"True, O God!" murmured the tiny woman, who sat beside the window yonder. And Dame Meregrett rose and in silence passed from the room.
The two started, and laughed in common, and afterward paid little heed to her outgoing. For Sire Edward had put aside the lute and sat now regarding the Princess. His big left hand propped the bearded chin; his grave countenance was flushed, and his intent eyes shone under their shaggy brows, very steadily, like the tapers before an altar.
And, irresolutely, Dame Blanch plucked at her gown; then rearranged a fold of it, and with composure awaited the ensuing action, afraid at bottom, but not at all ill-pleased; and always she looked downward.
The King said: "Never before were we two alone, madame. Fate is very gracious to me this morning."
"Fate," the lady considered, "has never denied much to the Hammer of the Scots."
"She has denied me nothing," he sadly said, "save the one thing that makes this business of living seem a rational proceeding. Fame and power and wealth she has accorded me, no doubt, but never the common joys of life. And, look you, my Princess, I am of aging person now. During some thirty years I have ruled England according to my interpretation of God's will as it was anciently made manifest by the holy Evangelists; and during that period I have ruled England not without odd by-ends of commendation: yet behold, to-day I forget the world-applauded, excellent King Edward, and remember only Edward Plantagenet—hot-blooded and desirous man!—of whom that much-commended king has made a prisoner all these years."
"It is the duty of exalted persons," Blanch unsteadily said, "to put aside such private inclinations as their breasts may harbor—"
He said, "I have done what I might for the happiness of every Englishman within my realm saving only Edward Plantagenet; and now I think his turn to be at hand." Then the man kept silence; and his hot appraisal daunted her.
"Lord," she presently faltered, "lord, in sober verity Love cannot extend his laws between husband and wife, since the gifts of love are voluntary, and husband and wife are but the slaves of duty—"
"Troubadourish nonsense!" Sire Edward said; "yet it is true that the gifts of love are voluntary. And therefore— Ha, most beautiful, what have you and I to do with all this chaffering over Guienne?" The two stood very close to each other now.
Blanch said, "It is a high matter—" Then on a sudden the full-veined girl was aglow with passion. "It is a trivial matter." He took her in his arms, since already her cheeks flared in scarlet anticipation of the event.
And thus holding her, he wooed the girl tempestuously. Here, indeed, was Sieur Hercules enslaved, burned by a fiercer fire than that of Nessus, and the huge bulk of the unconquerable visibly shaken by his adoration. In the disordered tapestry of verbiage, passion-flapped as a flag is by the wind, she presently beheld herself prefigured by Balkis, the Judean's lure, and by the Princess of Cyprus (in Aristotle's time), and by Nicolette, the King's daughter of Carthage—since the first flush of morning was as a rush-light before her resplendency, the man swore; and in conclusion, by the Countess of Tripolis, for love of whom he had cleft the seas, and losing whom he must inevitably die as Rudel did. He snapped his fingers now over any consideration of Guienne. He would conquer for her all Muscovy and all Cataia, too, if she desired mere acreage. Meanwhile he wanted her, and his hard and savage passion beat down opposition as with a bludgeon.
"Heart's emperor," the trembling girl more lately said, "I think that you were cast in some larger mould than we of France. Oh, none of us may dare resist you! and I know that nothing matters, nothing in all the world, save that you love me. Then take me, since you will it—and not as King, since you will otherwise, but as Edward Plantagenet. For listen! by good luck you have this afternoon despatched Rigon for Chevrieul, where tomorrow we hunt the great boar. And in consequence to-night this hut will be unoccupied."
The man was silent. He had a gift that way when occasion served.
"Here, then, beau sire! here, then, at nine, you are to meet me with my chaplain. Behold, he marries us, as glibly as though we two were peasants. Poor king and princess!" cried Dame Blanch, and in a voice which thrilled him, "shall ye not, then, dare to be but man and woman?"
"Ha!" the King said. He laughed. "The King is pleased to loose his prisoner; and I will do it." He fiercely said this, for the girl was very beautiful.
So he came that night, without any retinue, and habited as a forester, a horn swung about his neck, into the unlighted hut of Rigon the forester, and found a woman there, though not the woman whom he had perhaps expected.
"Treachery, beau sire! Horrible treachery!" she wailed.
"I have encountered it ere this," the big man said.
"Presently comes not Blanch but Philippe, with many men to back him. And presently they will slay you. You have been trapped, beau sire. Ah, for the love of God, go! Go, while there is yet time!"
Sire Edward reflected. Undoubtedly, to light on Edward Longshanks alone in a forest would appear to King Philippe, if properly attended, a tempting chance to settle divers disputations, once for all; and Sire Edward knew the conscience of his old opponent to be invulnerable. The act would violate all laws of hospitality and knighthood—oh, granted! but its outcome would be a very definite gain to France, and for the rest, merely a dead body in a ditch. Not a monarch in Christendom, Sire Edward reflected, but feared and in consequence hated the Hammer of the Scots, and in further consequence would not lift a finger to avenge him; and not a being in the universe would rejoice at Philippe's achievement one-half so heartily as would Sire Edward's son and immediate successor, the young Prince Edward of Caernarvon. So that, all in all, ohimé! Philippe had planned the affair with forethought.
What Sire Edward said was, "Dame Blanch, then, knew of this?" But Meregrett's pitiful eyes had already answered him, and he laughed a little.
"In that event I have to-night enregistered my name among the goodly company of Love's Lunatics—
"Sots amoureux, sots privez, sots sauvages,Sots vieux, nouveaux, et sots de tous âges,"
thus he scornfully declaimed, "and as yokefellow with Dan Merlin in his thorn-bush, and with wise Salomon when he capered upon the high places of Chemosh, and with Duke Ares sheepishly agrin within the net of Mulciber. Rogues all, madame! fools all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and allures the soul to such sensual delights as bar its passage toward the eternal life wherein alone lies the empire and the heritage of the soul. And why does this carnal prison so impede the soul? Because Satan once ranked among the sons of God, and the Eternal Father, as I take it, has not yet forgotten the antique relationship—and hence it is permitted even in our late time that always the flesh rebel against the spirit, and always these so tiny and so thin-voiced tricksters, these highly tinted miracles of iniquity, so gracious in demeanor and so starry-eyed—"
Then he turned and pointed, no longer the zealot but the expectant captain now. "Look, my Princess!" For in the pathway from which he had recently emerged stood a man in full armor like a sentinel. "Mort de Dieu, we can but try," Sire Edward said.
"Too late," said Meregrett; and yet she followed him. And presently, in a big splash of moonlight, the armed man's falchion glittered across their way. "Back," he bade them, "for by the King's orders no man passes."
"It were very easy now to strangle this herring," Sire Edward reflected.
"But scarcely a whole school of herring," the fellow retorted. "Nay, Messire d'Aquitaine, the bushes of Ermenoueïl are alive with my associates. The hut yonder, in effect, is girdled by them—and we have our orders."
"Concerning women?" the King said.
The man deliberated. Then Sire Edward handed him three gold pieces. "There was assuredly no specific mention of petticoats," the soldier now reflected, "and in consequence I dare to pass the Princess."
"And in that event," Sire Edward said, "we twain had as well bid each other adieu."
But Meregrett only said, "You bid me go?"
He waved his hand. "Since there is no choice. For that which you have done—however tardily—I thank you. Meantime I can but return to Rigon's hut to rearrange my toga as King Caesar did when the assassins fell upon him, and to encounter whatever Dame Luck may send with due decorum."
"To die!" she said.
He shrugged his broad shoulders. "In the end we necessarily die."
Dame Meregrett turned and passed back into the hut without faltering.
And when he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, Sire Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation. "Presently come your brother and his tattling lords. To be discovered here with me at night, alone, means infamy. If Philippe chance to fall into one of his Capetian rages it means death."
"Nay, lord, it means far worse than death." And she laughed, though not merrily.
And now, for the first time, Sire Edward regarded her with profound consideration, as may we. To the fingertips this so-little lady showed a descendant of the holy Lewis he had known and loved in old years. Small and thinnish she was, with soft and profuse hair that, for all its blackness, gleamed in the lamplight with stray ripples of brilliancy, as you may see a spark shudder to extinction over burning charcoal. The Valois nose she had, long and delicate in form, and overhanging a short upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious in tint, and her skin the very Hyperborean snow in tint. As for her eyes, say, gigantic onyxes—or ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. They were too big for her little face; and they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which nervously endured each incident of life—invariably acquiescent, as a foreigner must necessarily be, to the custom of the country. In fine, this Meregrett was strange and brightly colored; and she seemed always thrilled with some subtle mirth, like that of a Siren who notes how the sailor pauses at the bulwark and laughs a little (knowing the outcome), and does not greatly care. Yet now Dame Meregrett's countenance was rapt.
And Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. "Madame, I do not understand."
Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. "It means that I love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for presently you die. Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may hearten me to live."
The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming to Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful haze of forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes a god and transmutes whatever in corporeal man had been a defect into some divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must tell you in this place, since no other occasion offers, that even until the end of her life it was so. For to her what in other persons would have seemed but flagrant dulness showed, somehow, in Sire Edward, as the majestic deliberation of one that knows his verdict to be decisive, and hence appraises cautiously; and if sometimes his big, calm eyes betrayed no apprehension of the jest at which her lips were laughing, and of which her brain very cordially approved, always within the instant her heart convinced her that a god is not lightly moved to mirth.
"SHE HAD VIEWED THE GREAT CONQUEROR" Painting by Howard Pyle_"SHE HAD VIEWED THE GREAT CONQUEROR"Painting by Howard Pyle
"SHE HAD VIEWED THE GREAT CONQUEROR" Painting by Howard Pyle_"SHE HAD VIEWED THE GREAT CONQUEROR"Painting by Howard Pyle
And now it was a god—O deus certè!—who had taken a woman's paltry face between his hands, half roughly. "And the maid is a Capet!" Sire Edward mused.
"Never has Blanch desired you any ill, beau sire. But it is the Archduke of Austria that she loves, beau sire. And once you were dead, she might marry him. One cannot blame her," Meregrett considered, "since he wishes to marry her, and she, of course, wishes to make him happy."
"And not herself, save in some secondary way!" the big King said. "In part I comprehend, madame. And I, too, long for this same happiness, impotently now, and much as a fevered man might long for water. And my admiration for the Death whom I praised this morning is somewhat abated. There was a Tenson once—Lord, Lord, how long ago! I learn too late that truth may possibly have been upon the losing side—" He took up Rigon's lute.
Sang Sire Edward:
"Incuriously he smites the armored kingAnd tricks his wisest counsellor—
ay, the song ran thus. Now listen, madame—listen, while for me Death waits without, and for you ignominy."
Sang Sire Edward:
"AnonWill Death not bid us cease from pleasuring,And change for idle laughter i' the sunThe grave's long silence and the peace thereof,—Where we entrancèd. Death our ViviaineImplacable, may never more regainThe unforgotten passion, and the painAnd grief and ecstasy of life and love?
"Yea, presently, as quiet as the kingSleeps now that laid the walls of Ilion,We, too, will sleep, and overhead the springLaugh, and young lovers laugh—as we have done—And kiss—as we, that take no heed thereof,But slumber very soundly, and disdainThe world-wide heralding of winter's waneAnd swift sweet ripple of the April rainRunning about the world to waken love.
"We shall have done with Love, and Death be kingAnd turn our nimble bodies carrion,Our red lips dusty;—yet our live lips clingSpite of that age-long severance and are oneSpite of the grave and the vain grief thereofWe mean to baffle, if in Death's domainOld memories may enter, and we twainMay dream a little, and rehearse againIn that unending sleep our present love.
"Speed forth to her in sorry unison,My rhymes: and say Death mocks us, and is slainLightly by Love, that lightly thinks thereon;And that were love at my disposal lain—All mine to take!—and Death had said, 'Refrain,Lest I demand the bitter cost thereof,'I know that even as the weather-vaneFollows the wind so would I follow Love."
Sire Edward put aside the lute. "Thus ends the Song of Service," he said, "which was made not by the King of England but by Edward Plantagenet—hot-blooded and desirous man!—in honor of the one woman who within more years than I care to think of has attempted to serve but Edward Plantagenet."
"I do not comprehend," she said. And, indeed, she dared not.
But now he held both tiny hands in his. "At best, your poet is an egotist. I must die presently. Meantime I crave largesse, madame! ay, a great largesse, so that in his unending sleep your poet may rehearse our present love." And even in Rigon's dim light he found her kindling eyes not niggardly.
So that more lately Sire Edward strode to the window and raised big hands toward the spear-points of the aloof stars. "Master of us all!" he cried; "O Father of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the Scourge of France, the conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and the flail of the accursed race that slew Thine only Son! the King of England am I who have made of England an imperial nation and have given to Thy Englishmen new laws! And to-night I crave my hire. Never, O my Father, have I had of any person aught save reverence or hatred! never in my life has any person loved me! And I am old, my Father—I am old, and presently I die. As I have served Thee—as Jacob wrestled with Thee at the ford of Jabbok—at the place of Peniel—" Against the tremulous blue and silver of the forest she saw in terror how horribly the big man was shaken. "My hire! my hire!" he hoarsely said. "Forty long years, my Father! And now I will not let Thee go except Thou hear me."
And presently he turned, stark and black in the rearward splendor of the moon. "As a prince hast thou power with God," he calmly said, "and thou hast prevailed. For the King of kings was never obdurate, m'amye.
"Child! O brave, brave child!" he said to her a little later, "I was never afraid to die, and yet to-night I would that I might live a trifle longer than in common reason I may ever hope to live!" And their lips met.
Neither stirred when Philippe the Handsome came into the room. At his heels were seven lords, armed cap-à-pie, but the entrance of eight cockchafers had meant as much to these transfigured two.
The French King was an odd man, no more sane, perhaps, than might reasonably be expected of a Valois. Subtly smiling, he came forward through the twilight, with soft, long strides, and made no outcry at recognition of his sister. "Take the woman away; Victor," he said, disinterestedly, to de Montespan. Afterward he sat down beside the table and remained silent for a while, intently regarding Sire Edward and the tiny woman who clung to Sire Edward's arm; and always in the flickering gloom of the hut Philippe smiled as an artist might do who gazes on the perfected work and knows it to be adroit.
"You prefer to remain, my sister?" he presently said. "Hé bien! it happens that to-night I am in a mood for granting almost any favor. A little later and I will attend to you." The fleet disorder of his visage had lapsed again into the meditative smile which was that of Lucifer watching a toasted soul. "And so it ends," he said. "Conqueror of Scotland, Scourge of France! O unconquerable king! and will the worms of Ermenoueïl, then, pause to-morrow to consider through what a glorious turmoil their dinner came to them?"
"You design murder, fair cousin?" Sire Edward said.
The French King shrugged. "I design that within this moment my lords shall slay you while I sit here and do not move a finger. Is it not good to be a king, my cousin, and to sit quite still, and to see your bitterest enemy hacked and slain—and all the while to sit quite still, quite unruffled, as a king should always be? Eh, eh! I never lived until to-night!"
"Now, by Heaven," said Sire Edward, "I am your kinsman and your guest, I am unarmed—"
And Philippe bowed his head. "Undoubtedly," he assented, "the deed is a foul one. But I desire Gascony very earnestly, and so long as you live you will never permit me to retain Gascony. Hence it is quite necessary, you conceive, that I murder you. What!" he presently said, "will you not beg for mercy? I had so hoped," the French King added, somewhat wistfully, "that you might be afraid to die, O huge and righteous man! and would entreat me to spare you. To spurn the weeping conqueror of Llewellyn, say ... But these sins which damn one's soul are in actual performance very tedious affairs; and I begin to grow aweary of the game. Hé bien! now kill this man for me, messieurs."
The English King strode forward. "O shallow trickster!" Sire Edward thundered. "Am I not afraid?You baby, would you ensnare a lion with a flimsy rat-trap? Not so; for it is the nature of a rat-trap, fair cousin, to ensnare not the beast which imperiously desires and takes in daylight, but the tinier and the filthier beast that covets and under darkness pilfers—as you and your seven skulkers!" The man was rather terrible; not a Frenchman within the hut but had drawn back a little.
"Listen!" Sire Edward said, and came yet farther toward the King of France and shook at him one forefinger; "when you were in your cradle I was leading armies. When you were yet unbreeched I was lord of half Europe. For thirty years I have driven kings before me as Fierabras did. Am I, then, a person to be hoodwinked by the first big-bosomed huzzy that elects to waggle her fat shoulders and to grant an assignation in a forest expressively designed for stabbings? You baby, is the Hammer of the Scots the man to trust a Capet? Ill-mannered infant," the King said, with bitter laughter, "it is now necessary that I summon my attendants and remove you to a nursery which I have prepared in England." He set the horn to his lips and blew three blasts.
There came many armed warriors into the hut, bearing ropes. Here was the entire retinue of the Earl of Aquitaine; and, cursing, Sire Philippe sprang upon the English King, and with a dagger smote at the impassive big man's heart. The blade broke against the mail armor under the tunic. "Have I not told you," Sire Edward wearily said, "that one may never trust a Capet? Now, messieurs, bind these carrion and convey them whither I have directed you. Nay, but, Roger—" He conversed apart with his lieutenant, and what Sire Edward commanded was done. The French King and seven lords of France went from that hut trussed like chickens.
And now Sire Edward turned toward Meregrett and chafed his big hands gleefully. "At every tree-bole a tethered horse awaits us; and a ship awaits our party at Fécamp. To-morrow we sleep in England—and, Mort de Dieu! do you not think, madame, that within the Tower your brother and I may more quickly come to some agreement over Guienne?"
She had shrunk from him. "Then the trap was yours? It was you that lured my brother to this infamy!"
"I am vile!" was the man's thought. And, "In effect, I planned it many months ago at Ipswich yonder," Sire Edward gayly said. "Faith of a gentleman! your brother has cheated me of Guienne, and was I to waste an eternity in begging him to restore it? Nay, for I have a many spies in France, and have for some two years known your brother and your sister to the bottom. Granted that I came hither incognito, to forecast your kinfolk's immediate endeavors was none too difficult; and I wanted Guienne—and, in consequence, the person of your brother. Mort de ma vie! Shall not the seasoned hunter adapt his snare aforetime to the qualities of his prey, and take the elephant through his curiosity, as the snake through his notorious treachery?" Now the King of England blustered.
But the little Princess wrung her hands. "I am this night most hideously shamed. Beau sire, I came hither to aid a brave man infamously trapped, and instead I find an alert spider, snug in his cunning web, and patiently waiting until the gnats of France fly near enough. Eh, the greater fool was I to waste my labor on the shrewd and evil thing which has no more need of me than I of it! And now let me go hence, sire, and unmolested, for the sake of chivalry. Could I have come to you but as to the brave man I had dreamed of, I had come through the murkiest lane of hell; as the more artful knave, as the more judicious trickster"—and here she thrust him from her—"I spit upon you. Now let me go hence."
He took her in his brawny arms. "Fit mate for me," he said. "Little vixen, had you done otherwise I had devoted you to the devil."
Anon, still grasping her, and victoriously lifting Dame Meregrett, so that her feet swung quite clear of the floor, Sire Edward said: "Look you, in my time I have played against Fate for considerable stakes—for fortresses, and towns, and strong citadels, and for kingdoms even. And it was only to-night I perceived that the one stake worth playing for is love. It were easy enough to get you for my wife; but I want more than that.... Pschutt! I know well enough how women have these notions: and carefully I weighed the issue—Meregrett and Guienne to boot? or Meregrett and Meregrett's love to boot?—and thus the final destination of my captives was but the courtyard of Mezelais, in order I might come to you with hands—well! not intolerably soiled."
"Oh, now I love you!" she cried, a-thrill with disappointment. "Yet you have done wrong, for Guienne is a king's ransom."
He smiled whimsically, and presently one arm swept beneath her knees, so that presently he held her as one dandles a baby; and presently his stiff and yellow beard caressed her burning cheek. Masterfully he said: "Then let it serve as such and ransom for a king his glad and common manhood. Ah, m'amye, I am both very wise and abominably selfish. And in either capacity it appears expedient that I leave France without any unwholesome delay. More lately—hé, already I have within my pocket the Pope's dispensation permitting me to marry the sister of the King of France, so that I dare to hope."
Very shyly Dame Meregrett lifted her little mouth toward his hot and bearded lips. "Patience," she said, "is a virtue; and daring is a virtue; and hope, too, is a virtue: and otherwise, beau sire, I would not live."
And in consequence, after a deal of political tergiversation (Nicolas concludes), in the year of grace 1299, on the day of our Lady's nativity, and in the twenty-seventh year of King Edward's reign, came to the British realm, and landed at Dover, not Dame Blanch, as would have been in consonance with seasoned expectation, but Dame Meregrett, the other daughter of King Philippe the Bold; and upon the following day proceeded to Canterbury, whither on the next Thursday after came Edward, King of England, into the Church of the Trinity at Canterbury, and therein espoused the aforesaid Dame Meregrett.
"Sest fable es en aquest monSemblans al homes que i son;Que el mager sen qu'om pot averSo es amar Dieu et sa mer,E gardar sos comendamens."
THE FOURTH NOVEL.—YSABEAU OF FRANCE, DESIROUS OFDISTRACTION, LOOKS FOR RECREATION IN THE TORMENTOF A CERTAIN KNIGHT, WHOM SHE PROVES TO BE NO MORETHAN HUMAN; BUT IN THE OUTCOME OF HER HOLIDAYHE CONFOUNDS THIS QUEEN BY THE WIT OF HIS REPLY.
dropcap-i
n the year of grace 1327 (thus Nicolas begins) you could have found in all England no lovers more ardent in affection or in despair more affluent than Rosamund Eastney and Sir Gregory Darrell. She was Lord Berners' only daughter, a brown beauty, and of extensive repute, thanks to such among her retinue of lovers as were practitioners of the Gay Science and had scattered broadcast innumerable Canzons in her honor; and Lord Berners was a man who accepted the world as he found it.
"Dompnedex!" the Earl was wont to say; "in sincerity I am fond of Gregory Darrell, and if he chooses to make love to my daughter that is none of my affair. The eyes and the brain preserve a proverbial warfare, which is the source of all amenity, for without lady-service there would be no songs and tourneys, no measure and no good breeding; and, in a phrase, a man delinquent in it is no more to be valued than an ear of corn without the grain. Nay, I am so profoundly an admirer of Love that I can never willingly behold him slain, of a surfeit, by Matrimony; and besides, the rapscallion could not to advantage exchange purses with Lazarus; and, moreover, Rosamund is to marry the Earl of Sarum a little after All Saints' day."
"Sarum!" people echoed. "Why, the old goat has had two wives already!"
And the Earl would spread his hands. "One of the wealthiest persons in England," he was used to submit.
Thus it fell out that Sir Gregory came and went at his own discretion as concerned Lord Berners' fief of Ordish, all through those gusty times of warfare between Sire Edward and Queen Ysabeau, until at last the Queen had conquered. Lord Berners, for one, vexed himself not inordinately over the outcome of events, since he protested the King's armament to consist of fools and the Queen's of rascals; and had with entire serenity declined to back either Dick or the devil.
It was in the September of this year, a little before Michaelmas, that they brought Sir Gregory Darrell to be judged by the Queen, for notoriously the knight had been Sire Edward's adherent. "Death!" croaked Adam Orleton, who sat to the right hand, and, "Young de Spencer's death!" amended the Earl of March, with wild laughter; but Ysabeau leaned back in her great chair—a handsome woman, stoutening now from gluttony and from too much wine—and regarded her prisoner with lazy amiability, and devoted the silence to consideration of how scantily the man had changed.
"And what was your errand in Figgis Wood?" she demanded in the ultimate—"or are you mad, then, Gregory Darrell, that you dare ride past my gates alone?"
He curtly said, "I rode for Ordish."
Followed silence. "Roger," the Queen ordered, sharply, "give me the paper which I would not sign."
The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of London somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, as a person in shrewd and epicurean amusement, what while she subscribed the parchment within the moment, with a great scrawling flourish.
"Take, in the devil's name, the hire of your dexterities," said Ysabeau, and pushed this document with her wet pen-point toward March, "and ride for Berkeley now upon that necessary business we know of. And do the rest of you withdraw, saving only my prisoner—my prisoner!" she said, and laughed not very pleasantly.
"'MY PRISONER!' SHE SAID" _Painting by Howard Pyle_"'MY PRISONER!' SHE SAID"Painting by Howard Pyle
"'MY PRISONER!' SHE SAID" _Painting by Howard Pyle_"'MY PRISONER!' SHE SAID"Painting by Howard Pyle
Followed another silence. Queen Ysabeau lolled in her carven chair, considering the comely gentleman who stood before her, fettered, at the point of shameful death. There was a little dog in the room which had come to the Queen, and now licked the palm of her left hand, and the soft lapping of its tongue was the only sound you heard. "So at peril of your life you rode for Ordish, then, messire?"
The tense man had flushed. "You have harried us of the King's party out of England—and in reason I might not leave England without seeing her."
"My friend," said Ysabeau, as half in sorrow, "I would have pardoned anything save that." She rose. Her face was dark and hot. "By God and all His saints! you shall indeed leave England to-morrow and the world as well! but not without a final glimpse of this same Rosamund. Yet listen: I, too, must ride with you to Ordish—as your sister, say—Gregory, did I not hang last April the husband of your sister? Yes, Ralph de Belomys, a thin man with eager eyes, the Earl of Farrington he was. As his widow will I ride with you to Ordish, upon condition you disclose to none at Ordish, saving only, if you will, this quite immaculate Rosamund, even a hint of our merry carnival. And to-morrow (you will swear according to the nicest obligations of honor) you must ride back with me to encounter—that which I may devise. For I dare to trust your naked word in this, and, moreover, I shall take with me a sufficiency of retainers to leave you no choice."
Darrell knelt before her. "I can do no homage to Queen Ysabeau; yet the prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die to-morrow and cunningly contrives, for old time's sake, to hearten me with a sight of Rosamund, I cannot but kiss." This much he did. "And I swear in all things to obey her will."
"O comely fool!" the Queen said, not ungently, "I contrive, it may be, but to demonstrate that many tyrants of antiquity were only bunglers. And, besides, I must have other thoughts than that which now occupies my heart: I must this night take holiday, lest I go mad."
Thus did the Queen arrange her holiday.
"Either I mean to torture you to-morrow," Dame Ysabeau said, presently, to Darrell, as these two rode side by side, "or else I mean to free you. In sober verity I do not know. I am in a holiday humor, and it is as the whim may take me. But you indeed do love this Rosamund Eastney? And of course she worships you?"
"It is my belief, madame, that when I see her I tremble visibly, and my weakness is such that a child has more intelligence than I—and toward such misery any lady must in common reason be a little compassionate."
Her hands had twitched so that the astonished palfrey reared. "I design torture," the Queen said; "ah, I perfect exquisite torture, for you have proven recreant, you have forgotten the maid Ysabeau—Le Desir du Cuer, was it not, my Gregory?"
His palms clutched at heaven. "That Ysabeau is dead! and all true joy is destroyed, and the world lies under a blight wherefrom God has averted an unfriendly face in displeasure! yet of all wretched persons existent I am he who endures the most grievous anguish, for daily I partake of life without any relish, and I would in truth deem him austerely kind who slew me now that the maiden Ysabeau is dead."
She shrugged, although but wearily. "I scent the raw stuff of a Planh," the Queen observed; "benedicite!it was ever your way, my friend, to love a woman chiefly for the verses she inspired." And she began to sing, as they rode through Baverstock Thicket.
Sang Ysabeau:
"Man's love hath many prompters,But a woman's love hath none;And he may woo a nimble witOr hair that shames the sun,Whilst she must pick of all one manAnd ever brood thereon—And for no reason,And not rightly,—
"Save that the plan was foreordained(More old than Chalcedon,Or any tower of TarshishOr of gleaming Babylon),That she must love unwillinglyAnd love till life be done,He for a season,And more lightly."
So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell. Lord Berners received the party with boisterous hospitality.
"And the more for that your sister is a very handsome woman," was Rosamund Eastney's comment. The period appears to have been after supper, and she sat with Gregory Darrell in not the most brilliant corner of the main hall.
The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then with a sudden splurge of speech informed her of the sorry masquerade. "The she-devil designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she plans I know not what."
"Yet I—" said Rosamund. The girl had risen, and she continued with an odd inconsequence. "You have told me you were Pembroke's squire when long ago he sailed for France to fetch this woman into England—"
"Which you never heard!" Lord Berners shouted at this point. "Jasper, a lute!" And then he halloaed, more lately, "Gregory, Madame de Farrington demands that racy song you made against Queen Ysabeau during your last visit."
Thus did the Queen begin her holiday.
It was a handsome couple which came forward, hand quitting hand a shade too tardily, and the blinking eyes yet rapt; but these two were not overpleased at being disturbed, and the man in particular was troubled, as in reason he well might be, by the task assigned him.
"Is it, indeed, your will, my sister," he said, "that I should sing—this song?"
"It is my will," the Countess said.
And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. "What I have written I shall not disown in any company. It is not, look you, of my own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if she bade me would I sing this song as willingly before Queen Ysabeau, for, Christ aid me! the song is true."
Sang Sir Gregory:
"Dame Ysabeau, la prophécieQue li sage dit ne ment mie,Que la royne sut ceus greverQui tantost laquais sot aymer—"
and so on. It was a lengthy ditty and in its wording not oversqueamish; the Queen's career in England was detailed without any stuttering, and you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory sang it with an incisive gusto, though it seemed to him to countersign his death-warrant; and with the vigor that a mangled snake summons for its last hideous stroke, it seemed to Ysabeau regretful of an ancient spring.
Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, and for obvious reasons, his translator would prefer to do otherwise.
Only the minstrel added, though Lord Berners did not notice it, a fire-new peroration.
Sang Sir Gregory:
"Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gémit—Peu pense à ce que la voix dit,Car me membre du temps jadisEt d'ung garson, d'amour surpris,Et d'une fille—et la vois si—Et grandement suis esbahi."
And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance caught between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had annoyed her. She drew the little dagger from her girdle and meditatively cut the buzzing thing in two. Then she flung the fragments from her, and resting the dagger's point upon the arm of her chair, one forefinger upon the summit of the hilt, considerately twirled the brilliant weapon.
"This song does not err upon the side of clemency," she said at last, "nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau."
"That she-wolf!" said Lord Berners, comfortably. "Hoo, Madame Gertrude! since the Prophet Moses wrung healing waters from a rock there has been no such miracle recorded."
"We read, Messire de Berners, that when the she-wolf once acknowledges a master she will follow him as faithfully as any dog. Nay, my brother, I do not question your sincerity, yet you sing with the voice of an unhonored courtier. Suppose Queen Ysabeau had heard your song all through and then had said—for she is not as the run of women—'Messire, I had thought till this there was no thorough man in England saving Roger Mortimer. I find him tawdry now, and—I remember. Come you, then, and rule the England that you love as you may love no woman, and rule me, messire, for I find even in your cruelty—England! bah, we are no pygmies, you and I!'" the Countess said with a great voice; "'yonder is squabbling Europe and all the ancient gold of Africa, ready for our taking! and past that lies Asia, too, and its painted houses hung with bells, and cloud-wrapt Tartary, wherein we twain may yet erect our equal thrones, whereon to receive the tributary emperors! For we are no pygmies, you and I.'" She paused and more lately shrugged. "Suppose Queen Ysabeau had said this much, my brother?"
Darrell was more pallid, as the phrase is, than a sheet, and the lute had dropped unheeded, and his hands were clenched.
"I would answer, my sister, that as she has found in England but one man, I have found in England but one woman—the rose of all the world." His eyes were turned at this toward Rosamund Eastney. "And yet," the man stammered, "for that I, too, remember—"
"Nay, in God's name! I am answered," the Countess said. She rose, in dignity almost a queen. "We have ridden far to-day, and to-morrow we must travel a deal farther—eh, my brother? I am a trifle overspent, Messire de Berners." And her face had now the weary beauty of an idol's.
So the men and women parted. Madame de Farrington kissed her brother in leaving him, as was natural; and under her caress his stalwart person shuddered, but not in repugnance; and the Queen went bedward regretful of an ancient spring and singing hushedly.
Sang Ysabeau:
"Were the All-Mother wise, life (shaped anotherwise)Would be all high and true;Could I be otherwise I had been otherwiseSimply because of you,Who are no longer you.
"Life with its pay to be bade us essay to beWhat we became,—I believeWere there a way to be what it was play to beI would not greatly grieve...And I neither laugh nor grieve!"
Ysabeau would have slept that night within the chamber of Rosamund Eastney had either slept at all. As concerns the older I say nothing. The girl, though soon aware of frequent rustlings near at hand, lay quiet, half-forgetful of the poisonous woman yonder. The girl was now fulfilled with a great blaze of exultation; to-morrow Gregory must die, and then perhaps she might find time for tears; but meanwhile, before her eyes, the man had flung away a kingdom and life itself for love of her, and the least nook of her heart ached to be a shade more worthy of the sacrifice.
After it might have been an hour of this excruciate ecstasy the Countess came to Rosamund's bed. "Ay," the woman hollowly began, "it is indisputable that his hair is like spun gold and that his eyes resemble sun-drenched waters in June. And that when this Gregory laughs God is more happy. Ma belle, I was familiar with the routine of your meditations ere you were born."
Rosamund said, quite simply: "You have known him always. I envy the circumstance, Madame Gertrude—you alone of all women in the world I envy, since you, his sister, being so much older, must have known him always."
"I know him to the core, my girl," the Countess answered, and afterward sat silent, one bare foot jogging restlessly; "yet am I two years the junior— Did you hear nothing, Rosamund?"
"Nay, Madame Gertrude, I heard nothing."
"Strange!" the Countess said; "let us have lights, since I can no longer endure the overpopulous darkness." She kindled, with twitching fingers, three lamps and looked in vain for more. "It is as yet dark yonder, where the shadows quiver very oddly, as though they would rise from the floor—do they not, my girl?—and protest vain things. Nay, Rosamund, it has been done; in the moment of death men's souls have travelled farther and have been visible; it has been done, I tell you. And he would stand before me, with pleading eyes, and reproach me in a voice too faint to reach my ears—but I would see him—and his groping hands would clutch at my hands as though a dropped veil had touched me, and with the contact I would go mad!"
"Madame Gertrude!" the girl now stammered, in communicated terror.
"Poor innocent dastard!" the woman said, "I am Ysabeau of France." And when Rosamund made as though to rise, in alarm, Queen Ysabeau caught her by the shoulder. "Bear witness when he comes I never hated him. Yet for my quiet it was necessary that it suffer so cruelly, the scented, pampered body, and no mark be left upon it! Eia! even now he suffers! Nay, I have lied. I hate the man, and in such fashion as you will comprehend only when you are Sarum's wife."
"Madame and Queen!" the girl said, "you will not murder me!"
"I am tempted!" the Queen hissed. "O little slip of girlhood, I am tempted, for it is not reasonable you should possess everything that I have lost. Innocence you have, and youth, and untroubled eyes, and quiet dreams, and the glad beauty of the devil, and Gregory Darrell's love—" Now Ysabeau sat down upon the bed and caught up the girl's face between two fevered hands. "Rosamund, this Darrell perceives within the moment, as I do, that the love he bears for you is but what he remembers of the love he bore a certain maid long dead. Eh, you might have been her sister, Rosamund, for you are very like her. And she, poor wench—why, I could see her now, I think, were my eyes not blurred, somehow, almost as though Queen Ysabeau might weep! But she was handsomer than you, since your complexion is not overclear, praise God!"
Woman against woman they were. "He has told me of his intercourse with you," the girl said, and this was a lie flatfooted. "Nay, kill me if you will, madame, since you are the stronger, yet, with my dying breath, Gregory has loved but me."
"Ma belle," the Queen answered, and laughed bitterly, "do I not know men? He told you nothing. And to-night he hesitated, and to-morrow, at the lifting of my finger, he will supplicate. Throughout his life has Gregory Darrell loved me, O white, palsied innocence! and he is mine at a whistle. And in that time to come he will desert you, Rosamund—though with a pleasing Canzon—and they will give you to the gross Earl of Sarum, as they gave me to the painted man who was of late our King! and in that time to come you will know your body to be your husband's makeshift when he lacks leisure to seek out other recreation! and in that time to come you will long at first for death, and presently your heart will be a flame within you, my Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your God because He made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you, and hate all masculinity because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whim! and chiefly hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and devastation only will you love in that strange time which is to come. It is adjacent, my Rosamund."
The girl kept silence. She sat erect in the tumbled bed, her hands clasping her knees, and appeared to deliberate what Dame Ysabeau had said. The plentiful brown hair fell about this Rosamund's face, which was white and shrewd. "A part of what you say, madame, I understand. I know that Gregory Darrell loves me, yet I have long ago acknowledged he loves me but as one pets a child, or, let us say, a spaniel which reveres and amuses one. I lack his wit, you comprehend, and so he never speaks to me all that he thinks. Yet a part of it he tells me, and he loves me, and with this I am content. Assuredly, if they give me to Sarum I shall hate Sarum even more than I detest him now. And then, I think, Heaven help me! that I would not greatly grieve— Oh, you are all evil!" Rosamund said; "and you thrust thoughts into my mind I may not grapple with!"
"You will comprehend them," the Queen said, "when you know yourself a chattel, bought and paid for."
The Queen laughed. She rose, and either hand strained toward heaven. "You are omnipotent, yet have You let me become that into which I am transmuted," she said, very low.
Anon she began, as though a statue spoke through motionless and pallid lips. "They have long urged me, Rosamund, to a deed which by one stroke would make me mistress of these islands. To-day I looked on Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in love—and I had but to crush a filthy worm to come to him. Eh, and I was tempted—!"
The fearless girl said: "Let us grant that Gregory loves you very greatly, and me just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a cushioned infamy, a colorful and brief delirium, and afterward demolishment of soul and body; I offer him contentment and a level life, made up of tiny happenings, it may be, and lacking both in abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love a flame wherein must the lover's soul be purified, as an ore by fire, even to its own discredit; and thus, madame, to judge between us I dare summon you."
"Child, child!" the Queen said, tenderly, and with a smile, "you are brave; and in your fashion you are wise; yet you will never comprehend. But once I was in heart and soul and body all that you are to-day; and now I am Queen Ysabeau. Assuredly, it would be hard to yield my single chance of happiness; it would be hard to know that Gregory Darrell must presently dwindle into an ox well-pastured, and garner of life no more than any ox; but to say, 'Let this girl become as I, and garner that which I have garnered—!' Did you in truth hear nothing, Rosamund?"
"Why, nothing save the wind."
"Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and various imprecations! But I, too, grow cowardly, it maybe— Nay, I know," she said, and in a resonant voice, "that I am by this mistress of broad England, until my son—my own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund—knows me for what I am. For I have heard— Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!" the Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I was but your plaything!"
"Madame Ysabeau—!" the girl stammered, and ran toward her, for the girl had risen, and she was terrified.
"To bed!" said Ysabeau; "and put out the lights lest he come presently. Or perhaps he fears me now too much to come to-night. Yet the night approaches, none the less, when I must lift some arras and find him there, chalk-white, with painted cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very terribly, or look into some mirror and behold there not myself but him—and in that instant I will die. Meantime I rule, until my son attains his manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and so helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly, and save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more fair— But I must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, God orders matters very shrewdly, my Rosamund."
And timidly the girl touched one shoulder. "In part, I understand, madame and Queen."
"You understand nothing," said Ysabeau; "how should you understand whose breasts are yet so tiny? Nay, put out the light! though I dread the darkness, Rosamund—For they say that hell is poorly lighted—and they say—" Then Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Herself blew out each lamp.
"We know this Gregory Darrell," the Queen said in the darkness, and aloud, "ay, to the marrow we know him, however steadfastly we blink, and we know the present turmoil of his soul; and in common-sense what chance have you of victory?"
"None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. For man is a being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy orders, and his life here but one unending warfare between that which is divine in him and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of the cruel tourney. Always his judgment misleads the man, and his faculties allure him to a truce, however brief, with iniquity. His senses raise a mist about his goings, and there is not an endowment of the man but in the end plays traitor to his interest, as of His wisdom God intends; so that when the man is overthrown, God the Eternal Father may, in reason, be neither vexed nor grieved if only he takes heart to rise again. And when, betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight out the allotted battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors which God Himself accorded, I think that they hold festival in heaven."
"A very pretty sermon," said the Queen, and with premeditation yawned.
Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but I believe that neither of these two slept with an inappropriate profundity.
About dawn one of the Queen's attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and presently conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, where Ysabeau walked in tranquil converse with Lord Berners. The old man was in high good-humor.
"My lad," said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the shoulder, "you have, I do protest, the very phoenix of sisters. I was never happier." And he went away chuckling.
The Queen said in a toneless voice, "We ride for Blackfriars now."
Darrell responded, "I am content, and ask but leave to speak, and briefly, with Dame Rosamund before I die."
Then the woman came more near to him. "I am not used to beg, but within this hour you die, and I have loved no man in all my life saving only you, Sir Gregory Darrell. Nor have you loved any person as you loved me once in France. Nay, to-day, I may speak freely, for with you the doings of that boy and girl are matters overpast. Yet were it otherwise—eh, weigh the matter carefully! for absolute mistress of England am I now, and entire England would I give you, and such love as that slim, white innocence has never dreamed of would I give you, Gregory Darrell—No, no! ah, Mother of God, not you!" The Queen clapped one hand upon his lips.
"Listen," she quickly said, as a person in the crisis of panic; "I spoke to tempt you. But you saw, and clearly, that it was the sickly whim of a wanton, and you never dreamed of yielding, for you love this Rosamund Eastney, and you know me to be vile. Then have a care of me! The strange woman am I of whom we read that her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. Yea, many strong men have been slain by me, and futurely will many others be slain, it may be; but never you among them, my Gregory, who are more wary, and more merciful, and know that I have need to lay aside at least one comfortable thought against eternity."
"I concede you to have been unwise—" he hoarsely said.
About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air of this new day seemed raw and chill.
Then Rosamund came through the opening in the hedge. "Nay, choose," she wearily said; "the woman offers life and empery and wealth, and it may be, even a greater love than I am capable of giving you. I offer a dishonorable death within the moment."
And again, with that peculiar and imperious gesture, the man flung back his head, and he laughed. "I am I! and I will so to live that I may face without shame not only God, but even my own scrutiny." He wheeled upon the Queen and spoke henceforward very leisurely. "I love you; all my life long I have loved you, Ysabeau, and even now I love you: and you, too, dear Rosamund, I love, though with a difference. And every fibre of my being lusts for the power that you would give me, Ysabeau, and for the good which I would do with it in the England I or Roger Mortimer must rule; as every fibre of my being lusts for the man that I would be could I choose death without debate, and for the man which you would make of me, my Rosamund.
"The man! And what is this man, this Gregory Darrell, that his welfare be considered?—an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with the archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts! This much I know, at bottom, durst I but be honest.
"Yet more clearly do I perceive that this same man, like all his fellows, is a maimed god who walks the world dependent upon many wise and evil counsellors. He must measure, and to a hair's-breadth, every content of the world by means of a bloodied sponge, tucked somewhere in his skull, which is ungeared by the first cup of wine and ruined by the touch of his own finger. He must appraise all that he judges with no better instruments than two bits of colored jelly, with a bungling makeshift so maladroit that the nearest horologer's apprentice could have devised a more accurate device. In fine, he is under penalty condemned to compute eternity with false weights and to estimate infinity with a yardstick: and he very often does it. For though, 'If then I do that which I would not I consent unto the law,' saith even the Apostle; yet the braver Pagan answers him, 'Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better and more divine than the things which cause the various effects and, as it were, pull thee by the strings.'
"There lies the choice which every man must make—or rationally, as his reason goes, to accept his own limitations and make the best of his allotted prison-yard? or stupendously to play the fool and swear even to himself (while his own judgment shrieks and proves a flat denial), that he is at will omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my poor proud Ysabeau; and I choose now, and differently: for poltroon that I am! being now in a cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am not much afraid, and I choose death, madame."
It was toward Rosamund that the Queen looked, and smiled a little pitifully. "Should Queen Ysabeau be angry or vexed or very cruel now, my Rosamund? for at bottom she is glad."
More lately the Queen said: "I give you back your plighted word. I ride homeward to my husks, but you remain. Or rather, the Countess of Farrington departs for the convent of Ambresbury, disconsolate in her widowhood and desirous to have done with worldly affairs. It is most natural she should relinquish to her beloved and only brother all her dower-lands—or so at least Messire de Berners acknowledges. Here, then, is the grant, my Gregory, that conveys to you those lands of Ralph de Belomys which last year I confiscated. And this tedious Messire de Berners is willing now—nay, desirous—to have you for a son-in-law."
About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air of this new day seemed raw and chill, what while, very calmly, Dame Ysabeau took Sir Gregory's hand and laid it upon the hand of Rosamund Eastney. "Our paladin is, in the outcome, a mortal man, and therefore I do not altogether envy you. Yet he has his moments, and you are capable. Serve, then, not only his desires but mine also, dear Rosamund."
There was a silence. The girl spoke as though it was a sacrament. "I will, madame and Queen."
Thus did the Queen end her holiday.
A little later the Countess of Farrington rode from Ordish with all her train save one; and riding from that place, where love was, she sang very softly, and as to herself.
Sang Ysabeau:
"As with her dupes dealt CirceLife deals with hers, pardie!Reshaping without mercy,And shaping swinishly,To wallow swinishly,And for eternity—
"Though, harder than the witch was,Life, changing ne'er the whole,Transmutes the body, which wasProud garment of the soul,And briefly drugs the soul,Whose ruin is her goal—
"And means by this thereafterA subtler mirth to get,And mock with bitterer laughterHer helpless dupes' regret,Their swinish dull regretFor what they half forget."