wind horns, follow stags,
control dogs almost as well as Conon and Aimery. Of course, they could
ride from early girlhood. On occasion of ceremony they ride sidesaddle,
but when hunting and hawking they go astride in wholly masculine
manner. François has been riding now for years, and even little Anseau,
barely seven, can cling to the back of a high steed and keep beside his
mother, unless the hunt becomes extremely furious.
The equipments for hunting are simple. The only real luxury is in the
hunting horns, the great olifants whose piercing notes can ring a mile
through the still forests. These horns are made of ivory, chased with
gold, and swung from each important rider's neck by a cord of silk or
fine leather. The hunters wear leather gauntlets and use a bow and
arrows, a "Danish ax" (a kind of tomahawk), a boar spear (the favorite
hunting weapon), and also a large knife for emergencies. As the party
mounts in the castle court, around them are leaping and yelping the
great pack of dogs--white in teeth, red tongues, straining the
leashes and barely controlled by their keepers. Dogs are loved almost
as much as falcons, and Conon has a large collection of greyhounds,
staghounds, boarhounds, and even of terrible bloodhounds. The kennels
are replenished constantly, for stags and old boars can kill many dogs
ere they are finally run down and speared. The gift of a litter of fine
puppies is, therefore, often as welcome as a cast of hawks.
[Sidenote: Chasing Down a Great Boar]
It is a happy day if a beater comes in with tidings of "a wild boar,
the strongest of which anyone has ever heard tell, in the forest of
Pevele and Vicogne near the free holdings of St. Bertin." The baron
will call out all the castle folk, and, if time admits, will send to
some favorite vassals a few miles away to join the sport. With ten
pairs of hounds and at least fifteen huntsmen and beaters he will
thus organize the pursuit. The hunt will start at dawn, and it will
take much of the forenoon to reach the forest where the boar has been
discovered. Then (recites a jongleur) will begin "the baying and the
yelping of dogs. They are unleashed. They bound through the thicket
and find the tracks where the boar has dug and rooted for worms." One
of the keepers then unleashes Blanchart, the baron's best bloodhound.
Conon pats his head and they put him on the track.
The hound soon discovers the boar's lair. "It is a narrow place between
the trunks of two uprooted oaks, near a spring. When the boar hears
the baying of the hound he stands erect, spreads his enormous feet,
and, disdaining flight, wheels around, until, judging himself within
reaching distance of the good hound, he seizes it and fells it dead
by his side. The baron would not have given Blanchart for one hundred
deniers. Not hearing his barking he runs up, sword in hand; but he is
too late; the boar is gone."
After that there is nothing for it except to keep up the chase
relentlessly until evening, with the whole company gradually scattering
through the forest until Conon at last overtakes the chase. But the
baron is now alone save for a few dogs. "The boar has finally come to
bay in front of a thicket. He begins by refreshing himself in a pool;
then, raising his brows, rolling his eyes, and snorting, he bares his
tusks and dashes upon the dogs, and rips them open or tears them to
pieces, one after another, all except three of the best greyhounds.
Then Conon arrives, and first of all he sees his dogs stretched out
dead. 'Oh, son of a sow,' cries he, 'it is you that have disemboweled
my dogs, have separated me from my friends, and have brought me I know
not where! You shall die!' He leaps from his steed. At his shout the
boar, despite bushes and ditches, leaps upon him swift as an arrow.
Conon lets him come straight on, and, holding the boar spear straight
before him, strikes at his breast. The point pierces the heart and
goes out at the shoulder blade. Mortally wounded, the boar swerves to
one side, totters, and falls."[19] So the chase ends and the dogs are
avenged. The baron has to blow his horn many times ere his party finds
him. Luckily the boar has run back somewhat toward St. Aliquis. They
are therefore able to get home in noisy triumph that night, and all the
castle women are under the red torches outside the gate to "oh!" and
"ah!" at the boar and to praise the prowess of their seigneur.
[Illustration: THE STAG HUNT
Twelfth century; from a window in the cathedral of Chartres.]
Conon is fortunate in being able to return home without more
adventures. His high suzerain, King Philip Augustus, while a young
prince, once followed a boar until he was lost in the forest, and
became justly anxious; but just as he was commending himself to God,
the Virgin, and "St. Denis, the protector of the King of France," to
his great relief he met "a charcoal burner, grim to behold, with a face
black with charcoal, carrying a great ax on his shoulder." This honest
peasant guided the prince to safety.
[Sidenote: Hunting Across Peasants' Lands]
One important part of the St. Aliquis population, however, regards
all hunting parties with far less satisfaction. The chase often goes
straight across the peasants' fields, with twenty horses beating down
the newly seeded ground or even the standing crops. This is the baron's
absolute privilege and any protest is treasonable. The villeins have
not simply to submit to this, but if deer nibble or boars root upon
their fields, they can merely try to scare the ravagers off. Their
lord and his friends alone may use arrow, blade, or spear against the
game. The St. Aliquis peasants bless the saints that this time the boar
kept conveniently in the forest and did not sell his life dearly in a
half-ripe cornfield.
Hawking and hunting are two great out-of-door sports, always excepting
martial exercises and downright war; although sometimes Aimery and
other young men, for a tame diversion, take crossbows and try to shoot
birds in the meadows.
If Conon is naturally the master of the hunt, Adela is as invariably
mistress of a very important place--the garden. Castles are
disagreeable residences. Even with the newer _palais_ rising beside
the grim donjon, they are usually dampish, illy lighted, and subject
to uncanny odors. In northern France there is enough confining weather
in any case. Therefore, the more reason there is, the moment the sun
shines, for hastening where there are sweet air, bright flowers, and
delightful greenness.
The castle garden is outside the barbican, shut off by a dense hedge
from the exercise ground. In it are not merely many beds of flowers,
but fruit trees and a group of venerable elms much older than the First
Crusade. Also, there is a broad, fine stretch of closely cropped grass,
shaded by the trees for most of the day. Here all kinds of things
can occur. At long tables the whole castle will dine and sup in fine
weather. Here Conon will assemble his vassals for ceremonious council.
Here will be played innumerable games of chess. And here especially, if
a few jongleurs can be found to saw their viols on fête days, all the
castle folk, noble and villein, will rapturously join in dances, not in
stuffy hall under midnight lamps, but in bright daylight with the merry
feet twinkling on God's soft green grass.
[Sidenote: The Castle Garden]
Adela has taken great pains with her garden, which fell into a bad
condition during Baron Garnier's day. She often councils with Brother
Sebastian at the abbey, a real botanist with a true love of plants
and flowers. One side of the beds is adorned with roses, lilies, and
marigolds. On the other grow useful herbs such as lettuce, cresses,
mint, parsley, hyssop, sage, coriander, and fennel. With these, too,
are also poppies, daffodils, and acanthus plants, while a vegetable
garden supplies the castle with cucumbers, beets, mustard, and
wormwood. The fruit trees yield a sizable crop of apples, quinces,
peaches, and pears. There is a kind of hot-house in which the baroness
has tried to raise figs, but with no great success; but, of course,
there is no difficulty in maturing grapes and cherries; indeed,
cherry festivals are among the most familiar and delightful holidays
in all this part of France. "Life," say monkish writers, warning the
thoughtless, "though perhaps pleasant, is transitory, 'even as is a
cherry fair.'"
"Crooked" Heman (the hunchbacked gardener) has considerable skill even
without the teachings of Brother Sebastian. He practices grafting
successfully, although his theories on the subject are absurd. He is
trying to develop a new kind of plum and is tenderly raising some of
the new "Agony" pears--a bitter variety for pickling. True, he believes
that cherries can grow without stones if you have the right recipe, and
that peach trees will bear pomegranates if only you can sprinkle them
with enough goats' milk. This does not prevent large practical results.
His tools are simple--an ax, a spade, a grafting knife, and a pruning
hook; but, thanks to the unlimited number of peasant clowns which the
baroness can put at his disposal, he keeps the garden and orchard in
admirable order.
Heman's office is the more important because the garden does not exist
solely as a pleasure spot or for its fruits and vegetables. Flowers are
in constant demand, whenever obtainable, for garlands and chaplets.
Even as with the Greeks, no feast is complete without them. Wild
flowers are in favor, and many a time Adela's maids are sent out to
gather and wreathe woodbine or hawthorn; but, of course, such a supply
is irregular. On every social occasion from early spring to the edge of
winter the castle garden must, therefore, supply its garlands. It is,
accordingly, one of the essential working units of St. Aliquis, along
with the stables, the mews, and the armory.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Such a law was actually enacted for the entire kingdom of France
in 1256.
[15] A mediæval manuscript contains a vivid picture of two gamesters,
one of whom had only a shirt left; the other had been reduced to
sheer nakedness. Their companions had evidently stripped them almost
completely, leaving them to compete for one garment!
[16] We hear scandalous stories of bishops and abbots who did not
think it unfit to take their hawks to church. It is alleged that they
would strap their precious charges to the altar rail while they were
performing the holy offices.
[17] By the thirteenth century a material fraction of the better
falcons seem, however, to have been hatched and bred in captivity, thus
avoiding this perilous exercise.
[18] The story had it that he was converted to a religious life after
meeting in the woods a stag bearing between his horns an image of the
Saviour. St. Hubert's feast day was always faithfully celebrated by
kings and nobles.
[19] The quotations are from the story of the boar hunt in the romance
_Garin le Lorrain_, with Baron Conon substituted for Duke Begoy in the
original.
Chapter V: The Family of the Baron. Life of the Women.
Conon, we have said, has lived in great harmony with his baroness.
Well he might. A short time ago a visiting cavalier, who had learned
to string words after the South Country troubadour fashion, saw fit
to praise Adela after this manner: "She has fair blond locks and a
forehead whiter than the lilies. Her laughing eyes change color with
her mood. Her nose is straight and firm. Her fresh face outvies the
white and vermilion of the flowers. Her mouth is small and her teeth
are white like snow on the wild rose. White are her fair hands, and
the fingers are both smooth and slender." Also the baron is very proud
of his sister, for whom he is planning a worthy marriage. A Breton
jongleur, who found St. Aliquis's hospitality grateful, sang thus of
Alienor: "Passing slim is the lady, sweet of bodice and slender of
girdle. Her throat is whiter than snow on branch, and her eyes are like
flowers set in the healthful pallor of her face. She has a witching
mouth, a dainty nose, and an open brow. Her eyebrows are brown, and her
golden hair is parted in two soft waves upon her forehead."[20]
[Sidenote: Types of Beautiful Women]
Both of these laudators exaggerate. Neither Adela nor Alienor has a
monopoly of good looks; yet a life of eager exercise in the open has
given them both a complexion which many a town-pent rival might envy.
Their positions in the castle, as at once the gracious hostesses to
equals and the unquestioned mistresses over hundreds of dependents,
bestow on them dignity and "noble" assurance. Each lady rejoices in
the good fortune of being blond, a first prerequisite to beauty--for
in all the romances there is hardly one brunette maiden who comes in
for praise. Their hair falls down the length of their arms, to the
owners' great satisfaction, and is worn in two long braids, entwined
with ribbons, or on gala days with gold thread, resting in front over
their shoulders. Adela, at least, has long since become complaisant
to all kinds of flatteries, though Alienor is still thrilled when a
jongleur or sentimental knight assures her that she has "lips small
as an infant's," "cheeks the color of peach bloom," "teeth of perfect
regularity," "breath sweet as the censer swung above a church altar,"
and that "her beauty suddenly illuminates the whole castle." Both of
the ladies are tall and slender, again the ideal type of femininity;
and they have unconcealed pity for the poor Viscountess of Foretvert,
who is short, plump, and afflicted with dark hair.
[Illustration: COIFFURE OF A NOBLEWOMAN
Twelfth century (cathedral of Chartres).]
Alienor's mother is dead, but her sister-in-law is enough older to
take her place somewhat and give much well-meant advice, which the
younger damsel must take meekly. Adela often admonishes thus: "My fair
sister, be courteous and meek, for nothing else so secures the favor
of God and of mortals. Be friendly to small and great. I have seen a
great duchess bow ceremoniously to an ironmonger. One of her followers
was astonished. 'I prefer' replied she, 'to have been guilty of too
great courtesy toward that man, than guilty of the least incivility
toward a knight.' Also one must shun foreign fashions at festivals and
tourneys, lest one become foolishly conspicuous; and above all beware
of lofty headgear, lest you resemble stags who must lower their heads
on entering a wood, and in order that you may not by your loud fashions
make everyone stare at you as if you were a wild beast."
Recently, too, Adela has been giving sisterly advice on how to walk
becomingly: "Look straight before you, with your eyelids low and fixed,
gazing forward at the ground six fathoms ahead, not changing your look
from one place to another, nor laughing, nor stopping to chatter with
anybody upon the highway."
Conon, too, has beset poor Alienor, with all the superiority of
an elder brother. He has commended the instructions of a certain
_trouvère_ (North French minstrel) to a young noblewoman. She must not
talk too much; especially she must not boast of the attentions paid by
young knights. When going to church she must not "trot or run," but
salute "debonairely" all persons she meets. She must not let men caress
her with their hands or kiss her upon the mouth. They might misconstrue
such familiarities. She must not go around with part of her body
uncovered, undress in the presence of men, nor accept presents from any
man not a kinsman nor her accepted lover.
[Sidenote: Good Manners for Noblewomen]
The _trouvère_ instructor also goes on to warn his fair pupils against
scolding in public, against overeating, and against getting drunk,
"whence much mischief might arise." Unless she is ugly or deformed,
she should not cover her face coquettishly. "A lady who is pale faced
or has not a good smell ought to breakfast early in the morning! for
good wine gives a very good color, and she who eats and drinks well can
heighten her complexion." To avoid bad breath eat aniseed and fennel
for breakfast. Keep your hands clean and cut your nails so as not to
retain dirt. When you are sharing the same dish at table with some one
else (as is the custom) do not pick out all the best bits for yourself;
and beware of swallowing too large or too hot a morsel of food. Also,
wipe your mouth frequently, but on your napkin, and particularly not
upon the tablecloth. Also, do not spill from your mouth or grease
your hands too much. Young ladies also should keep from telling
lies.--Alienor wishes the impertinent _trouvère_ in purgatory.
But following Conon and Adela, Father Grégoire, the chaplain, and then
even holy Brother Matthew, the prior of the abbey, takes her in hand.
She must avoid sin by never letting her mantle trail disgracefully,
lest she seem like a fox whose glory is in his tail. Her maids must
avoid repeating gossip. She must never travel without proper retinue,
lest she be caught in compromising situations. She must attend mass
regularly and not be satisfied "merely with hearing low mass and
hurrying two or three times through the Lord's Prayer and then going
off to indulge herself with sweetmeats." Alienor should also avoid all
games of chance, including backgammon (advice, indeed, at which Conon
laughs) and not to waste too much time even at chess, nor to take
indecent pleasure in the low songs and antics of the jongleurs. No
wonder the poor girl vows she will perversely do these very things at
first opportunity![21]
Alienor tells herself, however, that she is fortunate she is not
troubled by worse things than hortatory friends. Champions of "equality
of sexes" from a later age can become horrified over the legal status
of women in the feudal centuries. Females can never bear arms; they
must remain perpetually as minors before the law. Even a great heiress
will be under severe pressure to take a husband who will perform the
military duties of her fief as soon as possible. If a baron dies,
leaving only a young daughter, the suzerain can complain that he has
been injured in one of his most important rights--his claim to armed
service from the fief holder. Where now is the vassal to follow his
banner? Perhaps a decent suzerain will wait until the heiress is
twelve. Then he will "give" her to some battleworthy follower. She will
not have any real choice, even if the bridegroom is old, ugly, and
brutal.
On the other hand, many a fatherless girl becomes terribly anxious to
be married. Only married women have a fixed status in feudal society.
Only a husband can keep an heiress's lands from shameless plunder.
There is the familiar story of a young noblewoman who went straight
before the king and said: "My father has been dead two months. I demand
of you a husband." She never dreamed of suggesting any particular
husband. _That_ was the suzerain's business; but to leave her in
unprotected celibacy was an outrage which no lord had a right to
inflict upon an orphan.
[Sidenote: Position of Women in Castles]
Legally and morally, husbands have the right to treat their wives
harshly if the latter provoke them. Every girl around St. Aliquis
knows the story of the silly wife who often contradicted her husband
in public, and how, after he had vainly remonstrated, "one day raised
his fist, knocked her down, and kicked her in the face while she was
prostrate, and so broke her nose." The story conveys the plain lesson
that she was directly to blame, "for it is only right that words of
authority should belong to her lord, and the wife's duty requires that
she should listen in peace and obedience." It is, indeed, repeated as
something rather exceptional that Adela has recently boasted to certain
relatives: "My husband since our marriage has never once laid hands on
me." Not that all castellans are brutal--but after all, men will be
men, lose their tempers, and treat their wives accordingly. Everybody
knows the scene from an epic poem where a certain king is angered at
a tactless remark by his queen, and therefore "shows his anger in his
face, and strikes her in the nose so hard that he draws four drops of
blood, at which the lady meekly says 'Many thanks. When it pleases you,
you may do it again!'" Such submissiveness is the best way to disarm a
husband's anger.
Conon has been mildly ridiculed among his fellow knights because
he takes counsel with his wife. Minstrels like to make fun of such
cavaliers and to commend the baron who told his officious spouse:
"Woman, go within and eat and drink with your maids. Busy yourself
dyeing silks. Such is _your_ business. _Mine_ it is to strike with the
sword of steel!"[22] Of course, many knights do worse things than to
tell their wives not to meddle, and, if not obeyed, occasionally knock
them down. It has been told how Baron Garnier imprisoned his unhappy
consort. This was harsh, but not exceptional. Philip Augustus, the
reigning king, kept his unlucky bride, Ingebord of Denmark, long years
in captivity, notwithstanding the menaces of the Church; holding her
tight in the gloomy Tower of Éstampes, where she complained she had
not enough either to eat or to wear. Many nobles sometimes imitate
their lord. Thus over in Burgundy, Gautier of Salins recently threw
his wife into prison, whence, however, she contrived to escape to her
parents. In any case, when, for the sake of her fiefs, a girl of twelve
to eighteen is wedded to a husband of forty or fifty, all kinds of
unhappy things can happen. The devil can fill the poor damsel's mind
with love for a handsome squire. Her lord may neglect her scandalously
until suddenly he finds himself required to avenge "his honor" by some
deed of startling cruelty. Such things make the kind saints weep. Not
without reason does Conon make discreet inquiries concerning a certain
widower knight who has sought Alienor's hand: "Does he horsewhip his
servants save for good cause? Did he leave his last wife to mope about
the hall while he spent his months riotously at the king's court?"
Nevertheless the chatelaines and baronesses of these parts are not
always meek doves at the mercy of their husbands. Are they not sprung
themselves from a domineering stock? Are they not reared around a
castle, which is a great barrack, and where the talk is ever of feuds
and forays, horses, lances, and armor? Many a noble lady can answer
her husband's fist with a rousing box on the ear, and, if he is not
a courageous man, make him quail and surrender before her passions.
Her habits are likely to seem very masculine. If she can quarrel like
a virago, she can also prove a she-wolf in times of danger. A knight
will ride away to the wars, leaving his castle under the command of his
wife and feel certain that it will be defended to the inner donjon. The
rough men at arms will obey her orders as implicitly as her husband's.
In short, the feudal noblewoman is, as might be expected, a compound
of mortal weaknesses and excellencies, but all of these qualities are
somewhat naïve and elemental.
In any case the castle women cannot complain of being shut up in a
harem. They have perfect freedom to meet strange men. If we accept the
epic poems, when noble maidens believe a visiting knight to be very
handsome they do not hesitate to tell him so to his face. In many love
stories the first advances come from the lady, and not infrequently
these advances are rather coldly received by the knight. Your average
mail-clad cavalier is a man of strong passions, but he is often more
interested in war and the chase than in fair maidens. He is seldom a
philanderer.
[Sidenote: Grossness of Castle Life]
If we visited the castles around St. Aliquis and listened to typical
jongleurs' tales, we should gather abundant material for monkish
preachments. Noble ladies are said to make few difficulties about
inviting male visitors to their chambers to sit on their beds while
they are still within the same--or entering the room of a male guest
and sitting on _his_ bed while conversing very familiarly. Women often
meet strangers in scandalously insufficient garments. Ladies also
talk with the uttermost freedom to men, quite as openly as young men
will talk on ticklish matters among themselves. Many a story, jesting
question, or "gab" which is utterly coarse, not to say worse, will be
exchanged in mixed company. Young women are seldom well chaperoned. In
place of the duenna there is the "waiting woman," herself apt to have
her own lover and ready to help her mistress push matters with hers.
If there is a sensual intrigue, all criticism ceases if there is, at
the end, a formal marriage; but many romances (according to the current
stories) in no wise end in marriages. A wedding is by no means the
standard climax even to a happy love affair.
The monks, of course, are scandalized at less harmful things than
these. They assert that the fair sex, besides being sinful coquettes,
are spendthrifts, ruining their husbands by their own extravagance.
Women as a sex are inordinately fond of false hair, rouging, and other
forms of giving a lie to the faces which God has vouchsafed. As for
controlling them, Brother Guyot, of Provins, wrote in despair thus:
"The wisest are astray when they wish to judge or correct a woman. She
has never found her master, and who can flatter himself that he knows
her? When her eyes weep her heart laughs. There are men who teach
astronomy, necromancy, geometry, law, medicine, and music; but I have
never known a person who was not a fool to take _woman_ for a subject
of study."
All the above seems true. Yet when due allowances are made, the number
of noblewomen who lead happy, honorable lives is great; and if many
barons are unkind to their wives, many others reckon them as their
greatest treasures. If reasonable care has been taken not to force the
mating of obviously uncongenial couples, a decent respect is likely
to result, even after a marriage arranged wholly by outsiders. If,
in many of the epics, sundry fair ladies seem unprudish, very many
others are superlatively faithful, devoted to their husbands, foes to
all evil thoughts and seducers, and know how to draw the line very
sharply between those familiar attentions which courtesy demands and
those where real sinfulness begins. Even a baron who will curse his
wife roundly and switch her shoulders treats her also as his _juré_,
the holder of his pledge, to whom he can trust his honor and leave the
command of his castle when he rides to war.
[Sidenote: Accomplishments of Castle Women]
"A great deal depends upon the woman herself," Adela assures Alienor.
Husbands and wives are shut up together in a castle often for weary
months, and a clever wife can easily make herself indispensable to
her husband, and then rule the whole barony. In short, in treatment
of women, as in all things else, the Feudal Age is a jumble of
contradictions. You can find the worst and the best. "A good woman
suffices to illuminate a kingdom," a poet declares; while even a crusty
monk writes that "we ought to love, serve, and honor woman, for out
of her we all come." And what, in one sense, is the intense worship
of the Virgin but a sign that woman is extraordinarily venerated and
very powerful? "God, thou son of St. Mary"--is that not a standing
invocation among the knights?
As for the pursuits of the women, there is little about the castle
to which they cannot devote themselves. Sometimes they have even to
replace the men on armed expeditions. Adela is grateful that she
has not had to imitate the great Countess Blanche of Champagne, who
(while guardian of her young son) has recently, in 1218, conducted an
invading army into Lorraine and burned Nancy, and then again, near
Château-Villein, has led her knights in person and won a real pitched
battle. Adela, however, understands all the technic of defending the
castle in a siege, she can help her husband about the entire peace-time
economy of the seigneury, check up the provosts's accounts, sift out
the complaints of the peasants, arrange the alms to the poor, and, best
of all, knows how to manage the local bishop and abbot, with a mingling
of piety, harmless coquetry, and firmness--a great asset for the weal
of the barony.
Her greatest task, however, is to direct the perpetual weaving,
knitting, embroidering, and sewing of the castle women. Even if some of
the finer cloth is imported, nearly all the garments must be made up
in St. Aliquis; and the ladies must set their maids as good an example
with their needles as the baron must furnish to his men with his sword.
The chambers of the _palais_, and even the garden in summer, seem
given over to incessant cutting and sewing; and many a time can you
watch the fair Alienor, like the girl in the romance, "seated in her
brother's chambers, working a stole and 'amise' in silk and gold, right
skillfully; and she made it with care, and many a little cross and many
a little star she sets therein, singing all the while the 'Song of the
Cloth'"--a gentle, lilting air suitable for the movements of her white
hands and her needle.
It was when so engaged that her brother, coming in early from the
hounds, vowed he would not spare the dowry to get her a gallant
husband; and that night he cast five deniers to the jongleur who
praised her to her face before the applauding hall:
She is the rose, the lily, too,
The sweetest violet, and through
Her noble beauty, stately mien,
I think her now the finest queen
Which mortal eyes have ever seen.
Simple, yet coy, her eyes flash joy:
God give her life without annoy
And every bliss whereof I ween!
[Sidenote: Customs at Births and Baptisms]
Of course, the prime centers of Adela's life are the rearing of her
children and the management of her servants. When little François and
Anseau were being born, the castle bell, and that, too, of the village
church, were all the time rung furiously to induce the saints to ease
their mother's labor. Sensible Father Grégoire had to interpose his
ghostly authority to check the midwife from at once plunging the
feet of the newly born into icy water to toughen them to the cold, or
rubbing their cheeks with a gold piece to make them rich. Of course,
Conon was delighted each time they told him, "A sturdy son!" On
François' advent he called all his vassals to a feast. "Be joyous!" he
proclaimed. "There is born the seigneur from whom you will hold your
lands. He will give you rich furs, white and gray, beautiful arms, and
horses of price. Yes, in twenty years my son will be dubbed a knight!"
[Illustration: CRADLE
Thirteenth-century manuscript in the Cambridge Library (Green).]
The young St. Aliquis barons were rocked in beautifully carved cradles.
They were bathed before a great fire and wrapped, not merely in the
usual long baby clothes, but in little robes of silk and furs, even of
precious ermine, to proclaim their noble rank. They were, of course,
baptized at first opportunity, because unbaptized children had very
dubious chances in the next world. Adela had been unable to go to the
ceremony for either, but there had been a great gathering of relatives
and vassals; for a christening is the formal acknowledgment of the
child's legitimacy and settles many claims to inheritance. A child
must have three godparents, two of its own sex and one of the other.
At the font, one of these holds the babe round the body, and each of
the others grasps a leg. Then the priest dips the child completely in
the water. "Bare as a babe at baptism," runs the saying. Of course, the
higher the rank of the godparents, the luckier the infant. François is
proud already because the Duke of Quelqueparte calls him "godson," and
Anseau because he is styled the same by the high Countess of Blois.
Up to seven the young boys were left to the care of their mother. Adela
nursed her own sons, although wet nurses were the rule in many noble
families; but at least three maids were constantly in attendance on
each young sprig of St. Aliquis. Neither François nor Anseau is spared
the wholesome diet of many blows. Monkish preachers are always warning
against sparing the rod and spoiling the child, and every father and
mother heeds this particular admonition. Truth to tell, conditions
round a castle often tend to make boys little demons of rascality.
All the hall has laughed at the epic "Daurel and Beton," in which a
child at four was clever enough to steal his guardian's gloves, and
at five to play chess and dice and to ride a tall horse. But François
and Anseau are growing up reasonably honest, thanks to frequent dermal
pain. They have enjoyed a great variety of toys, most of them of types
as old as the Pyramids and which will be a delight in succeeding
centuries. There are dolls with hempen wigs, carved wooden soldiers
with helms and hauberks, windmills, all kinds of animals made of baked
clay, wooden horses, and, of course, an armory of wooden weapons.
The scores of children swarming the bailey are at their disposal as
playfellows, with the sons of the higher officers preferred. There are
innumerable games of the tag variety, but already François is learning
to marshal his playmates in military companies. What greater delight
than to defend some tower against their father's old foe, Foretvert?
It will be lucky if they do not filch real arbalists and shoot deadly
bolts at one another.
[Sidenote: Education of Young Noblewomen]
François is now being taken in hand by his father and taught many
things needful for a baron's son to know before he is sent away to be
"nourished" by some friendly seigneur. He has no sisters, but his aunt
Alienor is just emerging from the usual education of a girl of family.
If there had been a local nunnery she might have been sent to the
convent school. As it was, Conon took in the daughter of a petty noble,
a kind of sister under minor vows, who was half teacher, half attendant.
This good soul has given Alienor rather more of bookish learning than
François will probably obtain. The young lady has learned to read and
write Romain (North French) and at least to read Latin. The result is
that she devours every romance manuscript which she can borrow or can
persuade her brother to buy. She has been taught arithmetic fairly
well; she has learned the names of the chief stars and constellations
and the legend about the "Way of St. Jacques" (the Milky Way). She
has picked up a knowledge of healing herbs and is not afraid of the
sight of blood, nor does she flinch when binding up a wound. Warfare
and tourneys require that young girls should become expert nurses and
even make shift to set shattered bones. Of course, she can ride, and
at hawking or hunting upon her dear roan Marchegai can keep up with
the best; and, like every fortunate maiden in France, her lips are
perpetually light with songs--pious or secular, from quaint little
chants in honor of the Virgin to the merry
Easter time in April
Sings each small bird gentle,
"_Zo fricandés, zo, zo!_--
_Zo fricandés, zo!_"
Assuredly, Father Grégoire and the monks have not neglected her
religious education. She has learned many prayers, besides the Credo,
Ave, and Paternoster, which every Christian child must memorize
as soon as possible. Her brother one Easter gave her a finely
illustrated psalter, and she has most of the chants by heart. By
constant attendance at mass she knows practically the entire service
and understands its symbolism. She has plenty of quaint little
superstitions, but no degrading ones. At bedtime she repeats a prayer
which is popular with all the girls of France: "I implore thee again,
Virgin Mary, mayest thou, with all the saints and the elect of God,
keep close to me and council me, and further all my prayers and
desires: and be with me in all my sorrows and necessities, in all that
I am called upon to do, to say, or to think; on all days, at all hours,
through all the moments of my life."
Her dolls, of course, have been much finer, and have been retained much
longer, than those of François. In her chamber her pet falcon is seldom
lacking from his perch--a fact which does not add to cleanliness.
She has also a caged magpie which she is laboriously teaching to
talk. At the last fair she longed vainly for a rare Eastern parrot,
but has consoled herself with a very small lap dog presented by a
friendly vassal. Cats abound in the bailey, but they are not pets for
noblewomen. There is something plebeian about them. Ill-famed old
crones always possess black cats, which possibly partake of the devil.
The Church, however, does not support this last belief, because in most
nunneries the sisters are forbidden to keep any animals except cats,
which evidently belong less to this world than dogs, the companions of
secular warriors.
There is one thing which Alienor really loves even better than riding
and hawking--_a long, hard dance_. The mania young people have for
dancing is sinful. The Church vainly tries to restrain it. Preferably,
Alienor would dance with a handsome knight or squire, yet if these
lack, the most indifferent music and company will suffice. The truth is
that her robust, vigorous body demands a violent outlet. It is vain for
the graver Adela to tell her of the count who allowed so much dancing
in his castle that finally at a _bal_ on Christmas Day so many joined
the revel and all danced so violently that the floor of his great hall
suddenly collapsed. The whole company were flung to the cellar, and the
foolish count's own daughter was the first body to be taken out.
At the time of the great Church festivals, of course, comes the delight
of the mystery plays, and Alienor herself has participated therein,
once as an angel and once also as Queen Esther at the Easter play
arranged at Pontdebois by the cathedral clergy. She has hopes now that
next Easter she can be Herodias's daughter--which is surely the best
part open to women, except that of the Holy Virgin herself.
[Sidenote: Castle Servants]
While Adela is, on her part, graciously assisting her family, she is
also more explicitly directing her servants. She need not reckon the
lack of domestic help among her troubles; hundreds of young men and
women from the peasants are only too glad to enter service in return
for a straw pallet, a suit of clothes yearly, and a seat in the great
hall after the regular diners have risen. Money wages need hardly be
considered, although everybody expects a few obols at Christmas and
Easter. The importance of a baron is partly indicated by the number of
his dependents wearing his insignia, "eating his bread," and attending
him and his lady everywhere. Conon is hardly less vain than his peers.
The result is that St. Aliquis has twice as many servitors as are
really required. The courtyards swarm with busy idlers, although there
is a certain organization and hierarchy of service, and all but the
least responsible lads and damsels enjoy the honor of having at least
_one_ inferior whom they can afflict with cuffings and snappish orders.
Adela commands some twenty young women. One or two of these are
_pucelles_, daughters of petty nobles and entitled to a certain
consideration, even as are the baron's squires. They dress their
mistress and Alienor, accompany them, and discreetly share their
pleasures. The others, strong-limbed Aiglentine, Jeanette, Martine, and
their sisters, by their loose, sleeveless aprons betray peasant origin.
They have been carefully selected by the baroness from thrice as many
candidates. She has taken pains to learn whether they come of honest
parents, are greedy or inclined to drink, are respectful, and whether
they are accustomed merely to answer on receiving an order, "It shall
be done pretty soon."[23]
[Sidenote: Duties of Servants]
These maids are trained to clean the apartments; next to wipe down all
the stools and benches; next to feed the "chamber animals"--dogs and
cage birds. After that the mistress must assign to them their task of
weaving, cutting, sewing, etc. They are fed plentifully, "but only on
one meat, and have only one kind of drink, nourishing but not heady,
whether wine or otherwise." They must also eat promptly, "not reposing
on their meal, or halting or leaning on their elbows," and "they must
rise as soon as they begin to talk and lounge about." After supper they
must go immediately to bed, unless with the remainder of the castle
they sit up for a jongleur.
So passes the routine of many days until at last the prospect dawns
of an event which will tax the full administrative capacities of
the baroness, and which sets Adela and Aimery each in a different
kind of a flutter. Conon is about to give his sister in marriage and
immediately after that to knight his brother. There will be a festival
which will carry the name of St. Aliquis all over northern France.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] These quotations are from Arnaut de Maruelh and Marie de France,
respectively.
[21] All the above advice to noblewomen is from contemporary etiquette
books or clerical writers. The trouvère quoted is Robert of Blois, a
writer of the thirteenth century.
[22] Students of the _Odyssey_ will recall a similar command which
Telemachus addressed to his mother, Penelope. Homeric society and
feudal society had many viewpoints in common.
[23] The directions about engaging servants given in mediæval handbooks
on domestic economy contain much practical common sense for any age.
Chapter VI: The Matter of Clothes. A Feudal Wedding.
Inasmuch as from time immemorial a wedding has seemed primarily a
matter of clothes, what better place than this wherein to consider the
costumes of the good folk of St. Aliquis? Assuredly, the Scripture
warns us, "Take no thought saying ... 'Wherewithal shall we be
clothed?'" but that admonition (so Adela tells the abbot) was doubtless
intended only for the Holy Apostles, not for a Christian woman who must
make a fair showing for her husband in the face of Heaven knows how
many critical baronesses and countesses.
Already Western folk have made that great change in their general style
of costume which is to last for many generations later. The Greeks and
Romans _wrapped on_ their garments; all of them were forms of slightly
elaborated shawls, fastened with fibulæ or buckles, but devoid of
buttons. Even as late as Frankish times the garments of Charlemagne's
contemporaries seemed fairly loose, after the antique model. But with
the Feudal Age has come elaborately made clothing which must be _put
on_ and securely fastened. We have reached the epoch of the shirt, the
stocking, and even of objects later to be styled "trousers." Perhaps
the life constantly spent in the saddle requires this; also, the
demand for garments easily worn under the hauberks, the great coats of
mail.[24] The great transition has been made. The men of St. Aliquis
wear garments strange enough to another epoch, but without those
sartorial differences which will separate the twentieth century from
the age of Nero.
[Sidenote: Materials for Clothing]
Another thing to observe is that nearly all garments are still made of
wool, save, indeed, the leathern leggings and gauntlets of the hunters,
and crude garments of skins for the peasants. Cotton and silk, if not
quite unknown, have been rare, with linen not very common. The woolen
fabrics have usually been coarse, home spun literally, made up in the
castles or farmhouses. Such garments are warm and durable, but they are
prone to collect dirt, hard to wash, and very irritating to the skin.
Probably it is the general use of woolen clothing, along with the fact
that much of the population possesses no other raiment than what it is
wearing incessantly every day, which accounts for the number of skin
diseases, from leprosy downward, which are direfully prevalent. Matters
are improving, however. More flax is being spun up into fine linen.
People of quality change their clothes pretty often. Cotton and silk
are coming from the Levant at prices that permit the ordinarily rich
to command them. Wash day is even developing into a fixed institution
around most castles. All this makes for health and comfort. Still, the
great majority of all garments are woolen; and, Holy saints! how the
fleas jump out of a villein's doublets whenever you beat their wearer!
Conon normally dons the following peace-time garments. First, his
squire helps him into underdrawers of fine white linen; next come
long hose which can be of various fabrics or colors. Upon a gala day
he will proclaim himself to be a rich baron by wearing silk hose;
otherwise they are of fine wool. Good taste forbids stockings of
brilliant color, they should be black, brown, or, at most, black with
red stripes. After that comes the chemise, a shirt of white linen, but
_sans_ cuffs or collar.
[Illustration: A KING IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY WEARING PELISSON
Restored by Viollet-Le-Duc, from a manuscript of the Bibliothèque
nationale.]
The baron is now ready for his regular outer garments. He will put on
his pelisson. This is a long fur-edged garment, very warm and pleasant
in winter when the castle is a barnlike place. In summer it is often
hot, and as substitute one wears the _cotte_ without fur and made of
very thin stuff. Over the pelisson is thrown the bliaut, a tunic,
fairly loose, which is pulled on over the head like a shirt. The best
bliauts are of silk, but for common use one wears fustian or, perhaps,
even cotton. Finally, if the baron is going abroad, he will swing his
mantle over his shoulders. It is a semicircular cape, with a fur lining
even in summer, and very likely ornamented by many silk tassels.
The shoemakers are already masters of their art. Anybody can buy
well-cobbled leather shoes or high boots, but if a nobleman wishes to
dress in state he will wear cloth shoes, and display his wealth by
having them plated with gold and embroidered with jewels; for good
taste here permits elaborate ornaments.
[Sidenote: Women's Garments]
Conon's most variable garment is his headdress. In the house, or on
state occasions, he wears a chaplet of flowers, or even a thin gold
wreath of floreated design; outdoors he is likely to appear as do
meaner men, in a cloth bonnet--a kind of Phrygian cap of bright color.
If, however, the weather is bad, he will probably pull on a _chaperon_.
This is a combination cap and cape which is drawn on over the head, and
which sticks up or is pulled back in a kind of peak, at the same time
covering cheeks and shoulders, while the face shows through a long slit
cut in the upper part.
[Illustration: WREATH MADE OF METAL FLOWERS SEWED ON BRAID
Thirteenth century (church of St. Thibaut; Côte-d'Or).]
These are the orthodox male garments, while the female dress is much
the same, albeit with certain simplifications here and elaborations
elsewhere. Adela's maids ordinarily put upon her a long linen chemise,
preferably white, which descends to her knees. Over that comes the
pelisson, again with the fur edging. It can be made of some very fine
wool or silk, and falls over the chemise clear to her feet. Above this
again is the bliaut, sometimes worn rather loosely, but more often
close fitting and showing off the figure. The baroness's maids lace it
tightly and take pains adjusting the long trailing sleeves. It is held
in place by a girdle of woven cords, preferably of silk. The bliaut,
of course, can be of very fine material, and ornamented with gold
embroideries and pearl beadwork. Finally there is the mantle, a loose
trailing cloak, often cut as a long semicircular cape and made, on gala
occasions, of the richest stuffs available.
Plenty of elegant fabrics can be had by the wealthy. You can bring
back from the Champagne fairs figured silk, woven with silver and
gold thread; also very heavy silks woven with large threads of white,
green or red. This is the fair _samite_ whereof the poets delight
to sing. But perhaps more useful is the thin, airy, shimmery sendal
silks, useful both for delightful summer garments and for making those
brilliant banners which noble ladies give to the knights of their
choice. Naturally, too, there are plenty of Oriental silks, with
strange Egyptian and Persian figures. For humbler wear (if homespun
is not desired) you can buy all kinds of of honest woolens; Flemish
and Picard, Champagne products, or those from Languedoc. They come
in serges and rough goods, as excellent as anyone could ask. Linen
is available bleached to a dazzling whiteness for those who have the
price; but cotton cloth is still costly, although the mercers often
spread out to the ladies "silk at a marvelously low price" which is
really naught but cotton, woven up, perhaps, in Sicily.
However, the finest samite and sendal cannot take the place of suitable
furs. _Wearing furs is practically a sign of nobility_, like wearing a
sword or carrying a hawk. Many a petty noble will cling to his frayed
tippet of black lambskin, even in the hottest weather, merely to
proclaim that he is not a villein. Fox- and wolf-skins and civet are,
of course, common, but your high noble seeks something better. He will
line his pelisson and other garments with red or white marten, black
sable, with the gray of the beautiful northern squirrel, and especially
(if his purse can compass it) with ermine, the precious fur of the
white weasel. The choicest furs probably come from those dim countries
called "Russia." You cannot make a noble friend a much more acceptable
present than a fine ermine skin; and many a baron has pledged lands to
the Jews merely to satisfy his wife's taste for miniver, a superior
form of marten. In fact, there is more extravagance over furs than over
jewelry, or even over falcons!
[Sidenote: Luxurious Fashions]
Fashions in dress do not change around St. Aliquis so rapidly as in
other ages, yet there are constant innovations. For example, the
surcoat is coming in. Originally it was a longish woman's garment,
but recently a fine knight riding down from Rheims wore one cleverly
adapted to masculine necessities. It was a close, sleeveless jacket
cut short at the hips and made with big armholes for easy movement.
Conon must have one very soon. Inevitably too, at the king's court all
kinds of new fashions, luxuries and ornamentations are to be observed.
Women cover themselves with gold embroidery, wear gold buttons, and
gold girdles set alternately with agates and sapphires. They protect
their hands with chamois-skin gloves, and swing a silken alms purse
from silver chains at their belts. Fine cavaliers load themselves with
a dozen buckles set with sardonyx, and pieces of enamel, and even wear
small emeralds in the embroidery on their mantles. Pointed shoes are
coming much into style, with the use of colored thongs to bind them to
the feet.
[Illustration: FELT SHOE
Thirteenth century (various monuments).]
Yet the St. Aliquis simplicity is hardly undermined. Except on fête
days the seigneur is not much better clad than the upper servitors,
and Adela never ceases to warn her sister-in-law against extravagance
of dress. "Consider always your husband's rank and fortune, but never
disgrace them by seeming to devote too much study to your costume or by
constantly plunging into new fashions. Before leaving your room be sure
your appearance is neat, and see especially to it that the collar of
your gown is well adjusted and is not put on crooked."[25]
The dress of the humbler folk is of the above nature, of course
simplified, and of more sober hue. Blue is the color of the baronial
house and nearly all its lord's followers wear bliauts of that color.
This is their livery, because twice per year there is a distribution
(a _livraison_) of garments to all whom Conon undertakes to clothe and
feed.
[Illustration: WINTER COSTUME IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY
From a manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale (Viollet-Le-Duc).]
Noble folk thus display their rank by wearing furs. They also show
it by their headdresses. When the baron wishes to put on dignity he
assumes a velvet bonnet in place of the ordinary cloth one. On formal
occasions, however, this bonnet will be embroidered with gold thread
and become his "cap of presence." Sometimes these caps are elaborated
and made with a flattened square top. These are the _mortiers_, and in
generations later great lawyers and doctors will wear the mortar-board
as a professional badge long after the high barons have absolutely
discarded the fashion.
As for the head covering of women, the thirteenth century is as yet
rather innocent of those towering constructions of peaks and veils
common in the succeeding age. Even noblewomen are usually content (as
we have seen) with the long braids of their hair intertwined often
with ribbons. If the sun is hot or the weather bad they will wear thin
veils or solid woolen hoods, according to the seasons; and on gala days
they will don either floral chaplets or genuine crowns of gold and
pearls, according to the wealth of their fathers or husbands.
[Illustration: HEADDRESS OF A MAN
Popular in the thirteenth century (tomb of Saint-Denis).]
[Sidenote: Hair Dressing and Beards]
Conon's appearance differs from that of his grandsire's in one
important particular. Until rather recently gentlemen had their hair
cut short in front, although rather long behind, and wore beards, often
divided into a great many little tufts which they might even wind with
gold thread. By 1200, however, noblemen were usually smooth shaven,
although the hair was allowed to grow to some length and sometimes was
arranged in little curls. Thus ended a long struggle, for the Church
has for generations disapproved of lengthy beards; many a bishop has
warned that "they are the sign of the children of Belial," and the
great Pope Gregory VII uttered a regular anathema against them. The
reign of the barber is renewed, and the St. Aliquis tonsor twice or
thrice per week scrapes over the chins of all the knightly males in
the castle. For the servitors and villeins, however, there is no such
luxury. All the humbler folk wear beards of great bushiness, as well as
unsanitariness; and their hair is cut so seldom that often it can be
almost braided like the women's.
Every person of consequence wears a ring. Its signet device is often
equivalent to a personal signature. All a man's friends know his ring
and will give credence to messengers who produce the same. Women give
rings to their lovers, as well, of course, as receiving rings in
return. It is believed that many rings have charmed virtues. Conon's
signet has been in the family at least since the First Crusade. It has
a green Egyptian turquoise cut with a serpent, and is called "The Luck
of St. Aliquis." The servitors profess confidence that so long as the
baron keeps this ring the castle cannot be taken; and François has
already had his head filled with such stories as that of the father
who on his deathbed gave his son a ring, "the virtue of which was
that whosoever should wear it should have the love of all men"; or
the tale of Princess Rigmel, who gave to her lover a ring so potent
that "whoever bore it upon him could not perish; he need not fear to
die in fire or water, nor on the battlefield nor in the mêlées of the
tournament."
[Illustration: COSTUME OF A NOBLEWOMAN
Thirteenth century; restored by Viollet-Le-Duc, from various monuments.]
Such are the ordinary articles of costume and adornment. One need not
dwell on the buckles and brooches, the golden pins and the jewel-set
necklets which Adela treasures in her coffers. They come from Oriental,
Byzantine, or Venetian workshops. Some are very beautiful, but fine
jewelry, generally speaking, has changed comparatively little from age
to age.
[Sidenote: Cosmetics and False Hair]
The baroness is not above certain frivolities of toilet herself, but
Alienor's approaching marriage has given her fair opportunity to
admonish the younger lady on the sins of false adornments. Indeed,
these iniquities are thundered against nearly every Sunday at the
churches, because the shrewd preachers know that all the men in the
congregation will grin approval the fiercer the invectives become.
Women are regularly accused "of turning their bodies out of their
natural form" by means of laces and stays, of dyeing their hair, of
painting their faces. It is affirmed that David was first impelled
to desire Bathsheba because she combed her long hair at a window
too openly, and all her sore troubles came justly upon her "for the
overgreat attention which she sinfully gave to the ornamenting of her
head."
Then, in another sermon, there is approvingly repeated the sarcastic
story by the monk Guyot of Provins, that the saints have brought suit
at the Assize of God against the race of women because the latter
have used so much color for their faces there is none left wherewith
to paint the holy images in the churches! The noble ladies are told
that when they smear on vermilion, saffron, or quicksilver, or apply
poultices of mashed beans and mare's milk to improve their complexions,
they are adding centuries to their durance in purgatory, if not taking
chances of eternal damnation.
[Illustration: COIFFURE OF A WOMAN
Thirteenth century (cathedral of Rheims).]
Lastly, there is the iniquity of false hair--as if the good God
did not know the proper amount of herbage to grow from each female
head! Once there was a holy man who could heal the sick. A young
noblewoman suffered from grievous headaches. The miracle worker took
one glance at her towering headpiece. "First," said he, "remove that
scaffolding which surmounts your head. Then will I pray for you with
great confidence." The sacrifice was too great, and she refused; yet
erelong her anguish became unendurable and the holy man was recalled.
He compelled her to cast away all her false hair and colored bands and
swear never to resume them. Immediately then he began to pray--and,
behold! her headache departed.
These sermons and Adela's sisterly warnings produce as much result as
such admonitions can. Alienor will go through life, now dreading for
her comeliness and now for her soul, but never quite imperiling either.
Yet she is surely less frivolous than the family rivals, the Foretvert
dames--who (tasteless creatures!) could adorn a whole cathedral of
saints' images with their paint pots.
There are sometimes seen around St. Aliquis certain obnoxious people
who are compelled to wear conspicuous garments in order that others may
be warned and thus avoid physical or moral contamination. If you meet
a man with a gray coat and a scarlet hat, pass at a distance--he is a
leper. If he has a big circle of saffron cloth sewed on his breast,
look to your money--he is a Jew. If he has a cross sewed on each side
of his breast, say a prayer--he is a released heretic. Finally, if
you go to Pontdebois and come upon sundry unveiled females in scarlet
dresses, accost them not if you are a decent man--they are women of the
town.
At last we have seen the general nature of the garments which are to
make gay Alienor's wedding. It is time for the wedding itself.
Marriage, in noble families often does not mean the union of two souls,
but of two fiefs. The average baron marries to extend his seigneury
and to rear up sons to defend it. A wife represents an estate and a
castle. Not many young men marry before they have been knighted. After
that they are glad to enter into holy wedlock, for the normal way an
aspiring young cavalier whose father is living can gain independence
is through his wife's dowry, unless his father allows him a share of
the barony.
[Sidenote: Ages for Marriage]
Since young men are not often knighted until late in their teens or
even beyond twenty, weddings on their side seldom take place early.
Girls, however, become marriageable sooner. South Country troubadours
assert that love can begin to claim a girl when she is thirteen; she
is then eligible for marriage. If she has not "given her heart" by the
time she is twenty-one there is no hope for her, save in a nunnery; and
old maids find no recognized place in society whether in castle, city,
or peasant hut.[26]
[Illustration: A ROYAL MARRIAGE IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
From a manuscript preserved in the British Museum (Green).]
Of course, couples can marry younger than that. Not many years earlier
Count Baldwin VI of Hainault was wedded to Countess Marie of Champagne.
The bride was only twelve, the bridegroom only fourteen. Boys and girls
are thus sometimes merely "so many pieces on a chessboard," to suit the
ambitions of guardians.
If a noblewoman's husband dies she need not expect to be a widow very
long, for a man is required to manage her fief. It was one of the
greatest proofs of Conon's mother's strong character and ability that
when his father died she prevented Baron Garnier from forcing her into
nuptials with one of his boon companions--a roistering daredevil who,
as guardian of her children, would have ruined them, body and soul.
Also, if an heiress's husband does not prove suitable to the prevailing
powers, strange things can happen. In 1190, when the crown of Jerusalem
became vacant, Isabella (the new queen) was forcibly separated from her
husband, the Seigneur Onfroy, by the barons of the Crusaders' realm,
and was given to a more powerful noble, Conrad of Montferrat. Twice the
poor queen's husbands died, and twice her barons forced new spouses
upon her. The wishes of Isabella herself, who sincerely cared for
Onfroy, were in nowise consulted.
In all the romances you can find stories of marriages consummated with
amazing haste. There is, _e.g._, the tale of the old Baron Aimeri, who
wished to find his son an heiress. The lad, unaware of what was to
happen, was summoned into the presence of a duke, his father's friend.
"Young sir," said the duke, "you are of high lineage. I am going to
give you my pretty daughter." The boy stood silent while the pucelle
was brought in. "Belle," said her father, "I have given you a husband."
"Blessed be God!" she replied promptly. The next to come in was a
bishop. The ceremony was immediately over; the young people were mated
for life, seemingly before either could get his or her breath. Here, at
least, the lad was as much the helpless tool of his elders as was the
maid.
A story in the "Lorraine" romance makes the proceedings hardly less
precipitate. The Count of Flanders is resolved to give his bereaved
sister to his valiant friend, Fromont. She had never seen this hero,
but has heard much about him. Suddenly her brother takes her by the
hand, saying, "My beautiful and dear sister, let us converse a little
apart." Then he announces "to-morrow, you shall have a husband." The
lady protests that she has been a widow only a month and has an infant
son. "You will do this, however, my sister," insists the count. "He
whom I give you is far richer than your first husband." Then he says
much in praise of Fromont, whereupon the lady responds, "Sire brother,
I will do according to your desires." Thereupon, runs the story,
"They did not wait a day, they did not wait an hour. On the spot they
proceeded to the church. Clerics and priests were notified. There they
were blessed and married."
[Sidenote: Church Control of Marriages]
This is a strange state of things, but, fortunately, the Church comes
partly to the rescue. It demands first that the maiden shall be at
least fifteen years old (a point sometimes waived), that she shall not
be too closely related to the man, and that she shall give her "free
consent" (another matter not always investigated). The question of the
"forbidden degrees" is, however, a bar to many projected alliances. The
Church endeavored formerly to forbid the marriage of cousins up to the
seventh degree, but that rule had proved unworkable, since god-parents
were reckoned the same as relatives. The Lateran Council of 1215 has
therefore ordained invalid marriages between cousins through the
_fourth_ degree; and the saints know that this rule makes complications
enough, considering how the great families are interrelated! Of course,
the regulations are wise, otherwise heiresses would always be given in
an outrageous manner to near kinsmen. On the other hand, the forbidden
degrees are sometimes a little trenched upon to give the contracting
parties an excuse for repudiating each other in case they get tired
of their bargain--although here again is a practice which the Church
treats with just anger.[27]
The Church does not formally permit divorce, but it cannot thwart many
of the currents of the age. Nobles frequently repudiate their wives for
trivial reasons--mere ill health, for instance; and often the women
take the initiative. There are worldly bishops who will give their help
toward an annulment on grounds of "lack of inward consent." Again, if
a very desirable marriage with a cousin comes in question, often a
"dispensation" can be obtained from the same complaisant authorities.
It is easy to become cynical if you study how easily the "holy bonds of
matrimony" can be put on and off by the powerful, although sometimes a
great pope like Innocent III will teach even a mighty king a lesson,
as Philip Augustus learned when he tried to repudiate poor Ingeborg of
Denmark.
If a maiden has a father, a competent brother, or an uncle she is
lucky. Otherwise, the bestowal of her hand belongs to her suzerain.
This right to bestow heiresses or the widows of vassals on faithful
retainers is one of the most precious privileges of a great seigneur.
Many a knight is kept loyal by the hope that presently his lord will
say: "One of my barons is dead without sons. I will give you his
fiefs and his daughter"; or, "Take the widow of the late Sire X....
You may have the land along with the lady." Under feudal usage it is
well-nigh impossible to deprive an heiress of her estates directly,
but her marriage practically gives her husband the ownership of the
property. No wonder the Duke of Quelqueparte is anxious to see whether
the sickly Count of Greve is about to die and leave only a daughter,
so that he can secure the desirable allegiance of the Baron of St.
Saturnin, who has been a widower now these six months, yet has remained
still "uncomforted" just in hope of this particular happening.
[Sidenote: Scandalous Relationships]
What wonder if under these conditions strange romances occur; if the
lady gives "her love and kiss" to some young knight, not her husband;
if South Country troubadours assert that "married couples cannot truly
love;" and if barons sometimes bring irregular consorts straight into
their castles, while perhaps winking at their wives' uncanny doings?
All this is true. Yet, as stated before, not everything is bad. Girls
are taught not to expect too much of their spouses. They usually accept
the situation as they accept stormy or sunny weather. Besides, if some
fathers or guardians are scandalously careless in disposing of their
charges, many fathers and brothers are full of honest affection and
accept the duty of marrying off their daughters or sisters as a solemn
responsibility; and if they are wise custodians the results are usually
happy. There is no need of pitying Alienor too much because she has not
the right to elope.
Conon has negotiated a most satisfactory marriage. He will give his
sister to Sire Olivier, the eldest son of the Count of Perseigne. The
Perseignes are a great Burgundian family with many castles, and counts
think themselves a little higher in the social scale than do barons,
but St. Aliquis is also a powerful fief, and its alliance will be
useful to Perseigne when he has his expected war with the Vidame of
Dijon. Conon will give the young couple his outlying Burgundian castle
(not of great value to himself) and the alliance will enable him to
talk roundly to his uncivil neighbors. A most excellent match; another
sign that St. Aliquis has an extremely sage seigneur!
Alienor is now nearly seventeen and has been thinking about a wedding
since before she was fifteen. Her nurses have long since reviewed all
the eligible cavaliers for her. Her great dread has been lest she have
to wed some old and very stupid man--as befell her cousin Mabila, who
had been sent away tearful and pouting to Picardy, the bride of a
three-times widower. Who can measure her relief when Conon declared he
would not give her to old St. Saturnin? It was all very well for the
jongleurs to sing, "An old man who loves a young maiden is not merely
old, but a fool!" The thing has happened so often!
Her ideal is to have a "damoiseau (squire or young knight) just with
his first beard"--one who is brave, valiant, and is, of course,
courteous and handsome. She had once hoped that Conon would give a
great tourney and award her to the conqueror; but this desire faded
when she learned that the victor in the last tourney was ugly and
brutal. She has been on very brotherly terms with William, Conon's
first squire, but William is still too young, and it is not always
honorable for a squire to push intrigues in the house of his lord.
Thus she is in a very open state of mind when her brother says to her
one day: "Fair sister, I have arranged your marriage with Olivier of
Perseigne. He is a gallant cavalier. Any maiden might rejoice to have
him. Consider well what I say because (here he adds a phrase which he
hopes will not be taken too literally) I would not have you wed him
against your wish."
If Alienor has anything against Olivier, if her antipathy were violent
and based on reason, Conon, as a genuinely affectionate brother, might
give it weight; but in fact, though she has met Olivier only a few
times at a tourney, at the Christmas fête at the Duke of Quelqueparte's
court, and once when he stopped at the castle, she has not the least
objection. He has certainly large blue eyes, blond hair, a large nose,
and a merry laugh. He is reported to be kind to his servants, generous
to a fault, and not overgiven to drinking or brawling. At the tourney
he broke three lances fairly against a more experienced knight. His
family is excellent and her brother's desires are obvious. She will not
have to live too far from St. Aliquis. What more could be said? After a
few hours of decent reflection she informs Adela that she will comply
with Conon's wishes. After that the castle takes on a joyous activity.
[Sidenote: Betrothal Ceremonies]
Before the wedding had come the betrothal. It was a solemn ceremony,
blessed by the Church. Sire Olivier visited the castle with a great
following of relatives and met the shy and blushing Alienor. In the
chapel, after suitable prayers by Father Grégoire, the pair had
awkwardly enough exchanged their promises! "I will take you for my
wife." "And I for my husband." After this there would have been great
scandal had either side turned back. The Church affirms energetically,
however, that betrothal is _not_ marriage. Otherwise the affianced
pair might have considered themselves somewhat wedded on trial, only
to repudiate their obligations later. Also, not merely the young
couple, but their parents or guardians, had to be present and add their
consent; and, of course, all the pledges were sworn to over the holiest
relics available.
Olivier, during all this happy time, has lodged at the castle of a
friendly vassal of St. Aliquis, and he rides over frequently to visit
his betrothed. He is excellently bred and knows everything expected of
a prospective bridegroom of good family. The alliance has been largely
negotiated by his parents, but he has been consulted, understands
that Alienor is witty and beautiful, and he is wholly aware of the
worldly advantages of being Conon's brother-in-law. At meals he and his
beloved are allowed to sit together and above all to eat out of the
same porringer, when he delicately leaves to his intended all the best
morsels. He consults a competent jongleur, and with his aid produces
suitable verses praising his fiancée's beauty. He gives her a gold ring
with both his own name and hers engraved thereon. In return, besides
a sleeve and a stocking to hang on his lances (gifts which she has
already sent in mere friendship to other cavaliers), she bestows a lock
of her hair set around a gold ring; likewise a larger lock which he
may twine around his helmet. The happy pair are permitted to take long
walks together, and to promenade up and down the garden, with Olivier
holding his lady in the politest manner by one finger--the accepted
method of showing intimacy.[28]
We have said that Conon is resolved to knight his brother at the same
time he gives his sister in marriage. This involves holding a tourney
and many other proceedings really unnecessary for a wedding; but, of
course, it will attract a much greater number of guests and advertise
the prosperity of the baron of St. Aliquis to all northwestern France.
The knighting and tourney will come after the bridal, however, and it
is easier to explain the two things separately. We omit the gathering
of the wedding guests--the coming of distant counts, barons, and sires;
the erection around St. Aliquis of a real village of brilliant tents
and pavilions; the ceremonious greetings; the frenzied efforts of the
castle folk to make all ready; the inevitable despair, not once, but
many times, of Adela, who directs everything. At last it is the morning
of _the_ day, in midsummer. No rain and, blessed be St. Martin, not
too much heat. Alienor is surrounded by a dozen women, old and young,
arraying her for her wedding.
[Sidenote: Dressing the Bride]
There is no regular bridal costume. Alienor does not dress much
differently from what she does on Easter or at some other major
festival. Her two great braids of hair are weighted down over her
breasts with an extra intertwining with gold thread. Her chemise is
of very fine saffron-tinted linen. Her pelisson is completely fringed
with magnificent ermine, the gift of the Countess of Perseigne, and
the garment itself is made of two cloths sewed together, the inner of
fine wool, the outer of beautiful bendal of reddish violet. The whole
is laced tightly until Alienor can hardly breathe. Above this garment
floats the elegant bliaut, of green silk with long sleeves, many
folds, and a long train. There is more silk embroidery and elaborate
flouncing. Fairest of all is the girdle, made of many pieces of gold
and each set with a good-luck stone--agate to guard against fever,
sardonyx to protect against malaria, and many similar. In the clasp
are great sapphires which Baron Garnier originally "acquired" from
a town merchant shortly before he hanged him. Finally, there is the
mantle--again of silk intricately embroidered and dyed with a royal
purple.
Alienor's pointed shoes are of vermilion leather from Cordova, with
still more of gold-thread embroidery. While one female minister is
clasping these, her chief pucelle is putting on a small saffron-colored
veil, circular, and held down by a golden circlet--a genuine crown;
beautifully engraved and set with emeralds. Inevitably the whole
process of dressing is prolonged. Alienor is too excited to feel hot
or pinched, but her attendants find her very exacting. They bless the
Virgin, however, that she is not as some noble brides, who fly into a
passion if every hair in their eyebrows is not separately adjusted.
Meantime, in a secluded part of the castle, the groom has been
wrestling with a similar problem, assisted by his two squires, although
requiring less of time and agony. His legs are covered with fine
brown silk stockings from Bruges; but it is effeminate to wear a silk
shirt--one of fine white linen will answer. His pelisson is like his
bride's, although less tightly laced--of cloth and silk, trimmed with
rich fur; and the outer color is pale red, inevitably with much gold
embroidery around the neck and sleeves. His bliaut does not come below
his knees, but it is of blue sendal silk; his mantle is also edged
with fur and of the same color as his pelisson. Simple as it is, it
must hang exactly right. Everybody will ask, "Did the groom wear his
mantle like a great baron?" The squires take a long time adjusting it.
Olivier's shoes are of very fine leather. On his crisply curled hair
they set a golden chaplet set with flashing gems--very much like that
worn by his bride.
Hardly are the happy twain ready before the wedding procession forms
in the bailey. So large a company could never crowd into the castle
chapel. It will go across the bridge over the Claire to the parish
church by the village--a Gothic structure sufficiently pretentious to
suit the occasion. The Perseignes reckon a bishop among their cousins,
and he is on hand to officiate.
[Sidenote: Marriage Procession and Ceremony]
So the procession forms. Ahead go a whole platoon of jongleurs puffing
their cheeks for their flutes, twanging their harps, or rasping
their viols. The Feudal Age delights in music, and does not mind if
sometimes melody is exchanged merely for a joyous noise. Alienor comes
next. She is on a black mule with extra long ears and a finely curried
shining coat. His harness is of gold and his trappings of scarlet
samite. She has been swung into the saddle by her eldest brother
("Alas! that her father, who should do this, is dead!" murmur all the
women), and he as her guardian leads the mule. Olivier rides a tall
white palfrey with a saddle of blue leather. His mother, Adela, and all
the St. Aliquis and Perseignes female relatives follow on other mules,
led by gayly dressed squires. Then come all the noble guests, the Duke
of Quelqueparte at their head. No wonder there is no work being done in
all the villages for miles around, and that all the villeins are lining
the road, doffing caps, and cheering as the dazzling cortége sweeps
past.
The details at the church we pass over. Among other features to be
noted is the fact that the bride is swung down from her mule upon a
great truss of straw, that the bishop meets them at the sacred portal,
and that outside the actual building Olivier and Alienor exchange those
vows which form the essential part of the marriage ceremony. After that
Conon's chief provost recites in loud voice all the estates, horses,
fine garments, and servitors which the bride brings as her dowry. This
customary publication may avert bitter disputes later. Next the happy
pair scatter newly coined silver deniers among the swarm of ill-favored
mendicants permitted to elbow and scramble among the more pretentious
guests.
Finally, the church is thrown open. The great nave opens mysterious and
dark, but galaxies of candles are burning and the lofty stained-glass
windows gleam like jewels. Olivier and Alienor occupy seats of honor in
the choir, while the bishop says the very solemn mass of the Trinity
and pronounces a special blessing over them. "Let this woman," intones
the prelate, "be amiable as Rachel, wise as Rebecca, faithful as Sarah.
Let her be sober through truth, venerable through modesty, and wise
through the teaching of Heaven."
So at last the mass ends. The "Agnus Dei" is chanted. The bridegroom
advances to the altar and receives from the bishop the kiss of peace.
Then he turns, and right at the foot of the great crucifix embraces his
wife and transmits the kiss to her. This act completes the ceremony.
Away the whole company go from the church. They have been condemned to
silence for nearly two hours, and are glad now to chatter like magpies.
When back at St. Aliquis they find the great hall has been swept,
garnished, and decorated as never before. The walls of the hall are
hung with the pictured tapestries or beautiful pieces of red and green
silk. Your feet crush fresh roses and lilies scattered on the floor.
Alienor almost bursts with delight at the number of high-born cavaliers
and dames who press up to kiss and congratulate. All the remainder
of her life she will match weddings with her friends: "I had so many
counts and barons at my marriage." "But I had so many!"
All these guests, however, expect to receive presents--bliauts,
mantles, goblets, and other things, each suitable to the recipient.
It is well that Conon has saved many livres in his strong box. The
presenting of the gifts by the host is quite a ceremony; each article
has to be accompanied by a well-turned speech. By the time this
reception to the bride and groom is over the trumpets sound furiously.
They tell that the feast is ready in the fragrant garden under the
trees. There is a fine tent of blue silk for the bridal party and the
more exalted guests. All the others must sit on long tables open to
the glad sunshine.
[Sidenote: The Marriage Feast]
What Messire Conon's guests have to eat and drink is so serious a topic
that we must tell thereof separately. We speak here merely concerning
the festivities of the wedding. Olivier and Alienor are served by two
barons as squires of state. The groom drinks from a great goblet, then
sends it to his wife, who ceremoniously finishes the draught. In the
bridal tent there is a reasonable amount of decorum, but elsewhere
(Blessed martyrs!) what noise and tumult! All the villeins appear to
be there, and burghers have even wandered up from Pontdebois. It will
never do to have men say, "The bride was charming, but her brother
stinted his hospitality." Enough food and drink is gorged and guzzled
to stave off a famine next winter. The jongleurs keep quiet during the
first part of the feast; later they earn their dinner by singing of the
loves of Jourdain and Orabel or of Berte, who was the faithful wife of
Girard of Roussillon through all of her lord's adversity. At many of
the tables the jesting and horseplay become unspeakably ribald. After
the wine circulates two petty nobles quarrel; one strikes the other
with a drinking cup, but the sergeants pull them apart before they can
whip out swords.
After three hours of this some guests are sleeping stertorously under
the trees; but those nobles who have kept their wits go to another
large tent, and, despite their heavy meal, dance with vigor. The bride
and groom are expected to dance together, and everybody is prepared
to admire the beauty of one and the grace and strength of the other.
As evening advances a priest appears. He solemnly blesses the nuptial
couch strewn with roses, while the new couple piously kneel. The couch
is then "censed" like an altar, and the women guests join in the
bizarre usages of "putting the bride to bed."
The morning after the marriage the newly wedded pair attend mass in the
castle chapel. Here they are expected to make privately all kinds of
vows of good conduct, and Alienor especially promises always to obey
her husband, and call him dutifully "mon sire" and "mon baron."
The festivities will last two weeks longer, and conclude with the
dubbing of knights and the tournament, whereof more presently. After
that Olivier and his wife will depart for their Burgundian castle
without anything like a honeymoon to strange parts....
So they celebrate the wedding at St. Aliquis. Very far is it from being
a love match of a later day; yet there is a decent hope of happiness
for the two most deeply interested. A new spirit in the relations of
men and women has been creeping into the world since Greek and Roman
days, and if this spirit too often manifests itself in illicit romances
it is something if romantic love can exist at all, and if, also, in
many an instance (as the jongleurs already like to tell us), their
story can run that "thus the twain were wedded, and forevermore lived
together happily."
It was as early as about 1160 that the South Country troubador, Bernart
de Ventadoun, sang about the great motive which was coming to add
beauty to the world:
"For indeed I know
Of no more subtle passion under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid;
Not only to keep down the base within a man,
But teach high thought and amiable words,
And courtliness and the desire of fame
And love of truth, and all that makes a man!"
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Of course, the northern climate and the fact that the Germanic
tribes wore many garments of skins and leather were contributing
factors.
[25] From a mediæval _Treatise of Instructions to a Young Lady_.
[26] Troubadour and romance love stories were thus likely to revolve
around very young and flighty people. If they survived this critical
period of youth they were likely to be staid and sober enough the rest
of their lives.
[27] How serious the problem of the "forbidden degrees" could be is
shown by the case of the pious Louis VII of France, who put away
his wife, the great heiress Eleanor of Aquitaine, because he was
the fifth in descent from Hugh Capet, who had married a sister of
the great-great-grandfather of Eleanor. Of course, the marriage had
actually proved uncongenial before this point was raised.
[28] Friends would seldom walk arm in arm. Two persons of the same
sex or of different sexes would walk familiarly hand in hand, or, if
especially friendly, one leading the other by a single finger.
Chapter VII: Cookery and Mealtimes.
Now it is as certain as that God reigns in heaven, that if one desires
a wedding and a tournament, although the first thought must be of
raiment, the second must be of food and drink. When Conon bids Adela
make ready for the festivities, straightway that prudent dame sends
for the butler and the cellarer and takes account of everything stowed
away in the great vaults under the castle. Then she orders the chief
huntsman muster all his beaters and course the forests, not for sport,
but for victuals. At the same time nets are set out in the Claire;
purveyors with their carts are ordered up from Pontdebois, and a
messenger is even sent to Troyes to bring back a tun of rare Grecian
wine. All available maids from the village are requisitioned to make
great pasties, and a master cook is imported from Paris to prepare
special cakes and pastries. In short, it is no light thing even for
the huge St. Aliquis household to prepare to feed several thousands
without aid of those miracles which caused five loaves and two fishes
to suffice in the days of our Blessed Lord.
For the baron's feast the great fireplace in the bailey cookhouse is
insufficient. They build fires in the open out in the tilt yard or
garden and all day perspiring varlets stand feeding on great logs over
which roast long spits of chickens and geese, or boil caldrons of
meat. In the cookhouse, where the finer dishes must be prepared, the
master cook has a true arsenal of utensils--pots, trivets, mor
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