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Title: The Fortunes of Garin
Author: Johnston, Mary
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Fortunes of Garin" ***
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By Mary Johnston
THE FORTUNES OF GARIN. Illustrated.
THE WITCH. With frontispiece.
HAGAR.
THE LONG ROLL. The first of two books
dealing with the war between the
States. With Illustrations in color
by N. C. WYETH.
CEASE FIRING. The second of two books
dealing with the war between the
States. With Illustrations in color
by N. C. WYETH.
LEWIS RAND. With Illustrations in color
by F. C. YOHN.
AUDREY. With Illustrations in color by
F. C. YOHN.
PRISONERS OF HOPE. With Frontispiece.
TO HAVE AND TO HOLD. With 8 Illustrations
by HOWARD PYLE, E. B.THOMPSON, A. W.
BETTS, and EMLEN MCCONNELL.
THE GODDESS OF REASON. _A Drama._
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
THE FORTUNES OF GARIN
[Illustration: THE MEETING BY ST. MARTHA’S WELL]
THE FORTUNES OF
GARIN
BY
MARY JOHNSTON
[Illustration: LOGO]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY MARY JOHNSTON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October 1915_
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
CONTENTS
I. ROCHE-DE-FRÊNE 1
II. THE JONGLEUR AND THE HERD-GIRL 13
III. THE NIGHTINGALE 31
IV. THE ABBOT 47
V. RAIMBAUT THE SIX-FINGERED 61
VI. THE GARDEN 73
VII. THE UGLY PRINCESS 85
VIII. TOURNAMENT 99
IX. GARIN SEEKS HIS FORTUNE 115
X. GARIN TAKES THE CROSS 127
XI. THIBAUT CANTELEU 144
XII. MONTMAURE 159
XIII. THE VENETIAN 174
XIV. OUR LADY IN EGYPT 189
XV. SAINT MARTHA’S WELL 204
XVI. GARIN AND JAUFRE 219
XVII. OUR LADY OF ROCHE-DE-FRÊNE 231
XVIII. COUNT JAUFRE 246
XIX. THE SIEGE 261
XX. THE WHITE TOWER 272
XXI. THE ROCK-GATE 282
XXII. THE SAFFRON CROSS 295
XXIII. CAP-DU-LOUP 309
XXIV. THE ABBEY OF THE FOUNTAIN 319
XXV. RICHARD LION-HEART 335
XXVI. THE FAIR GOAL 346
XXVII. SPRING TIME 361
THE FORTUNES
OF GARIN
CHAPTER I
ROCHE-DE-FRÊNE
WITHOUT blazed autumn sunshine, strong as summer sunshine in northern
lands. Within the cathedral dusk ruled, rich and mysterious. The
sanctuary light burned, a star. The candles were yet smoking, the
incense yet clung, thick and pungent. Vanishing through the sacristy
door went the last flutter of acolyte or chorister. The throng that
worshipped dwindled to a few lingering shapes. The rest disappeared by
the huge portal, marvellously sculptured. It had been a great throng,
for Bishop Ugo had preached. Now the cathedral was almost empty, and
more rich, more mysterious because of that. The saints in their niches
could be seen the better, and the gold dust from the windows came in
unbroken shafts to the pavement. There they splintered and light lay
in fragments. One of these patches made a strange glory for the head
of Boniface of Beaucaire who was doing penance, stretched out on the
pavement like a cross. Lost in the shadows of nave, aisles, and chapels
were other penitents, on their knees, muttering prayers. Hugues from
up the river lay on his face, half in light, half in shadow, before
the shrine of Saint Martial. Hugues’s penance had been heavy, for he
was a captain of Free Lances and had beset and robbed a travelling
monk. But in Hugues’s cavern that night the monk turned preacher and
wrought so mightily that he brought Hugues—who was a simple, emotional
soul—to his knees, and the next day, when they parted, sent him here
for penance. He lay bare to the waist, and his back was bloody from the
scourging he had received before the church doors.
The church was a marvel. It had been building for long, long while,
and it was not yet finished. It was begun by a grateful population, at
the instigation of the then bishop, in the year 1035. All Christendom
had set the year 1000 for the Second Coming and the Judgement Day, and
as the time approached had waited in deep gloom and with a palsied
will for those august arrivals. When the year passed, with miseries
enough, but with no rolling back of the firmament like a scroll, it
was concluded that what had been meant was the thousandth from the
Crucifixion. 1033 was now set for the Final Event, and the neglect
of each day, the torpor and terror of the mind, continued. But 1033
passed, marked by nothing more dreadful than famine and common
wretchedness. Christendom woke from that particular trance, sighed
with relief, and began to grow—to grow with vigour and rapidity, with
luxuriance and flourishes.
In 1035, then, the cathedral had been begun, and to-morrow morning,
here in the last quarter of the twelfth century, the stone masons would
go clinking, clinking up yonder, atop of the first of the two towers.
No man really knew when it would be finished. But for a century nave,
aisles, choir, and chapels had been completed. Under the wonderful roof
three generations of the people of Roche-de-Frêne had bowed themselves
when the bell rang and the Host was elevated. The cathedral had the
hallowing of time. It was an Inheritance as was the Faith that bred
it. The atmosphere of this place was the atmosphere of emotion, and
strong as were the pillars, they were no stronger than was the Habit
which brought the feet this way and bowed the heads; and clinging and
permeating as was the incense, it was no more so than the sentiment
that stretched yonder Boniface of Beaucaire and here Hugues the Free
Lance. Boniface of Beaucaire would cheat again and Hugues the Free
Lance rob and slay, but here they were, no hypocrites, and cleaner in
this moment than they had been.
There were two pillars, one twisted, one straight, that had been
brought from Palestine by Gaucelm the Crusader, father of Gaucelm the
Fortunate, the present Prince, and set on either side the shrine of Our
Lady of Roche-de-Frêne. A shaft of light from the great window struck
across the two, broke, and made the pavement sunny.
Just here knelt a youth, in a squire’s dress of green and brown. He
had no penance to perform. He was kneeling because he was in a kneeling
mood. The light showed a well-made, supple figure, with powerful
shoulders. The head and throat were good, the face rather long, with
strong features, the colouring blonde inclining to brown, the eyes grey
with blue glints. They were directed now to the image of the Virgin,
above him in her niche, the other side of the gold light. She stood,
incredibly slender, and taller than human, rose-cheeked, dressed in
azure samite sewn with gems, with a crown, and in her two hands a
crimson heart pierced by an iron arrow. A lamp burned before her, and
there were flowers around.
The youth knelt with a fixed gaze, asking for inspiration.... The
Virgin of Roche-de-Frêne seemed to move, to dilate, to breathe, to
smile! The young man sank his head, stretched forth his arms. “O Our
Lady, smile on me! O Our Lady, give me to-day a sign!”
The cathedral grew a place of mystery, of high, transcendent passion.
The lamp appeared to brighten, the heart in the two hands to glow.
“Is it a sign that I am to serve Her in Holy Church?” thought Garin
de Castel-Noir, “or, may-hap, that I am to serve Her with lance and
shield? Is it a sign, or am I mistaken? If it were a sign, would I ask
if I were mistaken?” He sighed. “O High God, give me a sign!”
He had to decide no less a thing than his career. Until a little while
ago he had thought that matter settled. He was esquire to a poor lord,
a fierce and a stupid lord, and he had no hope but to remain esquire
for years perhaps to come. But, come soon or come late, one day his
lord would make him knight. That done, and his saint favouring, he
might somehow achieve honour. Three months ago his lot had seemed as
fixed as that of a fir tree growing below his lord Raimbaut’s black
keep. Then into the matter had stepped the Abbot of Saint Pamphilius,
that was kinsman of Garin and of his brother, Foulque the Cripple, who
bided at Castel-Noir.
With simplicity, the squire explained it to Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne:
“He is our near kinsman, and he knows how poor are Foulque and I, and
he knows, too, Lord Raimbaut, and the little we may expect. And now
he says that if I will give up hope of chivalry and take the tonsure,
he will be my good patron. And if I work well with head and pen and
prove myself able, he will charge himself that I advance and win great
promotion. If I serve him well, so will he serve me well. O Our Lady,”
ended Garin, “he is a great man as you know, and close friend to Bishop
Ugo. Moreover, he and Foulque have made application to my lord Raimbaut
and won him to consent. And Foulque urges me toward Holy Church. But O
Blessed Lady,” cried Garin, and stretched forth his arms, “do I wish to
go? I know not—I know not!”
The Virgin of Roche-de-Frêne, crowned and dazzling, stood in blue
samite with her heart and arrow, but said no word and gave no sign....
Raimbaut and his knighthood—the Abbot and Holy Church—and Foulque
with his song, “Choose the Abbot! Work hard and be supple and further
the ends of Holy Church, twining your own ends with that golden cord.
No telling to what height you may rise! Great wealth and power fall to
them who serve her to her profit and liking. You crave learning. On
which road, I put it to you, will you gather most of that?” So Foulque.
And Bishop Ugo had preached, this morn, of the glory and power of Holy
Church and of the crowns laid up for them who served her.
The squire sighed deeply. He must make decision. The Abbot would not
always keep that look of invitation. He had other young and needy
kinsmen. Worldly considerations enough flitted through Garin’s head,
but they found something there beside themselves. “In deep truth, which
is mine? To endure until I may ride as knight and find or make some
door in a high, thick wall? To take the tonsure—to study, work and
plan—to become, maybe, canon, and after long time, larger things?...
Which is mine? This—or that—or either? O Blessed Lady, I would choose
from within!”
The tall, jewelled Queen of Heaven looked serenely down upon him. She
had ceased to breathe. The sign seemed not to be coming. He had before
him a long ride, and he must go, with or without the token. He kept
his position yet another minute, then, with a deep sigh, relinquished
the quest. Rising, he stepped backward from the presence of the Virgin
of Roche-de-Frêne, out of the line of the Saracen pillars. As he went,
the climbing shaft of amber light caught his eye and forthwith Jacob’s
ladder came into his head, and he began to send slim angels up and down
it. He had a potent fancy.
Leaving the church, he passed Boniface of Beaucaire and Hugues the
Free Lance. His step made a ringing on the pavement beside their prone
heads. He felt for them no contempt. They were making, more or less,
an honourable amende. Everybody in their lives had done or would do
penance, and after life came purgatory. He passed them as he might pass
any other quite usual phenomenon, and so quitted the cathedral.
Outside was Roche-de-Frêne, grey, close-built, massed upon the long
hill-top, sending spurs of houses down the hillsides between olive and
cypress, almond and plane and pine—Roche-de-Frêne, so well-walled,
Roche-de-Frêne beat upon, laved, drowned by the southern sun.
Crown of its wide-browed craggy hill rose another hill; crown of this,
a grey dream in the fiery day, sprang the castle of its prince, of
that Gaucelm the Fortunate whose father had brought the pillars. The
cathedral had its lesser rise of earth and faced the castle, and beside
the cathedral was the bishop’s palace, and between the church and the
castle, up and down and over the hillsides, spread the town. The sky
was as blue as the robe of the Virgin of Roche-de-Frêne. The southern
horizon showed a gleam of the Mediterranean, and north and west had
purple mountains. In the narrow streets between the high houses, and in
every little opening and chance square the people of Roche-de-Frêne,
men, women and children, talked, laughed, and gestured. It was a feast
day, holiday, merry in the sun. Wine was being drunk, jongleurs were
telling tales and playing the mountebank.
Garin sought his inn and his horse. He was in Roche-de-Frêne upon
Raimbaut’s business, but that over, he had leave to ride to Castel-Noir
and spend three days with his brother. The merry-making in the town
tempted, but the way was long and he must go. A chain of five girls
crossed his path, brown, laughing, making dancing steps, their robes
kilted high, red and yellow flowers in their hair. “What a beautiful
young man!” said their eyes. “Stay—stay!” Garin wanted to stay—but
he was not without judgement and he went. At the inn he had a spare
dinner, the only kind for which he could pay. A bit of meat, a piece of
bread, a bunch of grapes, a cup of wine—then his horse at the door.
Half a dozen men-at-arms from the castle passed this way. They stopped.
“That’s a good steed!”
Garin mounted. “None better,” he said briefly.
The grizzled chief of the six laid an approving touch upon the silken
flank. “Where did you get him?”
Garin took the reins. “At home.”
“Good page, where is that?”
“I am not page, I am esquire,” said Garin.
“Good esquire, where is that?”
“‘That’ is Castel-Noir.”
“A little black tower in a big black wood? I know the place,” said the
grizzled one. “Your lord is Raimbaut of the Six Fingers.”
“Just.”
“Whose lord is the Count of Montmaure, whose lord is our Prince
Gaucelm, whose lord is the King at Paris, whose lord is the Pope in
Rome, whose lord is God on His Throne.—Do you wish to sell your horse?”
“I do not.”
“I have taken a fancy to him,” said the man-at-arms. “But there! the
land is at peace. Go your ways—go your ways! Are you for the jousting
in the castle lists?”
“No. I would see it, but I have not time.”
“You would see a pretty sight,” quoth the man-at-arms. “There is
Prince Gaucelm’s second princess, to wit Madame Alazais that is the
most beautiful woman in the world, and sitting beside her the prince’s
daughter, our princess Audiart, that is not so beautiful.”
“They say,” spoke Garin, “that she is not beautiful at all.”
“That same ‘They say’ is a shifty knave.—Better go, and I will go with
you,” said the man-at-arms, “for truly I have not been lately to the
lists.”
But Garin adhered to it that he could not. He made Paladin to curvet,
bound and caracole, then with a backward laugh and wave of his hand
went his way—but caused his way to lead him past the castle of
Roche-de-Frêne.
So riding by, he looked up wistfully to barbican and walls and towers.
The place was vast, a great example of what a castle might be. Enough
folk for a town housed within it. At one point tree tops, peering over
the walls, spoke of an included garden. Above the donjon just stirred
in the autumn air the great blue banner of Gaucelm the Fortunate.
The mighty gates were open, the drawbridge down, the water in the
moat smiled as if it had neither memory nor premonition of dead men
in its arms. People were crossing, gay of dress. The sunny noon, the
holiday time, softened all the hugeness, kept one from seeing what a
frown Roche-de-Frêne might wear. Garin heard trumpets. The esquire of
Raimbaut the Six-fingered, the brother of Foulque the Cripple, the
youth from the small black tower in the black wood, gazed and listened
with parted lips. Raimbaut held from Montmaure, but for Raimbaut’s fief
and other fiefs adjacent, Montmaure who held mainly from the House of
Aquitaine, owed Roche-de-Frêne fealty. Being feudal lord of his lord,
Gaucelm the Fortunate was lord of Foulque the Cripple and Garin the
Squire. The latter wondered if ever he would enter there where the
trumpets were blowing.
The great pile passed, the town itself passed, he found himself
upon a downward sweeping road and so, by zig-zags, left the hill of
Roche-de-Frêne and coming to the plain rode west by north between shorn
fields and vineyards. The way was fair but lonely, for the country
folk were gone to the town for this day of the patron saint and were
not yet returning. Before him lay woods—for much of the country was
wooded then—and craggy hills, and in the distance purple mountains.
He had some leagues to ride. Now and again he might see, to this hand
or to that, a castle upon a height, below it a huddled brown hamlet.
Late in the afternoon there would lie to his right the Convent of Our
Lady in Egypt. But his road was not one of the great travelled ways. It
traversed a sparsely populated region, and it was going, presently, to
be lonely enough.
Garin rode with sunken head, trying to settle matters before he should
see Foulque. If Raimbaut had been a liberal, noble, joyous lord! But he
was none such. It was little that page or esquire could learn in his
gloomy castle, and little chance might have knight of his. A gloomy
castle, and a lord of little worth, and a lady old and shrewish....
Every man must have a lord—or so was Garin’s world arranged. But if
only every man could choose one to his liking—
The road bent. Rounding a craggy corner, Paladin and he well-nigh trod
upon a sleeping man, propped at the road edge against a grey boulder.
Paladin curvetted aside, Garin swore by his favourite saint, the man
awoke and stretched his arms. He was young,—five or six years older,
perhaps, than Garin. His dress, when it came to hue and cut, showed
extravagant and gay, but the stuffs of which it was composed were far
from costly. Here showed a rent, rather neatly darned, and here a soil
rubbed away as thoroughly as might be. He was dark and thin, with
long, narrow eyes that gave him an Eastern look. Beside him, slung
from his neck by a ribbon, lay a lute, and he smiled with professional
brilliancy.
CHAPTER II
THE JONGLEUR AND THE HERD-GIRL
“JONGLEUR,” said Garin, “some miles from this spot there is a feast day
in a fair town. This is the strangest thing that ever I saw, that a
jongleur should be here and not there!”
“Esquire,” said the other, “I have certain information that the prince
holds to-day a great tourney, and that every knight and baron in forty
miles around has gone to the joust. I know not an odder thing than that
all the knights should be riding in one direction and all the esquires
in another!”
“Two odd things in one day is good measure,” said Garin. “That is a
fine lute you have.”
The thin dark person drew the musical instrument in front of him and
began to play, and then to sing in a fair-to-middling voice.
“In the spring all hidden close,
Lives many a bud will be a rose.
In the spring ’tis crescent morn,
But then, ah then, the man is born!
In the spring ’tis yea or nay;
Then cometh Love makes gold of clay!
Love is the rose and truest gold,
Love is the day and soldan bold,
Love—”
The jongleur yawned and ceased to sing. “Why,” he asked the air, “why
should I sing Guy of Perpignan’s doggerel and give it immortality when
Guy of Perpignan, turning on his heel, hath turned me off?”
He drew the ribbon over his head, laid the lute on the grass, and
leaning back, closed his eyes. Garin gazed at the lute for a moment
then, dismounting, picked it up and tried his hand. He sang a hunting
stave, in a better voice by far than was the jongleur’s. None had ever
told him that he had a nightingale in his throat.
The jongleur opened his eyes. “Good squire, I could teach you to sing
not so badly! But sing of love—sing of love! Hunting is, poetically
speaking, out of court favour.”
“I sing of that which I know of,” said Garin.
The other sat up. “Have I found the phœnix? Nay, nay, I trow not! Love
is the theme, and I have not found a man—no, not in cloister—who
could not rhyme and carol and expound it! Love is extremely in
fashion.—Have you a lord?”
“Aye.”
“Has not that lord a lady?”
“Aye, so.”
“Then love thy lady, and sing of it.”
“I know,” said Garin, “that love is the fashion.”
“The height of it,” answered the other. “It has been so now for fifty
years and there seems no declining. It rages.”
Garin left his horse to crop the sweet grass and came and sat upon the
boulder above the jongleur. “Tell me,” he said, “how it came to be so.
I have a brother, older than me, who scoffs and saith that women did
not use to be of such account.”
The jongleur took up his lute again. “The troubadour whom, until the
other day, I served, discusses that. He is proud and ungrateful, but
yet for your edification, I will repeat what he says:—
“As earthly man walks earthly ways,
At times he findeth, God the praise!
Far leagues apart, thousand no less,
Fresh life, fresh light, that will him bless.
It cometh not save he do beckon.
He groweth to it as I reckon.
And when it comes the past seems grey,
And only now the golden day.
Then in its turn the golden day
Fadeth before new gold alway.
And yet he holds the ancient gain,
And carryeth it with him o’er the plain.
And so we fare and so we grow,
Wise men would not have it other so.”
“That is a good rede,” said Garin.
“It continueth thus,” answered the jongleur.
“In time of old came Reason, King,—
Ill fares the bow that lacks that string!
When time was full, to give great light,
Came Jesu’s word and churches’ might.
Then Knighthood rose and Courtesy,
And all we mean by Chivalry.
These had not come, I rede you well,
Save that before them rang a bell,
‘_Turn you, and look at Eve beside,
Who with you roameth the world wide,
And look no more as hart on hind._’
Now Love is seen by those were blind.
Full day it is of high Love’s power.
Her sceptre stands; it is her hour.
And well I wis her lovely face
To Time his reign will lend a grace!—
But think ye not is made the ring!
Morn will come a further thing.”
The jongleur ceased to finger his lute; Garin sat silent on the
boulder. The light, sifting through the trees, chequered his
olive-green, close-fitting dress and his brown mantle. He sat, clasping
his knee, his eyes with the blue glints at once bright and dreamy.
“I have read,” he said, “that it is a great thing to be a great lover.”
“So all the troubadours say,” quoth the jongleur.
He put the ribbon of the lute around his neck, stretched himself and
rose. “Miles still to the town! The day is getting on, and I will bid
you adieu.”
Garin, too, looked at the sun, whistled to Paladin and left the boulder.
“My name is Elias,” said the jongleur, “and I was born at Montaudon. If
you make acquaintance with a rich baron who would like to hear a new
tale or song each night for a thousand running, bear me in mind. I play
harp, viol and lute, and so well and timedly that when they hear me,
mourners leave their weeping and fall to dancing. Moreover, I know how
to walk upon my hands and to vault and tumble, and I have a trick with
eggs and another with platters in the air that no man or woman hath
ever seen into. I have also a great store of riddles. In addition, if
need be, I can back a horse and thrust with a spear.”
“I know no such lord,” said Garin sadly. “I would I were he myself.”
“Then perhaps you may meet with some famous troubadour. I will serve
none,” said Elias, “who is not in some measure famous. I prefer that he
be knight as well as poet. Be so kind as to round it in such an one’s
ear that you know a famed jongleur. Say to him that if God has not
given him voice wherewith to sing or to relate his chansons, tensos,
and sirventes, I, who sing like rossignol and who learned narration in
Tripoli and Alexandria, will do him at least some justice. But if he
sings like rossignol himself or, God-like, speaks his own compositions,
then say that I am the best accompanist—harp, lute, or viol—between
Spain and Italy. Say that, even though he be armed so cap-à-pie,
there will arise occasions when he is not in voice, or is weary or
out of spirits. Then how well to have such as I beside him! Then tell
him that I have the completest memory, that I learn most quickly and
neither forget nor misplace, and that never do I take a liberty with
my master’s verse. When you have come that far, make a pause; then,
while he ponders, resume. Say that, doubtless, at that moment, a
hundred jongleurs, scattered up and down the land, are chance learning
and wrongly giving forth his mightiest, sweetest poems. Were it not
well—ask him—himself to teach them to one with memory and delivery
beyond reproach, who in turn might teach others? So, from mouth to
mouth, all would go as it should, and he be published correctly. Let
that sink in. Then tell him that I am helpful in lesser ways,—silent
when silence is wanted, always discreet, a good bearer of letters and
messages, quick at extrications, subtle as an Italian. Say that I am
a good servant and honour him who feeds me and never mistake where
the salt stands. Say that I am skilful beyond most, and earnest ever
for the advancement and honour of my master. Lastly, say that I am
agreeable, but not too agreeable, in the eyes of women.”
“That is necessary?” asked Garin.
“Absolutely,” answered the jongleur. “Your lover is as jealous as God.
There must not be two Gods in one miracle play.”
“Does every troubadour,” asked Garin, “love greatly?”
“He thinks he does,” said Elias. “Do not forget, if you meet a truly
famed one, Elias of Montaudon. You may also say that I have been in
the company of many poets, and that I know the secret soul of Guy of
Perpignan.”
Both left the boulder and stepped into the road. Garin laid his hand on
Paladin’s neck.
“My lord is Raimbaut the Six-fingered,” he said. “His wife, my lady,
is half-aged and evil to look upon, and she rails at every one save
Raimbaut, whom she fears.”
“That is ill-luck,” said the jongleur. “There is, perhaps, some
neighbouring lady—”
“No. Not one.”
“To be very courtly,” said the jongleur, “one must be in love with
Love. You need not at all see a woman as she is. It suffices if she is
young and not deformed, and of noble station.”
“She must always be noble?”
“It doth not yet descend to shepherdesses,” said the jongleur. “For
them the antique way suffices.”
Garin mounted his horse and sat still in saddle, his eyes upon a fair
green branch that the sun was transfiguring, making it very lively and
intense in hue.
“Great love,” he said. “By the soul of my father, I think it is a great
thing! But if there is none set in your eyes to love—”
“Can you not,” said the jongleur, “like Lord Rudel, love one unseen?”
Garin sat regarding the green branch. “I do not know.... We love the
unseen when we love Honour.” He sat for a moment in silence, then drew
a sigh and spoke as though to himself. “It is with me as if all things
were between coming and going, and a half-light, and a fulness that
presses and yet knows not its path where it will go. I know not what
I shall do, nor how I shall carry life. Now I feel afire and now I am
sad—” He broke off and looked beyond the green branch; then, before
the other could speak, shook Paladin’s reins and moved down the leafy
way. He glanced over his shoulder at the jongleur. “I will remember
you.”
“Aye, remember!” returned the jongleur. He faced toward the town, put
one leg before the other, and, going, swept his fingers across the
strings of his lute. He, too, looked over his shoulder and called
across the widening distance. “Choose Love!” he called.
Garin, turning the corner of the jutty hill, lost sight of him. The
tinkle of the lute came a moment longer, then it, too, vanished. The
wind in the leaves sighed and sighed. “O Our Lady,” prayed Garin, “give
thy guidance to the best man within me!”
It was now full afternoon, the road growing narrower and worse, until
at last it was a mere track. It ran through a forest large and old, and
it grew quite lonely. The squire passed no one at all, saw only the
great wood and its inmates that were four-footed or feathered. He was
sympathetic to such life, and ordinarily gave it attention and found in
an inward and disinterested pleasure attention’s reward. But to-day his
mind was divided and troubled, and he rode unseeingly.
“The Abbot and Holy Church,” said part of his mind. “Raimbaut and some
day knighthood,” said another part. “There is earthly power,” said the
first part, “for those who serve Holy Church—serve Her to Her profit
and liking. Earthly power—and in Heaven, prelates still!” Spoke the
second part; “Ripe grapes of power fall, too, to the warrior’s hand.
Only be tall enough, strong enough to pluck them from the stoutest
fortress wall! Knights have become barons, barons counts, counts
kings!—And is not a good knight welcome in Heaven? I trow that he is,
and that the angels vie with one another to do him honour!”
It seemed to Garin, though it seemed dimly enough, that other voices
were trying to make themselves heard. But the first two were the loud
ones, the distinct ones. They were the fully formed, the sinewy, the
inherited concepts.
He rode on. He was now near the end of the forest. It began to break
into grassy glades. In a little time it had so thinned that looking
between the tree trunks one saw open country. Paladin raised his head,
pricked his ears.
“What is it?” asked Garin. “Those yonder are only sheep upon the
hillside.”
The next moment he heard a woman scream, “Help! Help!”
He pricked Paladin forward and together they burst into a little open
space, rounded by a thicket and shadowed by oaks. To one of these a
horse was tied. Its dismounted rider, a young man, richly dressed, had
by the arms and had forced to her knees, a peasant girl, herd, as it
seemed, of a few sheep who might be seen upon the hillside beyond the
thicket.
She cried again, “_A moi! A moi!_” She fought like a young tigress,
twisting her body this way and that, striving to wrench her arms free,
and that failing, bending her face and biting. The man was big-boned
and strong, with red-gold locks, inclining to auburn, and face and eyes
just now red and gleaming. He was young,—a very few years older than
Garin,—but his heel showed a knight’s spur. He bent the girl backward,
struck her a blow that fairly stunned her outcry.
Garin burst into the ring. “Thou caitiff! Turn and fight!”
As he spoke he leaped to the ground and drew his dagger—a long and
good one it chanced to be.
The attacker turned upon him a face of surprise and fury. “Meddler!
Meddler! Begone from here!” Snatching from his belt a small,
silver-mounted horn, he blew it shrilly, for he had followers with him
whom he had sent ahead when he came upon the herd-girl and would stop
for ill passion’s sake. But they had gone too considerable a way, or
the wind blew against the horn, or a hill came between. Whatever it
was, he summoned in vain.
“O thou coward!” cried Garin. “Turn and fight!”
The knight stamped upon the ground. “Fight with a page or a squire at
best! My men shall scourge that green coat from your back! Begone with
your life—”
“Now,” answered Garin, “if you were heir of France, yet are you to me
churl and recreant!”
Whereupon the other took his hands from the herd-girl, drew his short
sword, and sprang upon him.
Raimbaut the Six-fingered had faults many and heavy, but those about
him lacked not for instruction in the art of attack and defence. Garin
was skilful to make the difference not so pronounced between that
long dagger of his and the other’s sword, and he was as strong as
his opponent, and his eyes nothing like so clouded with despite and
fury. The knight had far the wider experience, was counted bold and
successful. But to-day he was at a disadvantage; he knew cold rages
in which he fought or tilted well; but this was a hot rage, and his
arm shook and he struck wide. Still the summoned men did not come, and
still the two struggled for mastery. As for the herd-girl—she had
risen to her knees and then to her feet, and now was standing beneath
a young oak, her eyes upon the combat. At first she had made a move to
leave the place, and then had shaken her head and stayed.
Garin gained, his antagonist fighting now in a blind fury. Presently
the squire gave a stroke so effective that the blood spouted and the
knight, reeling, let fall his weapon. He himself followed, sinking
first upon his knee and then upon his face.
“Now have I slain you?” demanded Garin, and thrusting the sword aside
with his foot, kneeled to see.
Whereupon the other turned swiftly and struck upward with his dagger.
The squire, jerking aside, went free of the intended hurt.
“Now! by the soul of my father!” swore Garin, “this is a noble knight
and must be nobly dealt with!” And so he took the other’s wrists,
forced away the dagger, and wrestling with him, bound his hands with
his belt, then dragged him to the nearest tree, and, cutting the bridle
from his horse, ran the leather beneath his arms and tied him to the
trunk. This done, he took from him the horn, and stooping, glanced at
his wound. “It will not kill you. Live and learn knightliness!”
The other, bound to the tree, twisted and strove, trying to free
himself. His face was no longer flushed but pale from loss of blood
and huge anger. His eyes burned like coals and he gnashed his teeth.
He had a hawk nose, a sensuous mouth, and across his cheek a long and
curiously shaped scar, traced there by a poignard. Garin, gazing upon
him, saw that he promised to be a mighty man.
The bound one spoke, his voice shaking with passion. “Who are you and
what is your name? Who is your lord? My father and I will come, level
your house with earth, flay you alive and nail you head downward to a
tree—”
“If you can, fair sir,” said Garin. Stepping back, he saw upon the
earth the herd-girl’s distaff where she had dropped it when the knight
came against her. The squire picked it up, came back to the captive’s
side and thrust it between his tied hands. “Now,” he said, “let your
men find you with no sword, but with a distaff!”
But the herd-girl moved at that from beneath the oak. Garin found
her at his side, a slim, dark girl, with torn dress and long, black,
loosened hair. “You are all alike!” she cried. “You would shame him
with my distaff! But I tell you that it is my distaff that you shame!”
With that she came to the bound man, caught the distaff from between
his hands, and with it burst through the thicket and went again among
her sheep.
There, presently, Garin found her, lying beneath a green bank, her head
buried in her arms.
“You were right,” said Garin, standing with Paladin beside her, “to
take your distaff away. I am sorry that I did that.—Now what will you
do? He had those with him who will come to seek him.”
The girl stood up. “I have been a fool,” she said, succinctly. “But
there! we learn by folly.” She looked about her. “Where will I go?
Well, that is the question.”
“Where do you live?”
The herd-girl seemed to regard the horizon from west to east and from
east to west. Then she said, “In a hut, two miles yonder. But his men
went that way.”
“Then you cannot go there now.”
“No.—Not now.”
Garin pondered. “It is less than two leagues,” he said, “to the Convent
of Our Lady in Egypt. I could take you there. The good nuns will give
you shelter and send you safe to-morrow to your people.”
The herd-girl seemed to consider it, then she nodded her head. She said
something, but her voice was half lost in the black torrent of her
loosened hair. The sun’s rays were slant—it was growing late.
Garin mounted and drew her up behind him. At a little distance the road
forked.
“They went that way,” she said, pointing.
“Then it’s as well,” said Garin, “that we go this. Now we had best ride
fast for a time.”
They rode fast for a good long way; then, as no hoof-sound or cry came
from behind, the squire checked Paladin, and they went slowly enough to
talk.
“I have hopes,” said Garin, “that he swooned, and when they found him
could tell them naught. Do you know his name?”
“No. I was asleep in the sun.”
“What is your name?”
“Jael.”
“The nuns will care for you.”
“I will ask them to let me stay and keep their sheep.”
They rode on through a fair, smiling country. Garin fell silent and the
herd-girl was not talkative. He could not but ride wondering about that
knight back there, and who he might be and how powerful. He saw that
it was possible that he had provided a hornet’s nest for the ears of
Castel-Noir and Foulque. He drew a sigh, half-frighted and half-proud
of a proved prowess.
The girl behind him moved slightly. “I had forgot to say it,” she
murmured. “I will say it now. Fair sir, I am humbly grateful—”
Garin had a great idiosyncrasy. He disliked to be thanked. “I liked
that fighting,” he said. “It was no sacrifice. That is,” he thought,
“it will not be if he never find out my name.”
Paladin carried them a way farther. Said Garin, remembering chivalry,
“It is man’s part to protect the weaker being, that is woman.”
“It puzzles so!” said the herd-girl. “I am not very weak. Is it man’s
part, too, to lay hands upon a woman against her will? If man did not
that, then man need not do, at such cost, the other. What credit to put
water on the house you yourself set afire?”
“Now by Our Lady,” said Garin, “you are a strange herd-girl!”
He twisted in the saddle so that he might look at her. She sat
still,—young, slim and forlorn to the eye, dark as a berry, her feet
bare and her dress so torn that her limbs showed. Her long, black
loosened hair almost hid her face, which seemed thin, with irregular
features. She had her distaff still, the forlorn serf’s daughter,
herself a serf.
“If we plume ourselves it is a mistake, and foolishness,” said Garin.
“But yet though one man act villainously, another may act well.”
“Just,” said the herd-girl. “And I thank the one who has acted
well—but not all men. I thank a man, but not mankind.”
“How old are you?”
“I am eighteen.”
“Where got you your thoughts?”
“There is time and need for thinking,” said the herd-girl, “when you
keep sheep.”
With that she sighed and fell silent. They were going now by a swift
stream; when, presently, they came to the ford and crossed, they were
upon convent lands. Our Lady in Egypt was a Cistercian convent, ample
and rich, and her grey-clad nuns came from noble houses. There were
humbly born lay sisters. The abbess was the sister of a prince. The
place had wealth, and being of the order of Saint Bernard, then in
its first strength, was like a hive for work. From the ford on, the
road was mended, the fields fat, the hedges trim. The convent had its
serfs, and the huts of these people were not miserable, nor did the
people themselves look hunger-stricken and woe-begone. The hillsides
smiled with vineyards, the sky arched all with an Egyptian blue, the
westering sun, tempering his fierceness, looked benignly on. Presently,
in a vale beside the stream, they saw the great place, set four-square,
a tiny hamlet clinging like an infant to its skirts. Behind, covering
a pleasant slope, were olive groves with tall cypresses mounting like
spires. Grey sisters worked among the grey trees. A bell rang slowly,
with a silver tone.
“I will take you to the gate,” said Garin. “Then you can knock and the
sister will let you in.”
“Aye, that will she. And you, fair squire, where will you go? Where is
your home?”
Now Garin was thinking, “If that knight is a powerful man it is well
that I gave him no inkling of where to find me!” Assuredly he had no
thought nor fear that the herd-girl might betray. And yet he did not
say, “I was born at Castel-Noir,” or “I live now in the castle of
Raimbaut the Six-fingered.” He said, “I dwell by the sea, a long way
from here.”
“Dusk is at hand,” said the herd-girl. “There, among those houses, is
one set apart for benighted travellers.”
“How do you know that? Have you been here before?”
“Aye, once.—If you have far to ride, or the way is not clear before
you, you had best rest to-night in the traveller’s house.”
But Garin shook his head. “I will go on.”
With that they came, just before the sun went down, to the wall of the
convent, and the door beneath a round arch where the needy applied for
shelter or relief. The squire checked Paladin. He made a motion to
dismount, but the girl put a brown hand upon his knee.
“Stay,” she said, “where you are! I will ring the bell and speak to
the portress.” So saying, she slipped to the earth like brown running
water; then turned and spoke to the rescuer. “Fair squire,” she said,
“take again my thanks. If ever I can pay good turn with good turn, be
sure that I will do it!” She moved within the arch, put her hand to the
bell and set it jangling, then again turned her head. “Will you remove
from so close before the door? You will frighten the sister. And the
sun is down and you had best be going. Farewell!”
Involuntarily Garin backed Paladin further from the round arch.
The horse was eager for his stable, wheeled in that direction, and
chafed at the yet restraining hand. Garin looked as in a dream at the
herd-girl. Even now he could not see her face for that streaming hair.
A grating in the convent door opened and the sister who was portress
looked forth. The herd-girl spoke, but he could not hear what was the
word she said. A key grated, the convent door swung open. “Lord God!”
cried the grey sister. He heard that, and had a glimpse of her standing
with lifted hands. The herd-girl crossed the threshold. Paladin,
insisting upon the road, took for a moment the squire’s full attention.
When he looked back the convent wall was blank; door and grating alike
were closed.
CHAPTER III
THE NIGHTINGALE
FOULQUE the Cripple listened with a perturbed brow. “You should have
left him alone! A wretched herd-girl!”
“If I am to be knight,” said Garin hotly, “I will not read knighthood
so.”
“Psha!” said Foulque. “They put resistance on! It is a mask when they
seem unwilling. And if it were real, what then?—Saint Pol, what
then?—And you saw naught to tell you who he was?”
“No.”
Foulque fretted. “If I had been there, I should have found some colour
or sign! But you go as dreamily as if you were bewitched! You see
naught that’s to the point.”
“He had a blue robe and a surcoat of crimson, and shoes of brown
cordovan,” said Garin. “His sword had a rich hilt, and his gloves were
embroidered. I noted them where he had thrust them in the bosom of his
robe when I knelt to look at his wound. He was red-gold of hair and
hawk nosed, full-lipped, and with a scar on his cheek. I think that he
is older than I, but not much older.”
“Well, well!” said Foulque, “he may have been some wanderer from a
distance, with no recourse but his own hand. Moreover, for fame’s
sake, he will not be quick to talk about a younger man, and one of less
degree. If he found out neither your name nor house,—perhaps we’ll
hear no more of it.... Well, what have you to say? I have news for you!
The abbot hath been to Roche-de-Frêne, and on his way home is pleased
to sleep one night at Castel-Noir. A man of his brought notice this
morning. This is Tuesday—Friday he will be here.” Foulque rose and
limped across the hall in some excitement. “Poor and bare, God knows!
is Castel-Noir, but we will do what we can! My bed here he shall have,
and we will put up the hangings from Genoa, and strew the floor with
fair herbs. There’s wine enough, and Pierre shall begin his baking
to-morrow morn! Friday.—He will have, his man said, twenty in his
train. The sub-prior—five or six brothers—the rest stout serfs with
staves.—Friday!—Every man of ours must be set to fishing!”
When every man was sent to the stream, the company of fishermen covered
no great length of bank. Moreover all could not settle to fishing,
for some must forth to forage for the approaching horse, and to find
venison, fowls, and other matters for the Saturday morn. For poor was
the small black tower in the black wood! Foulque could furnish to his
lord a young brother for esquire, and, if a levy were made, ten men, by
no means prize men, with ten horses, by no means horses for a king’s
stable. Paladin was the only horse of that nature. A poor, small fief
was Castel-Noir—black keep and tower on a crag, set in a dark wood,
with a few fields beyond, and all under shadow of the mountains to the
north. South of it, only, ran the bright stream where fish were to be
caught.
Thursday sunrise, Garin took a fishing-rod and went down the crag by
the road cut, long since, in the rock, and through the wood to this
stream. In a great leather pouch slung over his shoulder he had, with
other matters, bread and meat. He meant to make a day of it, bringing
home in the evening good fish for Pierre’s larder. When he reached the
stream, he found there old Jean and his two grandsons and they had a
great basket, its bottom already flashing silver and iris.
“Good-morning, Jean and Pol and Arnaut,” said Garin.
“Good-morning, master! The Blessed Maries have sent good fishing! They
snap as soon as you touch the water.”
Farther down the stream he found Sicart. “How great a man, master, is
the abbot? Very great he must be if he eats all the fish we are taking!
It is a miracle!”
Garin moved down the stream seeking for a place that should seize
his fancy. The eagerness with which he had risen and sallied forth
disappeared. They would have enough for the Abbot and his train—more
than enough. At times he cared for fishing, but not, he found, to-day.
Why then fish, if there was no need? He still carried the rod, but he
continued to walk, making no motion to stop and put it into use. There
was a foot-path by the stream, and it and the gliding water led him on.
He wanted to think, or, more truly, to dream. Back in the black castle
all was topsy-turvy, and Foulque concerned only with family fortunes.
Now Garin walked, and now he leaned against some tree and gazed at the
flowing water; but on the whole he moved forward with such steadiness
that before the sun was much above the tree-tops the foot-path ceased,
having brought him to a great round stone and an overhanging pine, and
the end, on this side, of the fief of Castel-Noir. Beyond came a strip
of stony and unprofitable land, a debated possession, claimed by two
barons and of no especial use to any man. Garin threw himself down upon
the boundary stone and, chin in hand, regarded the sliding stream.
It was this stone, perhaps, that brought into mind Tuesday’s boulder
and the jongleur. Rather than the jongleur came the figure of the
jongleur’s lute. Garin’s fingers moved as though they felt beneath
them the strings. A verse was running, running through his head. Only
after a slow, lilting, inward saying of it over twice or thrice did it
come to him, like the opening of a flower, that it was his own, not
another’s. He had made it, lying there. He rose from the stone and
walked forward, still going with the gliding stream. As he walked, the
second verse came to him. He said over the two, said over his first
poem and said it over again, tasting it, savouring it, hearing it now
with music. He was in a dream of dawn....
There was no longer a path, but he went on over the stony soil, beneath
old gnarled and stunted trees. The sun rode high and made the water
a flood of diamonds. Garin walked with a light and rapid step. When
a tree came in his way he swerved and rounded it and went on, but he
was hardly conscious that it had been there. The fishing-rod was yet
in his hand, but he did not think of the rod, nor of fishing, nor of
Castel-Noir, nor Foulque, nor the abbot, nor of the decision which the
abbot’s visit would force. He hardly knew of what he was thinking. It
was diffused,—the world was diffused,—drifting and swinging, and in
the mist he touched a new power.
A hawk shot downwards, plunged beak in water, rose with the taken fish
and soared into the eye of day. Garin started, shook himself, and
looked about him. He had come farther than he meant. He half-turned,
then stood irresolute, then again faced downstream. The day was not
old, and a distaste seized him for going back and listening to Foulque
on what the abbot might or might not do. He wandered on.
An hour later he came upon another boundary mark. This was a cross cut
in stone, with a rude carving upon the block that formed the base.
Garin sat down to rest, and sitting so, fell to scraping with his
knife the encrusting lichen from this carving. There was a palm tree
and a pyramid, which stamped Egypt in mind. Here was Saint Joseph, and
here was the ass bearing the Mother and Child. Above was Latin, to
the effect that you were upon the lands of the Convent of Our Lady in
Egypt. Garin knew that, and that two miles down the stream the nuns
would be now at the noon office. He wondered if, yesterday or to-day,
they had sent Jael the herd back to her own. But, on the surface, at
least, of consciousness there floated no long thought of that matter.
His mood was one of half-melancholy, half-exaltation, all threaded with
the warm wonder of making verses.
The nature of the land changed here. For stone and dwarfed growth there
began a richer soil and nobler trees. The latter made, all along the
water’s edge, a narrow grove, with here and there a fairy opening and
lawn of fine grass. Garin, having scraped away the lichen, looked at
the sun, which was now past the meridian, and thought that he would
retrace his steps.
Before him, out of a covert a little way down the stream, a nightingale
sang suddenly. Garin listened, and it might be his mood of to-day
that made him think that never before had he heard any bird sing so
sweetly. It carolled on, rich and deep, and the young man went toward
it. The ribbon of wood was dark and sweet; the bird sang like a soul
imprisoned. When it silenced itself Garin still stood looking up into
its tree. Presently it flew from that bower and, crossing one of the
elfin lawns, lost itself in the farther trees. Garin went on to this
grove and it sang for him again. When it ceased he did not go back to
the boundary stone. This country pleased him and he thought, “I will go
on and see how Our Lady in Egypt looks from this side.”
He followed the stream a mile and more. It was slipping now beneath
mighty trees. Their arching boughs made a roof; it was like walking
in cloisters. Between the pillars, inland, could be seen fields and
vineyards and, at last, the convent’s self, with her olive trees behind
her. Garin came now to thickly planted laurels, a grove within a grove.
This he threaded, pushing aside the heavy leaves. The laurels ended
suddenly, standing close and trim, a high green wall. This followed a
curving line and half enclosed a goodly space of turf, a shaven floor
of emerald, laved by the little river and shaded by a plane, a poplar,
and a cedar. The cedar stood close to the laurels and close to Garin,
and beneath the cedar was placed a seat of stone carved like a great
chair. The spot was all chequered with light and shade, the air was
sweet and fine, and the water sang as it passed. A fairer place for
dreaming, for talk or sober merry-making, might not be found. Just now
it was as clean as fairyland of human occupancy.
Garin stepped from the laurel wall and sat in the stone seat. It
pleased him, this place! A sense of mystery gathered; he began to
dream, dream. All manner of coloured, gleaming thought-motes danced
over the threshold. The minutes passed.
Voices—women’s voices! Doubly a trespasser that he was, he was not
willing to be found here, reigning it from this seat over the sweep of
lawn, the three trees, and the singing water. He rose, and stepped back
into the wall of laurel; then, being young and not incurious, waited
to see who it was that was coming. Lay sisters, perhaps, going from
vineyard to vineyard, or bringing clothes for the washing to the river
bank which here was rightly shelving. A gleam of grey garments between
the tree-trunks on the other side of the sylvan theatre seemed to prove
him right; and indeed, in a moment, there did emerge three or four of
these same lay sisters—strong, tanned, peasant women, roughly dressed,
fit for outdoor labour. They carried on their heads huge osier baskets,
but when they set these down, what was taken out was not linen or
woollen for washing, but rugs of Eastern weave and cushions of Eastern
make.
Moreover, with or following the lay sisters came others—young
women—who were certainly not under convent rule. These seized the rugs
and cushions and scattered them here and there, to advantage, over the
grass. They also set out dishes of fruit and Eastern comfits, and one
placed a harp upon a square of gold silk which she spread beneath the
poplar. As they worked they chattered like magpies. They were dressed
well and fancifully but not richly; it was to be made out that they
were waiting-women of those who did dress richly. One cocked her ear,
then raised her hand in a gesture to the others, whereupon all fell
into a demure silence. The lay sisters who had been stolid and still
throughout, now drew off by a path which carried them to the vineyards.
The waiting women cast a look around, then, with nods of satisfaction,
picked up the empty baskets and found for them and for themselves some
pleasant subordinate haven down by the stream, around the corner of the
lawn.
The little lawn lay prepared, festive and a desert. Now was the moment
when Garin might withdraw and the rustle of the laurel leaves tell no
tale where were no ears to hear. Truly, he thought once and twice of
departing, but then before the third thought which might have passed
into action, he caught, floating out of the opposite wood, delightful
voices, laughter that rippled, and a sheen and flash of colours. What
he forthwith determined to do was to please a little longer eye and
ear and sate curiosity. Then—and it need not be long—he would turn,
and as noiselessly as an innocent green-and-brown serpent, slip away
toward Castel-Noir. Given that he were discovered, plain truth-telling
were not bad. Discovery might bring him rebuke not too scornful, with,
perhaps, some laughter in her eye.
He laid his fishing-rod down, then knelt beside it upon the brown
earth between the laurel stems. Couched so, he could look past the
stone seat and the cedar trunk, and so observe what pageant might
appear. Had he had a wand in his hand he could have touched with it
this carven chair.
Out from the shadowy opposite grove came bright ladies, seven or eight.
One was dressed in violet and one in rose, one in green and white, and
one in daffodil, one in a bright medley, one in white sprigged with
gold, and one in the colour of the sky. After the fashion of the time
their hair hung in long braids from beneath fillet, or garland, or
veil of gauze twisted turban-wise or floating loose. Their shoes were
of soft-coloured leather or of silk, their dress close-fitting and
sweeping the grass. The wide and long mantles that were worn by both
sexes were not in evidence here—the day was warm and the convent,
whence alone these fair ones could have come, at no distance. Garin
wondered, and then he bethought himself that some great reigning
countess—perhaps some duchess or princess of Italy or Spain or further
yet afield, perhaps some queen—might be travelling through the land,
going from one court to another and by the way pausing to refresh
herself in the house of Our Lady in Egypt. From Roche-de-Frêne, he
knew, there was no such absence. The man-at-arms at the inn had said
that the princesses Alazais and Audiart were seated with their ladies
to mark the jousts.... He lay and watched.
Of the bright apparitions two seemed of their full summer and prime,
more stately, more authoritative than the others. The others were in
their spring and early spring. Light or dark, blonde or brunette, all
had beauty. Garin’s eyes darkened and softened, and the corners of
his lips moved upward to see such an array, and the swimming movement
with which they dispersed themselves over the lawn, and to hear their
trained voices. All seemed gay and laughing, and yet there presently
appeared a discontent. The dame in daffodil took up the harp and swept
the strings.
“Ah!” cried the one in azure, “for a true troubadour!”
“For even a jongleur!”
“Ah, what is life without men!”
“Ah, for the tourney!”
“Ah, if there were in sight but a monastery!”
The older two, who had an air of responsibility, rebuked the others.
“Life is made up of to and fro, and sounds and silences! Be content! It
is but one month out of many.”
“As if months were as plentiful as cherries!”
“Ah, if I were a princess—”
“Hush!” warned the daffodil-clad, and began to play upon the harp.
Garin saw that another two were coming through the grove. One of these
would be the noble lady for whom it was all planned. His imagination
was active to-day with a deep, involuntary pulsing. Foix or Toulouse,
or the greater domains to the north and west, or it might be Aragon,
or it might be Italy? Or she might have come from Sicily, or like
Prince Rudel’s far lady, from a kingdom or duchy carved from Paynim
lands. Some Eastern touch in the scene made him dwell upon that.
No matter whence now she came, she must have lived on a day in the
long, the outspread, the curving and sunny lands of this very south.
The tongue of her ladies proved that. Wedded she might have been to
some great prince and borne away, and now returned for a time and
a pilgrimage to the land of birth.... All this and more was of his
imaging. He lay upon the dark earth and parted the laurel leaves that
he might see more clearly.
The two were now plain among the trees. One was a blonde of much
beauty, dressed in grey cendal and carrying a book which seemed to
belong to her companion. The latter was a little in advance, and she
came on without speaking, and so stepped from the wood upon the lawn.
The seven already arrived beneath the plane, the poplar, and the cedar
made a formal movement of courtesy, then gathered like a rainbow about
the one of first importance. Plaintiveness and discontent retired from
evidence, court habit came up paramount. You might have thought that
these were dryads or Dian’s nymphs, and no other spot than this wood
their loved home! There came to Garin’s ear a ripple of sweet voices,
but it seemed that their lady for whom had been spread the feast
was either silent or seldom-and low-speaking. She stood beneath the
shimmering, tremulous poplar, a slender shape of fair height. She was
dressed in some fine weave of dark blue with a girdle of samite studded
with gems. The ends of this girdle hung to her silken shoe. Her hair,
black and long, was braided with gems. She seemed young, young as the
youngest there. “Seemed” is used, because Garin saw not her face. She
wore, as did several of the others, a veil of Eastern device, but hers
was long and wide and threaded with gold and silver, and so worn that
it overhung and shielded every feature.
Attention was called to the placing of the rugs, the cushions, the
harp, the dishes of fruit and comfits. The one for whom they had waited
nodded her head and seemed to approve. She was not garrulous; there
seemed to breathe about her, he knew not what, a tone of difference.
All now moved to the water-edge, and for a time loitered there upon the
green and rushy bank. One raised her voice and sang,—
“Green are the boughs when lovers meet,
Grey when they part—”
The bevy turned and came up the sloping lawn to the three trees and
the cushions upon the grass. The shape in dark blue with the Eastern
veil moved beyond them to the cedar and the stone chair. Here she took
her seat, and when the others would have gathered about her waved them
back with a slender, long-fingered hand. One brought to her a basket of
grapes. She chose a purple cluster resting upon a web of vine leaves
but laid it untouched beside her upon the wide seat. There was a space
between her and the dark enshadowing cedar and those others resting
now upon the cushions. She sat quite still, a hand upon each arm of
the chair, the deep blue of her dress flowing about her, the gems of
the girdle ends making a sombre gleaming. The veil hid all her face
from Garin, lying so near. He felt in her something solitary, something
powerful, yet felt that she was young, young—She sat with her gaze
straight before her upon the blue crests that showed afar. She sat as
still as though an enchanter had bid her stay. And between her and the
young man crouching in the laurels streamed no wide ocean of the autumn
air, of the subtle ether. The moments passed, slow, plangent, like the
notes of the harp that was being played....
What happened to one or both? Did one only feel it, the one that knew
there were two—or did, in some degree, the other also, and think
it was a day-dream? All that Garin knew, kneeling there, was that
something touched him, entered him. It came across that space, or it
came from some background and space not perceived. It was measureless,
or it seemed to him without measure. It was clothed in marvel; it was
fulness and redoubling, it was more life. It was as loud as thunder,
and as still as the stillest inner whisper. It was so sweet that he
wished to weep, and yet he wished too to leap and spring and exult
aloud, to send his cry of possession to the skies. He felt akin to all
that his senses touched. But as for the form in the stone chair—he sat
with her there, she knelt with him here, they were one body.... With
a swimming feeling, her being seemed to pass from his. He knelt here,
Garin of the Black Castle, squire of Raimbaut the Six-fingered, and she
sat there whose face he had not seen—a great dame, lady doubtless of
some lord of a hundred barons each worthier than Raimbaut.
Garin gazed across the little space between, and now it was as though
it were half the firmament. She sat like a figure among the stars,
blue-robed, amid the deep blue, and the cloudy world was between them.
She grew like to a goddess—like to the Unattainable Ideal, and he
felt no longer like a king, but like the acolyte that lights the lamp
and kneels as he places it. Now it was the Age for this to happen,
and for one man to act as had acted that knight in the wood toward
Roche-de-Frêne, and for another to do as now did Garin.
For now he wished no longer to play the spy, and he turned very
carefully and silently in the laurels and crept away. In all his
movements he was lithe and clean, and he made no sound that the
brooding young figure in the stone chair attended to. Presently,
looking back, his eyes saw only the great height of the cedar, its dark
head against the blue heaven. The liquid, dropping notes of the harp
pursued him a little farther, but when he was forth from the laurel
grove they, too, passed upon the air. He was soon at the boundary
cross of Our Lady in Egypt, and then upon the waste and stony land that
set toward the fief of Castel-Noir. Was it only this morning, thought
Garin, that he had come this way? And the nightingale that sang so deep
and full—it was not in the boughs above—it was singing now in his own
heart!
CHAPTER IV
THE ABBOT
FRIDAY the mistral blew, and Foulque was always wretched in that wind.
He gloomed now from this narrow window and now from that in the black
castle’s thick walls. The abbot was not expected before the dial showed
twelve, but Foulque looked from here and looked from there, and kept a
man atop of the tower to scan the road beyond the wood. The hall was
ready for the abbot, the arras hung, the floor strewn with leaves and
autumn buds, the great chair placed aright, a rich coverlet spread
upon the state bed. Pierre was ready,—the sauce for the fish, the
fish themselves were ready for the oven. Castel-Noir rested clean and
festive, and every man knew that he was to sink down upon both knees
and ask the abbot’s blessing.
The wind blew and hurled the leaves on high. The sun shone, the sky
was bright, but the moving air, dry and keen, was as a grindstone upon
which tempers were edged. A shrivelled, lame man must feel it. Under
the hooded mantel a fire was laid, but not kindled. Foulque could not
decide whether the abbot would feel the wind as he felt it, and want
to be welcomed with physical as well as other warmth, or whether,
riding hard, he would be heated and would frown at the sight of the
fire. Foulque would have liked a roaring blaze, out-sounding the wind.
But the Abbot of Saint Pamphilius was of a full body, tall and stout,
a hunter and a hawker. Foulque determined to have a torch from the
kitchen immediately at hand and kindle or not kindle according to the
first glimpse of his kinsman’s face.
The window embrasures were deep enough to swallow a family. Foulque, a
sensitive, knew without turning his head when Garin, too, stood within
the one that overlooked the road where it emerged from the wood. “He
should be here at any minute,” said Foulque. “Well? Well?”
“Brother Foulque,” said Garin, “I have determined, an it please you, to
bide with Lord Raimbaut and become a knight.”
Foulque let his wrath gather to a head. When it was at the withering
point, his gaze having been directed upon Garin for full thirty
seconds, he spoke. “Marry and crave pardon! Who is it hath determined?”
“I,” said Garin. “I.”
Foulque moistened his lips. “What has come to you? Raimbaut will let
you go. The Abbot of Saint Pamphilius invites—nay, he will himself
smooth your way to Holy Church’s high places. I, your elder brother,
command—”
“Your entreaty would do more, brother,” said Garin. “But I can no
other.”
“‘Can no other!—can no other!’ Does the fool see himself Alexander
or Roland or Arthur?” Foulque laughed. “Raimbaut the Six-fingered’s
squire!”
Garin was patient. “All the same he can give me knighthood.”
His brother laughed again and struck his hands together. “Knighthood!
Knighthood! Oh, your advantage from his buffet on your shoulder!
Raimbaut!” He held by the wall and stamped with the foot that was
not lamed. “Fight—fight—fight! then eat an ox and drink a cask and
go sleep! Ride abroad whenever you hear of a tourney that’s not too
difficult to enter. Tilt—tilt—tilt! and if you are not killed or
dragged to the barrier, win maybe prizes enough to keep body and soul
together until you hear of another joust! Between times, eat, drink,
and sleep and have not a thought in your head! Sprawl in the sun by the
keep, or yawn in the hall, or perhaps hunt a boar until there’s more
fighting! When there is, be dragged from the wall or smothered in the
moat or killed in the breach when the castle’s taken! Oh aye! Your lord
may take his foe’s castle and you be drunk for a day with victory and
smothering and hanging and slaying on your part! Yet forecast the day
when you’ll drink the cup you’re giving others! Look at the dice in
your hand and know that if you throw six, yet will you throw ace!”
“I may not be always bound to Raimbaut.”
“He is not old, and hath the strength of a bull! And what of the young
Raimbaut? Son grows like sire—”
“Even so,” said Garin desperately, “things happen.”
Foulque’s anger and scorn flowed on. “Oh, I grant you! Have I forgotten
large wars that may arise—fighting behind your lord for Prince or
King or Emperor? I have not. Cities and great castles instead of
small—thousands to kill and be killed instead of hundreds—the same
thing but more of it! Still a poor knight—still in the train of
Raimbaut the Six-fingered! The young Raimbaut hath six fingers also,
hath he not?—Oh, you may go crusading, too, and see strange lands
and kill the infidel who dares have his country spread around the
Holy Sepulchre! Go!—and die of thirst or be slain with a scimitar,
or have your eyes taken out and no new ones put in! Or, if you can,
slay and slay and slay the infidel! What have you got? Tired arm and
bloody hands and leave to go eat, drink, and sleep! A crusade! Your
crusade enriches one, beggars fifty! Returns one, keeps the bones of a
hundred—”
“I do not think of taking the cross,” said Garin.
His brother laughed again with a bitter mirth. “Well, what’s left?
Let’s see! If you can get Raimbaut’s consent, you might become an
errant knight and go vagabonding through the land! ‘Fair sir, may
I fight thee—all for the glory of valour and for thy horse and
trappings?’—‘Fair dame, having no business of mine own, may I take
thine upon me? Tell me thy grievance, and I will not enquire if it be
founded or no. Nor when, pursuing chivalry, I have redressed it, will
I refuse rich gifts.’—Bah!” cried Foulque. “I had rather eat, drink,
fight, and sleep with Raimbaut!”
“Aye,” said Garin; then painfully, “You are picturing the common run of
things. There have been and there are and there will be true and famous
knights—aye, and learned, who make good poesy and honour fair ladies,
and are courteous and noble and welcome in every castle hall! I mean
not to be of the baser sort. And those knights I speak of had, some of
them, as meagre a setting forth as mine—”
“In _romans_!” answered Foulque. “You are a fool, Garin! Take the other
road—take the other road!”
“I’ve made my choice.”
“Raimbaut the Six-fingered against the Abbot of Saint Pamphilius, who
is close friend to Bishop Ugo, who is ear and hand to the Pope—”
“I choose.”
“Now,” cried Foulque, choking, “by the soul of our father, little lacks
but I call Sicart and Jean and have you down into the dungeon! You are
too untamed—you are too untamed!”
“In your dungeon,” said Garin, “I would think, ‘How like is this to
abbey cell and cloister!’”
A silence fell. Only mistral whistled and eddied around the black
tower. Then said Foulque tensely: “What has come to you? Two nights ago
I saw you ready to put your hands in those of Holy Church—” He broke
off, facing the man from the tower top, framed now in the great door.
“Horsemen, my masters!” cried the watchman; “horsemen at the two pines!”
Foulque flung up his arms. “He is coming! Mayhap he will work upon
you—seeing that a brother cannot! Let me by—”
Garin stood at the window watching the abbot and the twenty with
him—ecclesiastical great noble and his cowled following—stout lay
brothers and abbey serfs well clad and fed—the abbot’s palfrey, sleek
mules and horses—all mounting with a jingle of bits and creaking
of leather, but with a suave lack of boisterous laughter, whoop,
and shout, the grey zig-zag cut in the crag upon which was perched
Castel-Noir. When they were immediately below the loophole window, he
turned and, leaving the hall, went to the castle gate and stood beside
Foulque.
When Abbot Arnaut and his palfrey reached them he sprang, squire-like,
to the stirrup, gave his shoulder to the abbot’s gloved hand. When the
great man was dismounted, he knelt with his brother for the lifted
fingers and blessing. The abbot was marshalled across the court to
the hall, followed by those two from Saint Pamphilius whom his nod
indicated. Jean and Sicart disposed of the following. Foulque’s anxious
drill bore fruits; everything went as if oiled.
Mistral still blew, high, cold and keen. “Have you a fire, kinsman?”
cried Abbot Arnaut. “I am as cold as a merman in the sea!”
Foulque made haste. The torch was at hand—in a moment there sprang a
blaze—the hangings from Genoa were all firelit and the great beams of
the roof.
“Hungry!” cried the abbot. “I am as hungry as Tantalus in hell! I
remember when once I came here, a boy, good fishing—”
The fish were good, Pierre’s sauce was good. All received commendation.
The abbot was portly and tall, with a massy head, with a countenance
so genial, a voice so bland, an eye so approving, that all appeared
nature and no art. His lips seemed made for golden syllables, he had an
unctuous and a mellow tongue. It was much to hear him speak Latin and
much to hear him discourse in the vernacular. The _langue d’oc_ came
richly from his mouth. He was a mighty abbot, a gracious power, timber
from which were made papal legates.
Foulque sat with him at the raised end of the table, the monks of his
company being ranged a foot lower. But Garin, as was squire-like,
waited upon the great guest and his brother. The abbot, the keen edge
of hunger abated, showed himself gracious and golden, friendly, almost
familiar. He spoke of the past, and of the father of his hosts. He
asked questions that showed that he knew Castel-Noir, dark wood and
craggy hills, mountains to the north, stream to the south. It even
seemed that he remembered old foresters and bowmen. He knew the
neighbouring fiefs, the disputed ground, the Convent of Our Lady in
Egypt. He was warm and pleasant with his kinsmen; he said that he had
loved their father and that their mother had been a fair, wise lady.
He remarked that poverty was a sore that might be salved; and when he
had drunk a great cup of spiced wine,—having, for his health’s sake,
a perpetual dispensation in that wise,—he said that he was of mind
that a man should serve and be served by his own blood. “Kin may prove
faithless, but unkin beats them to the post!”
Dinner was eaten, wine drunken, hands washed. The abbot and Foulque
rose, the monks of Saint Pamphilius rose, the table was cleared, the
boards and trestles taken from the hall.
Abbot Arnaut, standing by the fire, looked at the great bed. “By the
rood!” he said, “to face mistral clean from Roche-de-Frêne to this rock
is a wearisome thing! I will repose myself, kinsman, for one hour.”
All withdrew save the lay brother whom he retained for chamberlain.
Foulque offered Garin’s service, who stood with ready hands. But the
abbot was used to Brother Anselm, said as much, and with a sleepy and
mellow voice dismissed the two brothers. “Return in an hour when I
shall be refreshed. Then will we talk of that of which I wrote.”
The two left the hall. Without, Foulque must discover from Jean and
Sicart if all went well and the abbot’s train was in good humour.
“I’ve known a discontented horse-boy make a prince as discontented!”
But they who followed the abbot were laughing in the small, bare court,
and the bare ward room. Even mistral did not seem to trouble them.
South of the tower, in the angle between it and the wall, lay the
tiniest of grass-plots, upbearing one tall cypress. Foulque, his mantle
close around him, beckoned hither Garin. Here was a stone seat in the
sun, and the black tower between one and that wind from the mountains.
Foulque sat and argued, Garin stood with his back against the cypress.
The hour dropped away, and Foulque saw nothing gained. He shook with
wrath and concern for slipping fortunes. “Since yesterday! This has
happened since yesterday! You took your rod and went down to the river
to fish. What siren sang to you from what pool?”
Garin lifted his head. “No siren. Something wakened within me, and now
I will be neither monk nor priest. I am sorry to grieve you, Foulque.”
But Foulque nursed his wrath. “The hour has passed,” he said. “So we
go back to the abbot and spurn a rich offer!” He rose and with a bleak
face left the grass-plot.
Garin followed, but not immediately. He stood, beneath the cypress tree
and tried to see his life. He could not do so; he could only tell that
his heart was parted between sorrow and joy, and that a nightingale
sang and sang. He could tell that he wished to live beautifully, to do
noble deeds, to win honour, to serve, if need be to die for, a goddess
whose face was veiled. His life whirled; at once he felt generous,
wealthy, and great, and poor, humble, and despairing. He seemed to see
through drifting mists a Great Meaning; then the cloud thickened and he
was only Garin, Raimbaut’s squire—then again images and music, then
aching sadness. He stood with parted lips, beneath the cypress, and he
looked south. At last he sighed and covered his eyes with his hand,
then turned and went back to the hall.
The abbot was awake, had left the great bed and come to the great
chair. Seated at ease in the light of the renewed fire, he was goldenly
discoursing to Foulque who sat on a stool, of Roche-de-Frêne and its
prince and his court, and of Bishop Ugo. “Ah, the great chances in
the fair lap of Mother Church! Ugo is ambitious. There it is that we
differ. I am not ambitious—no, no! I am an easy soul, and but take
things as they come my way!” He turned in his chair and looked at Garin
standing behind his brother. “Ha!” he said, “and this is the squire who
would become canon?”
Foulque groaned. “Most Reverend Father, the boy is mad! I think that he
is bewitched. I pray that of your goodness, wisdom and eloquence you
bring him to a right mind—”
The Abbot of Saint Pamphilius smiled, assured as the sun. “What is it?
Does he think that already he has Fortune for mistress?”
“He will choose knighthood,” said Foulque. “He has no doubt of winning
it.”
The abbot lifted his brows. He looked with dignity into the fire, then
back at Foulque and at Garin the squire. “It pains me,” he said, “the
folly of mankind! Are you born prince, count or baron, then in reason,
you must run the course where you are set. Though indeed, time out of
mind, have been found castellans, vavasours, barons, dukes, and princes
who have laid aside hauberk, shield, and banner, and blithely come with
all their wealth into the peaceful hive of Holy Church—so rightly
could they weigh great value against low! But such as you, young
man—but such as you—poor liegemen of poor lords! What would you have?
Verily, the folly is deep! By no means all who would have knighthood
gain it, and if it is gained, what then? Another poor knight in a world
where they are as thick and undistinguishable as locusts!—Ha, what do
you say?”
Garin’s lips had moved, but now he flushed red.
“Speak out!” commanded the abbot, blandly imperious. “What was it that
you said?”
Garin lowered his eyes. “I said that there were many churchmen in the
world, as thick and undistinguishable—”
Foulque drew a dismayed breath. But the Abbot of Saint Pamphilius
laughed. He sat well back in his chair and looked at the squire with
freshened interest. “Granted, Bold Wit! The point is this. Did you
show me here the signet ring, not—God defend us!—of Raimbaut the
Six-fingered, but of Raimbaut’s lord and yours, Savaric of Montmaure,
then would I say, ‘So you have your patron! Good fortune, fair kinsman,
who are half-way up the ladder!’” He looked at the squire and laughed.
“You have it not by you, I think?” Garin shook his head. “Well then,”
said the abbot, “choose Holy Church. For here, I think,”—he spoke very
goldenly,—“you may show a patron. A feeble one, my son—of course, a
feeble one—”
Garin came from behind Foulque, kneeled before the abbot, and thanked
him for great kindness and condescension. “But, Reverend Father, with
all gratefulness and humbleness, yet I will not the tonsure—”
The abbot with a gesture kept him kneeling. “There is some reason here
that you hide. You are young, you are young! I guess that your reason
goes by name of woman—”
Garin knelt silent, but Foulque uttered an exclamation. “No, Reverend
Father, no! What has changed him I know not, but it has happened here
at Castel-Noir, since yesterday! There is no woman here, in hut or
tower, that could tempt him—”
But the Abbot of Saint Pamphilius continued to gaze upon Garin, and
to tap gently with his fingers upon the arm of the great chair. “I
hold not,” he said softly, “with those who would condone concubinage,
and who see no harm in a too fair cousin, niece, or servant in
priests’ dwellings. It is all sin—it is all sin—and Holy Church
must reprobate—yea, must chastise. But flesh is weak, my son, flesh
is weak! Somewhat may be compounded—somewhat overlooked—somewhat
pardoned! Especially, if not solely, in the case of those whose service
is great. As for courtly love—” The abbot smiled. “When you come to
courtly love,” he said, “there are many lordly churchmen have praised
fair ladies!—Do I resolve your scruples, my son?”
But Garin’s look showed no shaken determination. The abbot leaned
back in his chair. “The time grows tender,” he said. “Womanish and
tender! Your father would have known how to bring you to reason. Your
grandfather would have disposed of you like any Roman of old. But now
any sir squire is let to say, ‘I will’—or ‘I will not!’—Think not
that I wish him about me who is sullen and intractable! Nor that I
lack other kinsmen who are pleaders for that kindness I would have
shown Castel-Noir! There is young Enric, Bernart’s son—and there are
others.—Rise and begone to Raimbaut the Six-fingered’s keep!”
Garin stood up. Foulque made to speak, but the abbot waved the matter
down.
“All is said. It is a trifle, and we will disturb ourselves no further.
God knows, ungrateful young men are no rarity! Doubtless he hath,
after all, Montmaure’s signet—What is it now?”
Into the hall, from the court without, had come a sound of trampling
hoofs and of voices—one voice sullen and heavy. Garin started
violently, Foulque sprang to his feet. The great door was flung open,
admitting a burst of wind that shook the hangings, and behind it,
Sicart open-mouthed and breathless.
“Master, master! here is Lord Raimbaut!”
CHAPTER V
RAIMBAUT THE SIX-FINGERED
A LORD might of course visit one who held from him, often did so. But
it was not Raimbaut’s use to ride to Castel-Noir. And Garin, parting
from him less than a week ago, had heard no word of his coming.
But here he was, pushing Sicart aside, striding into the hall, a
low-browed, thick-skulled giant, savage with his foes, dull and
grudging with his friends—Raimbaut the Six-fingered! Foulque hastened
to do him reverence, make him welcome; Garin, stepping to his side,
took from him his wide, rust-hued mantle and furred cap.
“Well met, my Lord Raimbaut!” said the abbot in his golden tones.
Raimbaut gloomed upon him. “Ha, Lord Abbot! Are you here for this
springald, my esquire? Well, I have said that you might have him.”
“Nay,” said the abbot mellowly, “I think that I want him not.”
“—have him,” pursued Raimbaut. “And likewise his quarrel with Savaric
of Montmaure.”
He spoke with a deep, growling voice, as of an angered mastiff, and as
he spoke turned like one upon Garin. “Why, by every fiend in hell, did
you fight a Tuesday, with his son?”
Garin stared. He heard Foulque’s distressed exclamation, saw the abbot
purse his lips, but beyond all that he had a vision of a forest glade
and heard a clash of steel. He drew breath. “Was he that knight in
crimson? Was that Jaufre de Montmaure?”
Raimbaut doubled his fist and advanced it. Before this Garin had come
to earth beneath his lord’s buffet. He awaited it now, standing as
squarely as he might. He was aware that Raimbaut had for him a kind
of thwart liking—a liking that made, in Raimbaut’s mind, no reason
why he should not strike when angry. It was not the expected blow that
set Garin’s mind whirling. But Jaufre de Montmaure! To his knowledge
he had never, until that Tuesday, seen that same Jaufre. But he knew
of him, oh, knew of him! Montmaure was a great count, overlord of
towns and many castles. In Garin’s world Savaric of Montmaure was only
less than Gaucelm of Roche-de-Frêne—Gaucelm the Fortunate from whom
Savaric held certain fiefs. Immediately, Montmaure loomed larger than
Roche-de-Frêne, for Raimbaut the Six-fingered owed direct fealty to
Montmaure and in war must furnish a hundred men-at-arms.
Garin knew of the young count, Sir Jaufre. He knew that Jaufre had
been long time in Italy, at the court where his mother was born, but
that now he was looked for home again. He knew that he had fought
boldly in sieges of cities, and in tournaments was acclaimed brave and
fortunate. Perhaps Garin had dreamed of his own chance coming to him
by way of Montmaure—perhaps he had dreamed of somehow recommending
himself to this same Jaufre. That gibe of the abbot’s about the signet
ring had struck from the squire an answering thought, “Some day I
may—” Now came the reversal, now Garin felt a faintness, an icy fall.
He was young and in a thousand ways, unfree. For a day and a night his
conscious being had strained high. Now there came a dull subsidence, a
slipping toward the abyss. “Jaufre de Montmaure!”
Raimbaut did not deliver the meditated blow—too angered and concerned
was Raimbaut to dispense slight tokens. He let his hand drop, but
ground beneath his heavy foot the rushes on the floor. “I would I
had had you chained in the pit below the dungeon before I let you go
to Roche-de-Frêne!” He turned on Foulque who stood, grey-faced and
dry-lipped. “Knew you what this fool did?”
Foulque struck his hands together. “He told me that eve. He did
not know and I did not know—He thought it might be some wandering
knight—Ah, my Lord Raimbaut, as we owe you service, so do you owe us
protection!”
Raimbaut strode up and down, heavy and black as his own ancient donjon.
“Comes to me yestereve, as formal as you please, a herald from
Montmaure! ‘Hark and hear,’ says he, puffing out his cheeks, ‘to what
befell our young lord, Sir Jaufre, riding through the forest called
La Belle, and for some matter or other sending a good way ahead those
that rode with him. Came a squire out of the wood, drunken and, as it
were, mad, and with him, plain to be seen, a stark fiend! Then did the
two fall upon Sir Jaufre from behind and forced him to fight, and by
necromancy overthrew and wounded him, and, ignobly and villainously,
bound him to a tree. Which, when they had done, they vanished. And
straightway his men found him and brought him home. And now that fiend
may perchance not be found, but assuredly the man may be discovered!
When he is, for his foul pride, treason, and wizardry, the Count of
Montmaure will flay him alive and nail him head downward to a tree.’”
Mistral sent into the hall a withering blast. The smoke from the fire
blew out and went here and there in wreaths. It set the abbot coughing.
Raimbaut the Six-fingered continued his striding up and down. “Then he
puffs his cheeks out and says on, and wits me to know that Savaric of
Montmaure calls on every man that owes him fealty to discover—an he is
known to them—that churl and misdoer. And thereupon,” ended Raimbaut
on a note of thunder, “to my face he describes Garin my esquire!”
Garin stood silent, but Foulque panted hard. “Ah, thou unhappy! Ah,
the end of Castel-Noir! Ah, my Lord Raimbaut, have we not been faithful
liegemen?” He caught his brother by the arm. “Kneel, Garin—and I will
kneel—”
But Garin did not kneel. He stood young, straight, pale with
indignation. “Brother and Reverend Father and my Lord Raimbaut,” he
cried, “never in my life had I to do with a fiend! Nor was I drunken
nor without sense! Nor did I come upon him from behind! Does he say
that, then am I more glad than I was that I brought him fairly to the
earth and, because of his own treachery, tied him to a tree and bound
his hands with his stirrup leather—”
Raimbaut, in his striding up and down being close to his squire, turned
upon him at this and delivered the buffet. It brought Garin, hand and
knee, upon the rushes, but he rose with lightness. Raimbaut, striding
on by, came to the abbot, who, having ended coughing, sat, double chin
on hand and foot in furred slipper, tapping the floor. He stopped
short, feudal lord beside as massive ecclesiastic. “The Church says it
is her part to counsel! Out then with good counsel!”
The abbot looked at him aslant, then spoke with a golden voice. “Did
you tell the count’s herald that it was your esquire?”
“Not I! I said that it had a sound of Aimeric of the Forest’s men.”
Aimeric of the Forest was a lord with whom Raimbaut was wont to wage
private war.
The abbot murmured “Ah!” then, “Did any in your castle betray him?”
“No,” said Raimbaut. “Only Guilhelm, and Hugonet heard surely and
knew for certain. Six-fingered we may be and rude, but we wait a bit
before we give our esquires to other men’s deaths!” Again he covered
with his stride the space before the wide hearth. He was as huge as a
boar and as grim, but a certain black tenseness and danger seemed to
go out of the air of the hall. Turning, he again faced the abbot. “So
I think, now the best wit that I can find is to say ‘Aye’ twice where
I have already said it once, and speed this same Garin the fighter
into Church’s fold! Let him as best he may convoy himself to the Abbey
of Saint Pamphilius. There he may be turned at once into Brother
Such-an-one. So he will be as safe and hid as if he were in Heaven and
Our Lady drooped her mantle over him. By degrees Montmaure may forget,
or he may flay the wrong man—”
The abbot covered his mouth with his hand and looked into the blaze
that mistral drove this way and that. Foulque came close, with a
haggard, wrinkling face; but Garin, having risen from Raimbaut’s
buffet, made no other motion.
The abbot dropped his hand and spoke. “Do you not know that last year
the Count of Montmaure became Advocate and Protector of the Abbey of
Saint Pamphilius? As little as Lord Raimbaut do I will openly to offend
Count Savaric.”
“‘Openly,’” cried Foulque. “Ah, Reverend Father, it would not be
‘openly’—”
But Abbot Arnaut shook his head. “I know your ‘secret help,’” he said
goldenly. “It is that which most in this world getteth simple and
noble, lay and cleric, into trouble!” He spread his hands. “Moreover,
our Squire-who-fights-knights hath just declined the tonsure.”
“Hath he so?” exclaimed Raimbaut. “He is the more to my liking!—So the
abbot will let Count Savaric take him?”
The abbot put his fingers together. “I will do nothing,” he said, “that
will imperil the least interest of Holy Mother Church. I will never act
to the endangering of one small ornament upon her robe.”
Raimbaut made a sound like the grunt of a boar. Foulque covered his
face with his hands.
“But,” pursued the abbot, “kin is kin, and in the little, narrow lane
that is left me I will do what I can!” He spoke to Raimbaut. “Has Count
Savaric bands out in search of him?”
“Aye. They will look here as elsewhere.”
Garin stood forth. Above his eye was a darkening mark, sign of
Raimbaut’s buffet. It was there, but it did not depreciate something
else which was likewise there and which, for the moment, made of his
whole body a symbol, enduing it to an extent with visible bloom,
apparent power. For many hours there had been an inward glowing. But
heretofore to-day, what with Foulque and Abbot Arnaut and disputes,
anxieties, and preoccupation, it had been somewhat pushed away, stifled
under. Now it burst forth, to be seen and felt by others, though not
understood. Anger and outrage at that knight’s false accusation helped
it forth. And—though Garin himself did not understand this—that glade
in the forest toward Roche-de-Frêne, and that lawn of the poplar, the
plane, and the cedar by the Convent of Our Lady in Egypt, that Tuesday
and that Thursday, came somehow into contact, embraced, reinforced each
the other. Aware, or unaware, in his conscious or in his unconscious
experience, there was present a deep and harmonious vibration, an
expansion and intensification of being. Something of this came outward
and crossed space, to the others’ apprehension. They felt bloom and
they felt beauty, and they stared at him strangely, as though he were
palely demigod.
He spoke. “Brother Foulque and Lord Raimbaut and Reverend Father, let
me cut this knot! I must leave Castel-Noir and leave my Lord Raimbaut’s
castle, and I must take my leave without delay. That is plain. Plain,
too, that I must not go in this green and brown that I wore when I
fought him! Sicart can find me serf’s clothing. When it is night, I
will quit Castel-Noir, and I will lie in the fir wood, near the little
shrine, five miles west of here. In the morning you, Reverend Father,
pass with your train. The help that Foulque and I ask is that you will
let me join the Abbey people. They have scarcely seen me—Sicart shall
cut my hair and darken my face—they will not know me. But do you, of
your charity, bid one of the brothers take me up behind him. Let me
overtravel in safe company sufficient leagues to put me out of instant
clutch of Count Savaric and that noble knight, Sir Jaufre! I will leave
you short of the Abbey of Saint Pamphilius.”
“And where then, Garin, where then?” cried Foulque.
“I will go,” said Garin, “toward Toulouse and Foix and Spain. Give me,
Foulque, what money you can. I will go in churl’s guise until I am
out and away from Montmaure’s reach. Then in some town I will get me
a fit squire’s dress. If you can give me enough to buy a horse—very
good will that be!” He lifted and stretched his arms—a gesture that
ordinarily he would not have used in the presence of elder brother,
lord, or churchman. “Ah!” cried Garin, “then will I truly begin
life—how, I know not now, but I will begin it! Moreover, I will live
it, in some fashion, well!”
The three elder men still stared at him. Mature years, advantageous
place, bulked large indeed in their day. A young Daniel might be very
wise, but was he not _young_? A squire might propose the solution of a
riddle, but it were unmannerly for the squire to take credit; a mouse
might gnaw the lion’s net, but the mouse remained mouse, and the lion
lion. The Abbot of Saint Pamphilius, and Raimbaut the Six-fingered,
and Foulque the elder brother looked doubtfully at Garin. But the air
of bloom and light and power held long enough. They devised no better
plan, and, for the time at least, their minds subdued themselves and
put away anger and ceased to consider rebuke.
Raimbaut spoke. “I give you leave. I have not been a bad lord to you.”
His squire looked at him with shining eyes. “No, lord, you have not. I
thank you for much. And some day if I may I will return good for good,
and pay the service that I owe!”
Foulque the Cripple limped from the hearth to a chest by the wall,
unlocked it with a key hanging from his belt, and took out a bag of
soft leather—a small bag and a lank. He turned with it. “You shall
have wherewith to fit you out. Escape harm now, little brother! But
when the wind has ceased to blow, come back—”
The abbot seemed to awake from a dream, and, awakening, became golden
and expansive even beyond his wont. “You hear him say himself that he
has no vocation.... Nay, if he begins so early by overthrowing knights
he may be called, who knoweth? to become a column and pattern of
chivalry! I will bring him safe out of the immediate clutch of danger.”
An hour, and Raimbaut departed, and none outside the hall of
Castel-Noir knew aught but that, hunting a stag, he had come riding
that way. The sun set, and the abbot and his following had supper and
Garin served his brother and Abbot Arnaut. Afterwards, it was said
about the place that the company—having a long way to make—would
ride away before dawn. So, after a few hours sleep, all did arise by
torchlight and ate a hasty breakfast, and the horses and mules and the
abbot’s palfrey stamped in the courtyard. Mistral was dead and the air
cool, still, and dark. The swung torches confused shadow and substance.
In the trampling and neighing and barking of dogs, clamour and shifting
of shapes, it went unnoticed that only Foulque was there to bid
farewell to the abbot and kinsman.
In the early night, under the one cypress between the tower and the
wall, Foulque and Garin had said farewell. The light was gone from
about Garin; he seemed but a youth, poor and stricken, fleeing before
a very actual danger. The two brothers embraced. They shed tears, for
in their time men wept when they felt like doing so. They commended
each other to God and Our Lady and all the saints, and they parted, not
knowing if ever they would see each other again.
The abbot and his company wound down the zig-zag road and turned face
toward the distant Abbey of Saint Pamphilius. Riding westward they came
into the fir wood. The sun was at the hill-tops, when they overtook a
limping pedestrian,—a youth in a coarse and worn dress, with shoes of
poor leather and leggings of bark bound with thongs, and with a caped
hood that obscured his features. Questioned, he said that his father
sowed grain and reaped it for Castel-Noir, but that he had an uncle
who was a dyer and lived beyond Albi. His uncle was an old man and had
somewhat to leave and his father had got permission for him to go on a
visit—and he had hurt his foot. With that he looked wistfully at the
horse of the lay brother who had summoned him to the abbot.
“Saint Gilles!” exclaimed the abbot, and he spoke loud and goldenly.
“It were a long way to hop to Albi! Not a day but I strive to plant one
kindly deed—Take him up, my son, behind thee!”
CHAPTER VI
THE GARDEN
THE Abbot of Saint Pamphilius and Garin the squire rode westward—that
is to say they rode away from the busy town of Roche-de-Frêne; the
cathedral, where, atop the mounting tower, trowel clinked against
stone; the bishop’s palace, where, that morning Ugo wrote a letter to
Pope Alexander; and the vast castle with Gaucelm the Fortunate’s banner
above it.
Roche-de-Frêne dyed with scarlet second only to that of Montpellier.
It wove fine stuffs, its saddlers were known for their work, it made
good weapons. Rome had left it a ruined amphitheatre—not so large
as that at Arles, but large enough to house a trade. Here was the
quarter of the moulders of candles. A fair wine was made in the country
roundabout, brought to Roche-de-Frêne and sold, and thence sold again.
It was a mart likewise for great, creamy-flanked cattle. They came in
droves over the bridge that crossed the river and were sold and bought
without the walls, in the long, poplar-streaked field where was held
the yearly fair.
It was not a free town—not yet. Time was when its people had been
serfs wholly, chattels and thralls completely of the lords who built
the great castle. Less than a hundred years ago that was still largely
true. Then had entered small beginnings, fragmentary privileges,
rights of trade, commutations, market grants. These had increased;
every decade saw a little freedom filched. Lords must have wealth, and
the craftsmen and traders made it; money-rent entered in place of old
obediences. Silver paid off body-service. Skill increased, and the
number of wares made, and commerce in them. Wealth increased. The town
grew bolder and consciously strove for small liberties. Roche-de-Frêne
was different now indeed from the old times when it had been wholly
servile. It was growing with the strong twelfth century. All manner of
ideas entered its head.
Gaucelm the Fortunate’s father had been Gaucelm the Crusader, Gaucelm
of the Star. Certain of the ideas of the burghers of Roche-de-Frêne
had been approved by this prince. Others found themselves stingingly
rebuked. One of Roche-de-Frêne’s concepts of its own good might
flourish in court favour, a second just exist like grass under a
stone, wan and sere, a third encounter all the forces of extirpation.
In the main Gaucelm of the Star bore hardly against the struggle for
liberty. But at the last he took the cross, and needing moneys so
that he might go to Jerusalem with great array, granted “privileges.”
After three years he returned from Palestine and granted no more. He
died and Gaucelm the Fortunate reigned. For five years he fought the
ideas of Roche-de-Frêne. Then he changed, almost in a night-time, and
granted almost more than was asked. His barons and knights stared and
wondered; Gaucelm was no weakling. Roche-de-Frêne sat down to digest
and assimilate what it had gained. The town was no more radical than it
thought reasonable. The meal was sufficient for the time being. There
began a string of quiet years.
The bishop’s palace stood a long building, with wings at right
angles. Before it spread a flagged place, and in the middle of this a
fountain jetted, the water streaming from dolphins’ jaws. In old times
the bishops of Roche-de-Frêne had been mightier than its ravening,
war-shredded lords. Then had arisen the great line that built the
castle and subdued the fiefs and turned from baron to prince and
outweighed the bishops. The fountain, shifting its spray as the wind
blew, had seen a-many matters, a-many ambitions rise and fall and rise
again.
The fountain streamed and the spray shifted this autumn, while the
trees turned to gold and bronze and the grapes were gathered, and
through the country-side bare feet of peasants trod the wine-press, and
over the bridge in droves lowed the cream-hued cattle. It rose and fell
time before and time after that feast-day on which the squire Garin had
knelt in the cathedral dusk between the Palestine pillars, before Our
Lady of Roche-de-Frêne in blue samite and a gemmy crown. It streamed
and sparkled on a sunny morning when Bishop Ugo, bound for the castle,
behind him a secretary and other goodly following, checked his white
mule beside the basin and blessed the lounging folk who sank upon their
knees.
The process consumed no great while. Ugo was presently riding up the
town’s chief street, a thoroughfare that marked the ridge pole of the
hill of Roche-de-Frêne. People were abroad, and as he passed they did
him reverence. He was a great churchman, who could hurt or help them,
soul and body, here and hereafter! But at a quieter corner, before a
pile of old, dark buildings, he came upon, and that so closely that his
mantle almost brushed them, a man and two women, poorly dressed, who
stood without movement or appeal for blessing. Had they been viewed
at a distance, noted merely for three stony units in a bending crowd,
the bishop had been too superb to notice, but here they were under his
nose, unreverent, stocks before his eyes, their own eyes gazing as
though he were not!
Ugo checked his mule, spoke sharply. “Why, shameless ones, do you not
bend to Holy Church, her councillors and seneschals?”
The man spoke. “We bend to God.”
“To God within,” said one of the women. “Not to ill within—not to
luxury, pomp, and tyranny!”
“Woe!” cried the other woman, the younger. “Woe when the hearth no
longer warms, but destroys!”
“_Bougres_,” spoke the secretary at his master’s ear. “Paulicians,
Catharists, _Bons hommes_, Perfecti, Manichees.”
“That is to say, heretics,” said Ugo. “They grow hideously bold, having
Satan for saviour and surety! Take order for these. Lodge complaint
against them. See them laid fast in prison.”
The younger woman looked at him earnestly. “Ah, ah!” she said. “Thou
poor prisoner! Let me whisper thee—there is a way out of thy dark
hold! If only the door is not too high and wide and fully open for
thine eyes to see it!”
“They are not of Roche-de-Frêne,” spoke the secretary. “I warrant them
from Toulouse or Albi!”
“I, and more than I, have eyes upon Count Raymond of Toulouse,” said
the bishop. “Two or three of you take these wretches to the right
officer. And do thou, Nicholas, appear against them to-morrow.”
He touched his mule with his riding switch and rode on, a dark-browed
man, with a thin cheek and thin, close-shutting lips. He was a martial
bishop; he had fought in Sicily and at Damascus and Edessa, and at
Constantinople.
The street ran steeply upward, closing where, in the autumn day, there
spread and towered the castle. Ugo, approaching moat and drawbridge,
put with a customary action his hand over his lips and so regarded
outer and inner walls, the southward-facing barbican and the towers
that flanked it,—Lion Tower and Red Tower. Men-at-arms in number
lounged within the gate, straightening when the warder cried the
bishop’s train. Ugo took his hand from his lips and crossed the
hollow-sounding bridge. He rode beneath the portcullis and through the
deep, reverberating, vaulted passage opening on either hand into Lion
Tower and Red Tower, and so came to the court of dismounting, where
esquires and pages started into activity. From here he was marshalled,
the secretary and a couple of canons behind him, to the Court of
Honour, where met him other silken pages.
They bowed before him. “Lord Bishop, our great ones are gathered in the
garden, harkening to troubadours.”
One of higher authority came and took the word from them. “My lord,
I will lead you to where these rossignols are singing! They sing in
honour of ladies, and of the court’s guest, the duke from Italy who
would marry our princess!”
They moved through a noble, great hall, bare of all folk but
doorkeepers.
“Will the match be made?” asked Ugo.
“We do not know,” answered his conductor. “Our Lady Alazais favours it.
But we do not know the mind of Prince Gaucelm.”
Ugo walked in silence. His own mind was granting with anger the truth
of that. Presently he spoke in a measured voice. “If it be made, it
will be a fair alliance. Undoubtedly a good marriage! For say that to
our sorrow Prince Gaucelm hath never a son of his own, then it may come
that his daughter’s son rule that duchy and this land.”
“Dame Alazais,” said the other in a tone of discreetness, “hath been
six years a wife. The last pilgrimage brought naught, but the next may
serve.”
“Pray Our Lady it may!” answered Ugo with lip-devoutness, “and so
Gaucelm the Fortunate become more fortunate yet.—The Princess Audiart
hath been from home.”
“Aye, at Our Lady in Egypt’s. But she is returned, the prince having
sent for her. Hark! Raimon de Saint-Rémy is singing.”
There was to be heard, indeed, a fine, manly voice coming from where,
through an arched exit, they now had a glimpse of foliage and sky. It
sang loudly and boldly, a chanson of the best, a pæan to woman’s lips
and throat and breast, a proud, determined declaration of slavery, a
long, melodious cry for mistress mercy.
The bishop stood still to listen. “Ha!” he said, “many a song like that
does my Lady Alazais hear!”
“Just,” answered his companion. “When they look on her they begin to
sing.”
Moving forward they stood within the door that gave upon the garden.
It lay before them, a velvet sward enclosed by walls, with a high
watch-tower pricked against the eastern heavens.
“It is a great pity,” said Ugo guardedly, “that the young princess
stands so very far from her stepdame’s loveliness!”
“Aye, the court holds it a pity.”
“The prince hath an extraordinary affection toward her.”
“As great as if she were a son! She hath wit to please him,—though,”
said he who acted usher, “she doth not please every one.”
They passed a screen of fruit trees and came upon a vision first of
formal paths with grass, flowers, and aromatic herbs between, then of
a wide raised space, stage or dais, of the smoothest turf that ever
was. It had a backing of fruit trees, and behind these of grey wall and
parapet, and it was attained by shallow steps of stone. On these, and
on low seats and cushions and on banks of turf, sat or half-reclined
men and women, for the most part youthful or in the prime of life.
Others stood; others, men and women, away from the raised part,
strolled through the garden that here was formal and here maintained
a studied rusticity. The men wore neither armour nor weapons, save,
maybe, a dagger. Men and women were very richly dressed, for even where
was perpetual state, this was an occasion.
In a greater space than a confined castle garden they would not have
seemed so many; as it was there appeared a throng. In reality there
might be a hundred souls. The castle was as populous as an ant-heap,
but here was only the garland of the castle. The duke who was seeking
a mate had with him the very spice-pink of his own court. He and they
were of the garden. The festival that was made for him had drawn
neighbouring barons and knights, vassals of Gaucelm. There was no time
when such a court failed to entertain travellers of note, wandering
knights, envoys of sorts, lords going in state to Italy on the one
hand, to France or Spain or England on the other. Of such birds of
passage several were in the garden. And there were troubadours of more
than local fame, poets so great that they travelled with their own
servants and jongleurs. When the bishop came with two canons in his
train there were churchmen. And, moving or seated, glowed bright dames
and damosels.
But in the centre sat Alazais, and she seemed, indeed, of Venus’s
meinie. She was a fair beauty, with deep-red, perfect lips, and a curve
of cheek and throat to make men tremble. Her long brown eyes, set well
apart, had a trick of always looking from between half-shut lids. Her
limbs spoke the same languor, and yet she had strength, strength, it
seemed, of a pard or a great serpent. She was not pard and she was not
serpent; she was not evil. She was—Alazais, and they all sang to her.
Even though they did not name her name; even though they used other
names.
There were four chairs of state, though not set arow. Only two were
occupied—that in which sat ivory-and-gold Alazais, and that in which
sat the duke who had come to view Prince Gaucelm’s daughter. The duke
sat over against Alazais, with a strip of green grass between. He was
not beautiful: he had a shrunk form and a narrow, weazened face. But he
stared at the beauty before him, and a slight shiver went through him
with a fine prickling. “Madonna!” he thought. “If the other were his
wife, and this his daughter!”
Ugo came to the green level. Alazais rose to greet him and the
duke followed her. He had informed himself in the politics of
Roche-de-Frêne: he knew that though now there was peace between prince
and bishop, it had not always been so and might not be so again. The
duke was no great statesman, but to every one, at the moment, he was
as smooth as an innate, cross-grained imperiousness would let him
be. A fair seat was found for my lord bishop, the two canons and the
secretary standing behind him.
“Ah, my lord,” said Alazais, “you are good to grace our idle time! Our
poets have sung and will sing again, and then myself and all these
ladies are pledged to judge of a great matter. Sir Gilles de Valence,
what is the matter?”
The troubadour addressed bent the knee. “Princess, the history of
Madame Dido, and if she were not the supremest servant of Love who
would not survive, not the death but the leave-taking of her knight,
Messire Æneas, but made a pyre and burned herself thereon! And of
her example, as lover, to fair ladies, and if they should not,
emulating her,—in a manner of figure and not, most fair, with actual
flames!—withdraw themselves, as it were, from being and existence
throughout the time that flows between the leave-taking and coming
again of their knights. And of Messire Æneas, and if Love truly had him
in bonds.”
“Truly, a fair matter!” said Ugo, with hidden scorn. “Here are the
prince and the Princess Audiart!”
Dais and garden broke off their talk, turned with a flash of colour and
a bending movement toward the lord of the land.
Gaucelm the Fortunate came upon the scene with an easy quietness. He
was a large man, wearing a _bliaut_ of dark silk, richly belted, and
around his hair, that was a silvering brown, a fillet or circlet of
gold. There breathed about him something easy, humorous, wise. He
did not talk much, but what he said was to the purpose. Now he had a
profound and brooding look, and now his eye twinkled. In small things
he gave way; where he saw it his part to be firm he was firm enough.
Though he listened to many, the many did not for ever see their way
taken. He may have been religious, but he exhibited little or nothing
of his time’s religiosity. He had a stilly way of liking the present
minute and putting much into it. He did not laugh too easily, but yet
he seemed to find amusement in odd corners where none else looked for
it. He was not fond of state, but relaxed it when he could, yet kept
dignity. He came now into the castle garden with but a few attending,
and beside him, step for step, moved the young princess, his daughter
Audiart.
CHAPTER VII
THE UGLY PRINCESS
SHE had a way of dressing, for preference, in dark hues, reds like wine
or the deeper parts of rubies, blues like the ripened bunches between
the vineyard leaves, browns like a Martinmas wood. To-day she wore the
latter hue. Around her head was a golden fillet, but no other tire.
She wore to-day no Eastern veil, nor did her long, dark hair, securely
braided, give shadow to her face. Her shape was good, a slender shape,
endued with nervous strength. But her face showed plain, dark, and
thin, intelligent, but with features irregular beyond the ordinary.
The Court of Roche-de-Frêne, beneath its breath, called her the Ugly
Princess. She sat now beside her step-mother, Alazais, and made a foil
for that lovely dame.
In the past two generations there had come a change in the world. True
it was that to appearance it affected only a small ring—only the top
strata, the capstones of the feudal system; only the world of lords and
knights and poets and “ladies.” As the jongleur had told Garin, it was
not supposed to descend to shepherdesses. Even in the other world by no
means was it always present. Sometimes the lack of it was as shocking
as might be. Sometimes it was there only in very small part, only in
unimportant issues. Sometimes it was mere affectation. Sometimes it was
used as a mask, and behind it went on ill realities. But it had itself
come into the world as a reality. It knew motion and growth, and it
manifested itself, though in degrees. There was much alloy, but at its
purest and best it was a golden thing, a flower of light. It called
itself chivalric love.
Here and there it was pure and in action, but in between and all
around was imitation, a little gold drawn out into much filagree. The
filagree was the fashion; it drew being from the real, but the depth
of its being was slight. But it was the fashion, no doubt of that.
As the jongleur had said, it raged. Where it was received, in court
and castle, hall and bower, sensuality grew sensuousness with sparks
of something higher. But the framework of feudal society imposed all
manner of restrictions. The elaborate gradation of rank, the perpetual
recurrence of “lord” and “vassal,” the swords about women, marriage
that was bargaining for wealth and power—all blocked the torrent’s
natural course. Thrown back upon itself, the feeling inbred artifices
and illusions, extravagances, sometimes monstrosities. It became the
mock-heroic, the pseudo-passionate. It cultivated a bright-hued fungus
garden of sentimentality. It rose from earth, not by its own wings
but by some Icarian apparatus that the first fire scorched away. It
picked up the bright dropped feathers of the true bird of Paradise,
but though it made a mantle of them, its own hue showed beneath. It
did not understand what it was that it admired, but it made a cult of
the admiration.... And yet all the while there was something real, and
Extravagance and Mistake were dimly its seekers. Life was richer and
longer of stride than it had used to be. A host of perceptions had
at last melted into a concept of mutual love such as had not before
been in the earth. Those that the crown fell upon might be silent
or not, but no one else was silent. It was the Discovery—the age’s
Indies—and polite conversation came round to it as the needle to the
pole. Nay, _conversazioni_ were planned to discuss this and this alone.
Troubadours sang in contests songs of love—and once more songs of
love. Now and again they might dispute other matters in a _tenso_, lash
the time’s recognized vices in a _sirvente_. But these were asides.
Their true business was to sing of love and lovers and the service of
love. Some sang with a springtime freshness, force, and simplicity.
Some took all that was strained, far-fetched, and hectic in the time’s
regard of the Discovery and made of it a heady drink.
To-day this garden sat or stood to consider Love—that is, to consider
love of an individual of one sex for an individual of the other. Here
were knights who, when they fought, tied their lady’s sleeve or girdle
about arm or helm. Here were troubadours of note, each of whom flung
far and wide through the land the praise of some especial fair. And
here were women who were thus praised and sung.
The age greatly lauded virginity in the abstract. But—saving the
saints in heaven and abbesses on earth—precedence in fact was given by
the world of chivalry to the married woman. Public opinion required of
wedded great dames—perhaps in most cases received—essential regard
for their lords’ honour. This granted, for love they were let turn
elsewhere. Theirs chiefly, though not solely, were the knights, the
troubadours, the incense, the poesy. Marriage came so early, marriage
was so plainly the rule, that the unwed in evidence—the throngs of
nuns making another story—were almost always young girls indeed, buds
of flowers, somewhat ill at ease with the opened roses. But largely
they were of the rose kind, and, in the bloomy ring of wedded dames,
sighed to in _canzons_, “fair friends” of knight and poet, but saw
themselves a little further on. Those in the garden were not of the
very youngest, and they were used to courts and not ill at ease. They
were rosebuds very sweet, and they took their share of lauds. From them
all the ugly princess differed subtly.
It was not merely that she differed when faces were compared. What
others might think could not of course appear, but the duke, who had
considered an alliance with Roche-de-Frêne, thought her deficient in
every power to please. It was right enough that, in the presence of her
father and step-dame, before the perhaps oppressive loom of her own
possible good fortune, she should keep silence. But she should look
fair and complying, not be such an one that the world might say, “Our
Duke chose a poor little land, under a gloomy sky!” And when she did
speak she should speak with sense and _à propos_. As it was, she spoke
folly.
For instance. There had been introduced a jongleur, a
Babylonish-looking fellow, who had narrated at length and with
action the history of Dido. He had ended amid acclaim and had been
given largesse. Following the lesser art and performer had come the
major—burst into song the troubadours. They parted between them the
passion of the Carthaginian Queen. One took the May of it, one the
July, one the Winter. They soared to Olympus and pleaded it before
the Court of Love; they came down to Europe and placed it in the eye
of brave knights and sweet ladies. The duke was moved. He began to
lean toward Alazais; then, policy and the beauty of a virtuous action
prevailing, he bent instead toward the only one there who could link
together his dukedom and Roche-de-Frêne. “Fair, sweet princess, what
think you of this great lover, Queen Dido?”
Then had the changeling shown oddness and folly. She lifted eyes that
were _vair_ or changeable, and neither shy nor warm, and spoke in a
voice as dry as a Candlemas reed. “I hold,” she said, “that in that
matter of the bull’s hide, she was wise.”
She said no more and her eyes fell again upon her long, brown hands.
They were as brown as a berry; they looked as though she had been
roving like an Egyptian. The duke had a strong movement of distaste.
She appeared to him as Babylonish as the jongleur.
The court seemed used to her. Naturally, it failed in no observance.
She had her ladies, and a page stood at her call. The troubadours when
they sang bent to her as they bent to the other chairs of state. Lord
and knight made due obeisance. That marvellous Alazais spoke to her
ever and anon, and she answered. But her words were few and short; the
duke saw that she had not the gift of discourse. He saw no gift that
she had. Certainly, she was not trying to please a great duke. It was
not that she showed any discourtesy—that were impossible. But there
was no right sense of his presence. She sat, young and without beauty,
unsmiling, her eyes now upon the watch-tower drawn against the blue,
and now upon the face of the singer. They said that Prince Gaucelm
doated upon her. He was her father—let him doat!
“What shall a knight do for his lady?
He shall love her, love her, pardie!”
sang Gilles de Valence, reprobation of Messire Æneas being now in hand.
“All his nights and all his days
He shall study but her praise.
Her word against all words he weigheth,
Saith she ‘Stay,’ in joy he stayeth.
Saith she ‘Go,’ all meek he goeth.
A heart in chains is all he knoweth,
From other wit release he showeth!
Wit may plead, but Love is nigher,
Jove may call, but Love calls higher!
What shall a knight do for his lady?
He shall love her, love her, pardie!
All his nights and all his days,
He shall study but her praise!”
Applause arose. Raimon de Saint-Rémy took his lute. But the duke noted
how stiff and silent sat the ugly princess.
The entertainment of that forenoon over, they went to dinner—a
considerable concourse, so considerable that when all were seated the
great hall appeared to blossom like the garden. At the table of state
sat the prince and Alazais and the Princess Audiart, the duke, Bishop
Ugo, and three or four others whom Gaucelm would honour. Musicians
played in a gallery. Waiting men in long procession brought the
viands—venison and peacocks, pasties of all kinds, mutton, spitted
small birds, wheaten bread—a multitude of matters. Afterwards came
cakes and tarts, with many fruits. Always there was wine served in
rich cups. The oddity to a later taste would have been the excess of
seasoning,—the pepper, saffron, ginger, cloves, the heat and pungency
of the solid meats,—and then the honey dropped in wine. At the
prince’s table a knight carved, at the others the noblest esquires. The
apparel of the tables was rich; there were gold and silver vessels of
many sorts, dishes, bowls, fine knives and spoons,—but, high and low,
no fork.
The hall was very large, and so the talk of many people, subdued in
tone as, of late years, good manners had learnt to demand, created no
more than a pleasant deep humming. For the most part the talk ran upon
love, arms, and policy, the latest, most resounding public events, and
the achievements and abilities, personal adventures and misadventures,
of various members of the company. At the raised table it was high
politics and what was occurring in the world of rulers, for that was
what the duke liked to talk about and the prince bent the conversation
to suit his guest. Bishop Ugo liked it, too. Ugo’s mind ran at times
from realm to realm, but there was a main land in which he was most
at home. In that he passioned, schemed, and strove for Holy Church’s
temporal no less than spiritual ascendancy. The Hohenstauffen and Pope
Alexander—Guelph and Ghibelline—Church and Empire—the new, young
French King Philip, suzerain of Roche-de-Frêne—Henry the Second of
England and his sons, specifically his son Richard, not so far from
here, in Aquitaine—so ran the talk. The visiting duke spoke much, in
the tone of peer to them of whom he spoke. Ugo listened close-lipped;
now and then he entered eloquently, and always in the Papal service.
The prince said little. It was not easy to discover where he stood. The
barons at the table took judicious part. The dazzling Alazais displayed
a flattering interest, and the duke, noting that, gave his destrier
further rein, shook a more determined lance. He spoke of that same
Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, a man much talked of by his time, and he
related instances that showed that Richard’s strength and weakness.
He bore hard upon a fantastic generosity which, appealed to, could at
times make Richard change and forsake his dearest plans.
The Princess Audiart sipped her wine. She heard the duke as in a
dream. Atop of all the voices in the hall her mind was off in a forest
glade.... She looked across at the prince her father. She had not told
him of that adventure—of how she had desperately tired of Our Lady
in Egypt and of her aunt the Abbess and of most of her own women, and
would spend one day a-shepherdessing, and had done so. She was going to
tell him—even though she reckoned on some anger. She had for Gaucelm a
depth of devotion.... A forest glade, and an evil knight and a squire
in brown and green—and now what were they talking of?
That afternoon half the court rode out a-hawking. The prince did not
go; he was heavy now for the saddle. But the duke rode, and the two
princesses. The day was good, the sport was fair; the great thing,
air and exercise, all obtained without thinking of it. There was much
mirthful sound, laughter, men’s voices and women’s voices. Alazais
dazzled; so fair was she on her white palfrey that had its mane tied
with little silver bells. The duke rode constantly by her side. The
Princess Audiart had for escort Stephen the Marshal, a goodly baron
and knight. The duke was well and correct where he was, Alazais
being Gaucelm’s princess, and his hostess. Manners demanded toward
the younger princess a decorum of restraint and distance. Only this
restraint should have been managed with an exquisite semblance of
repressed ardour, with a fineness of “Truly a fair and precious link
between Houses!” This it was that was missing, and noted as missing by
every knight and lady that went a-hawking.
The return to the castle was made in the sunset-glow. Supper followed,
and after supper a short interval of repose. Then all met again in the
cleared hall and the musicians began to play. Gaucelm in red samite sat
upon the dais, and by him the duke in purple. Alazais, in white, with a
jewelled zone and a mantle hued like flame, looked Venus come to earth.
Beside her sat the ugly princess in dark blue over a silver robe.
Before them, on the floor of the hall, knights and ladies trod an
intricate measure. Great candles burned, viols and harps, the jongleurs
played their best, varlets stationed by the walls scattered Eastern
perfumes. The duke, with a word to the prince his host, rose and
bending to Alazais offered his hand. All watched this couple—the
measure over, all acclaimed. The duke led Alazais again to the dais,
then did what others must expect of him and he of himself. “Fair,
sweet lady,” he said to Gaucelm’s daughter. “Will you grace me with
this measure?”
The ugly princess gave him her finger-tips. He led her upon the floor
and they danced. As the measure, formal and stately, dictated, now
they took attitudes before each other, now they came together, palms
and fingers touching, now again parted. They were watched with strong
interest by the length and breadth of the hall, by both the Court of
Roche-de-Frêne and the duke’s following. A marriage such as this—say,
what men began to doubt, that it came to pass—by no means concerned
only the two who married. Thousands of folk were concerned, their
children and their children’s children.
Gaucelm the Fortunate watched from his dais and his great chair, where
he sat with bent elbow and his chin resting upon his hand. Sitting so,
he opened his other hand and looked again at a small piece of cotton
paper that had been slipped within it. Upon the paper appeared, in
the up-and-down, architectural writing of the period, these words:
“Messire, my father; do not, of your good pity, make me wed this lord!
I will be unhappy. You will be unhappy. He will be unhappy. I do think
that our lands and his lands will be unhappy. Messire my father, I do
not wish to wed.” Prince Gaucelm closed his hand and watched again.
The duke was dancing stiffly, with a bad grace masked as well as he
could mask anything that he truly felt. He wished to be prudent, and
certainly it were not prudent to give to Roche-de-Frêne either open or
secret offence. Not yet, even, had he determined.—He yet might, and he
might not.—But he was an arrogant man and a vain, and to his own mind
it was important that the world should not think he was fooled. Lasting
love between lord and lady, duke and duchess, mattered, forsooth,
little enough! It was not in the bond. When it came to beauty, he had
seen great queens without beauty of face or form. But the duke, though
he had it not himself, demanded that beauty in any woman immediately
about him, and with it complaisance, bent head, and burning of incense.
And he wished men to envy him, in some sort, all his goods, including
the woman whom he would make duchess. That was where Gaucelm was
fortunate. What living man, thought the duke, but would like to take
from him golden Alazais?
He danced as starkly as though he were in hauberk and helmet, and
his hand might have been mailed, so stiffly did it touch Audiart’s
hand. Who would envy him this Egyptian? He never noted if she danced
well or ill, if she had some grace of body or no; he looked for no
expression in her face that he might admire. She was outlandish—ugly.
There was—as would have become such a changeling—no awe of him, no
tremulous fear lest she should not please. He had an injured, hot
heart within him. Report had been too careless, bringing him only news
that here was a marriageable princess. He blamed his councillors,
determined to withdraw his favour from one who had been called his
bosom friend, but who had advocated this match. He blamed Gaucelm, who,
to his elaborate letter, had answered only with an invitation to visit
Roche-de-Frêne. He should have said: “Fair lord, you do my daughter too
much honour, who, you must know—” But chiefly the duke blamed that
princess herself.
The measure was over. The duke and the princess returned to the dais.
The jongleurs played loudly. The candles burned, the flung perfumes
floated through the hall. The music hid the whispers. Gaucelm the
Fortunate sat with a slight smile, his chin upon his hand. For an
interlude there was brought upon the floor the jongleur who had made
part of the forenoon’s entertainment. Elias of Montaudon he called
himself, and he was skilful beyond the ordinary with balls of coloured
glass and Eastern platters and daggers.
The ugly princess wished the taste of that dance taken from her lips.
She watched the jongleur, and because he was all in brown and yellow
like an autumn leaf and was as light as one and as quick as a woodland
creature, he brought the country to her mind and made her see forests
and streams. Her mother had been a mountain lady, and she herself would
have liked to rove the earth. She sat still, her gaze straight before
her, seeing the coloured balls, but beyond them imagined lands and
wanderings.
The duke spoke across to the prince her father, and the words came
clean and clear to her hearing, and to that of Stephen the Marshal and
others standing near. “I have had letters, sir,” said the duke, “which
make me to think that I am required at home.”
CHAPTER VIII
TOURNAMENT
THE next morning they heard mass in the castle chapel. The hour was
early, the world all drenched with autumn dews. The prince and the
duke and Alazais the Fair and Audiart, and behind them many knights
and ladies, kneeled on the stone flooring between the sparks of the
altar-lamps and the pink morning light. The chanted Latin rose and
fell, the bell rang, all bent. In came a lance of sunlight and the
vagrant morning breeze. Mass over, all flowed into the paved court. For
to-day there was arranged in the duke’s honour, a splendid tourney.
Many a good knight would joust—the duke also, it was said. Two hours,
and the trumpets would sound. The court was glad when the great folk
turned away with their immediate people, and the rest of the world
could begin to prepare.
Prince Gaucelm did not tilt. When he was young he had proved himself
_preux chevalier_. Now he was not so young, and his body weighed heavy,
and all his striving was to be _prud’homme_. When he came to his
chamber in the great donjon he dismissed from it all save a chamberlain
and a page, and the latter he sent to the princess his daughter with
a message that she might come to him now as she had asked. In as few
minutes as might be she came.
There was a window looking to the east, over the castle wall and moat
and forth upon the roofs of the town. The prince had here a great chair
and a bench with cushions, and the princess was to sit upon the bench.
Instead she came and stood beside him, and then slipped to her knees
and rested her head against the arm of the chair. “My good father,” she
said, “my wise father, my dear father, do you love me?”
“You know that I love you,” answered Gaucelm, and put his hand upon her
head.
“If you do, then it is all safe.”
Gaucelm slightly laughed. In the sound was both amusement and anger.
“But my guest the duke,” he said, “does not love you.”
“He loves me most vilely!” said the ugly princess with energy.
Prince Gaucelm mused. “Shall I show offence or no? I have not decided.”
“Why show offence?” said the ugly princess. “I am as I am, and he is
as he is. Let him go, with smiles and a stirrup-cup, and a ‘Fair lord,
well met and well parted!’”
“He is a foolish man.”
“There are many such—and women. Let him go. I grudge him no happiness,
nor a fair wife.”
The ugly princess rose from the floor and went and stood by the window.
Doves that Gaucelm cherished flew from their cote in the court below
across and across the opening. One came and sat upon the sill and
preened its feathers.
“This question of fairness has many aspects,” said Gaucelm the
Fortunate. “The cover in which you are clad is not so bad!—Well, let
us take it that this great baron is gone.”
“I will make an offering to Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne! But I will
thank you, too,—and most, I think.”
“It rests,” said Gaucelm, “that you must marry.”
“Ah, must I so surely?”
Prince Gaucelm regarded her ponderingly, with bent brows. “What is
there else for women? You will not be a nun?”
“Not I!”
“Fief by fief,” said Gaucelm, “Roche-de-Frêne was built, now by
conquest and now by alliance. If I have no son, you are my heir. There
is a bell that rings in all men’s ears. _Make for your heir betimes a
prudent marriage, adding land to land, gold to gold!_”
“Does it ring so joyously in your ears? It does not ring joyously in
mine. No, nor with a goodly, solemn sound!”
“It is the world’s way,” said the prince. “I do not know if it is the
right way.”
The Princess Audiart watched the dove, iris against the morning sky,
then turned, full face, to her father. “I am not fair,” she said. “Men
who want just that will never want me. It seems to me also that I am
not loving. At times, when I listen to what they say, I want to laugh.
I can see great love. But it seems to me that what they see is not
great love.... Well, but we marry without love! Well, it seems to me
that that is very irksome!—Well, but you may have a knight to love, so
that it be courtly love and your lord’s honour goes unhurt! Well, it
seems to me that that is children’s love.—I wish not to marry, but to
stay here and learn and learn and learn, and with you rule and serve
Roche-de-Frêne!”
In the distance a horn was winded. The mounting sun struck strongly
upon the roofs of Roche-de-Frêne. The dove spread its wings and flew
down to its cote. Voices and a sound of trampling hoofs came from the
court, and a nearer trumpet blew.
“Time and the mind have wings,” said Prince Gaucelm, “and it is not
well to look too far into the future!” He rose from his chair. “Load
not the camel and the day too heavily! Let us go now and watch the
knights joust.”
The tournament was held without the walls, in a long meadow sunk like
a floor between verdant slopes of earth. At either end were pavilions,
pitched for those who jousted. Midway of the lists appeared a wreathed
platform, silken-canopied, built for the great. Right and left of this
space of honour was found place for men-at-arms and castle retainers,
and likewise for the magistrates of the town and the more important
burghers. But on the other side of the lists there were slopes of
turf with out-cropping stones and an occasional well-placed tree, and
here the town poured out its workers, men and women. The crowd was
cheerful. There surged a loud, beating sea of talk. Up and down and
across sprang glitter and light, with sharp notes of colour. Squires
and men-at-arms, heralds and pages gave their quota. Nor did there
lack priest and pilgrim,—and that though the Church thundered against
tournaments,—Jew, free-lance and travelling merchant, jongleur and
stroller. All was gay beneath a bright blue sky, and esquires held the
knights’ horses before the painted pavilions.
The trumpets blew, and out of the castle gates and down the road cut in
the living rock came the great folk. When they reached the meadow and
the gallery built for them, and when presently all were seated, it was
like a long bank of flowers, coloured glories. At each end of the lists
waited twenty knights in mail with painted surcoats. Between, over the
green meadow, rode and staidly consulted the marshals. Horses neighed,
metal jingled, the folk laughed, talked, gesticulated, now and then
disputed. Jongleurs picked at stringed instruments, trumpeters made a
gay shower of notes. Towers and battlements closed the scene, and the
walled town spread upon the hill-top.
The prince did not tilt, but the duke had granted that during the day
he would splinter one lance. His pavilion was therefore pitched, his
shield hung before it, and two esquires walked up and down with a great
black stallion. Now, with Stephen the Marshal and with his own knights,
he left the gallery of honour and went to arm himself. Edging the lists
ran a pathway, wide enough for two horsemen abreast. A railing divided
it from the throng. As the duke and his party passed along this road,
the crowd, suddenly learning or conjecturing that here was the lord
in whose honour was planned the tournament, craned, many-headed, that
way. It was very important to know if this lord were going to wed the
princess! There were townsmen who had caught the word and called her
the ugly princess. As yet they did not know much about her, though they
saw her ride through the streets with her father, and that she looked
at the people not with haughtiness but attentively. Of Alazais they
were proud. Merchants of Roche-de-Frêne, when they travelled far away
and there insinuated the praises of home, bragged of the beauty of
their lord’s wife. Her name was known in Eastern bazaars.—But if there
was to be a marriage it was important, and important to know the looks
of the bridegroom.
Some crowding took place, some pressing against the wooden barrier.
At one point a plane tree, old and gnarled, stretched a bough above
the pathway. It made a superb tower of observation and as such had
been seized upon. The duke, walking with the marshal, and approaching
this tree, became aware of folk aloft, thick as fruit upon the bough,
half-hidden by the bronzing leaves, and more vocal than elsewhere.
Certain judgements floated down.
Holiday and festival encouraged licence of speech. The time enforced a
reality of obedience from rank to rank, but that provided for, cared
not to prevent mere wagging of tongues. The ruling castes never thought
it out, but had they done so they might have said that it was not amiss
that the people should somewhere indemnify themselves. Let them laugh,
exercise their wit, so that it grew not too caustic—be merry-hearted,
bold, and familiar! Who held the land held them, but it was pleasanter
for the lord himself when the land knew jollity. Add that the courts
of the south were more democratic than those of the north, and that
Gaucelm was a democratic prince.
The duke was of another temper,—a martinet and a stickler for respect
on the part of the vulgar. He caught the comment and flushed. “An
unmannerly people!” he said to Stephen the Marshal.
That baron darted an experienced glance. “They are the younger,
mechanical sort. Take no heed of them, fair lord.”
The remark caught had not been ill-natured, was more jocose than
turbulent, might pass where any freedom of speech was accorded. But
suddenly came clearly from the bough of the plane tree a genuinely
seditious utterance. Given forth in a round, naturally sonorous voice,
it carried further than the speaker intended. “_One day a burgher will
be as good as a duke!_”
The great folk were almost beneath that wide-spreading bough. They
looked sharply up—the duke, Stephen the Marshal, all the knights. The
voice said on, like an oracle aloft among the leaves: “The man in my
skin isn’t any less than the man in his skin. I say that one day—”
A branch that had served to steady the oracle suddenly broke, snapping
short. Amid ejaculations, oracle and branch came together to earth.
Down they tumbled, on the inner side of the barrier, upon the grassy
path before the duke and Stephen the Marshal.
Laughter arose with, on the knights’ side, some angry exclamation. The
fallen man got hastily to his feet. “The branch was rotten—” He put a
hand to either side his head, seemed to settle it upon his shoulders
and recover his wits. “Give me pardon, good lords, for tumbling there
like a pippin—” He was a young man, square-shouldered and sturdy, with
crisply curling black hair, a determined mouth, and black, bold, and
merry eyes.
Stephen the Marshal spoke sternly. “That bough brought you to earth,
Thibaut Canteleu, but, an you rein it not, your tongue will bring you
into earth!”
The offender turned his cap in his hand. “I spoke not to be heard by
great lords,” he said. “I know not that I said harm. I said that,
change my lord duke and me, and I might make a fair duke, and he a
fair master-saddler and worker in Cordovan! I think that he might, and
I will tell you that it taketh skill—”
The duke saw fit to laugh, though after an irritated and peevish
fashion. “Roche-de-Frêne,” he said, “breeds fair princesses and
townsmen with limber tongues!—Well, my Lord Stephen, let us not tarry
here!”
Lords and knights passed on toward the pavilions. Thibaut Canteleu,
pressed aside, stood close to the barrier until they were gone, then
put his hands upon the rail and swung himself up and over. The folk,
men and women, received him with laughter, and some admiration, and he
laughed at himself. Being a holiday, that was the best thing to do.
A jongleur, a dark Moorish-looking fellow in yellow and brown, accosted
him. “Thou poor mad-house citizen! Burgher and knight, lion and lamb,
priest and heretic, pope and paynim, villein and lord, jongleur and
troubadour, Jean and Jeanne, let us all go to heaven together!”
“We might,” answered Thibaut Canteleu sturdily. “That is a fine lute of
thine! Play us a tune while we wait.”
“Not I!” said the jongleur coolly. “It would demean me. Last night I
gave a turn of my art in the hall up yonder, before the prince and all
his court.—Who is this coming now, with a green-and-silver banner and
fifty men behind him?”
The meadow was pitched by the high road running from the north, and
now from this road there turned toward the lists, the holiday crowd,
and the wreathed gallery, a troop of half a hundred mounted men, at
their head one who seemed of importance. Not only the rustling people
on the green banks, but the lists now making final preparation, and the
silken-canopied gallery took cognizance of the approach. The troop came
nearer. A tall man rode in front upon a bay mare. Behind him an esquire
held aloft a spear with a small green-and-silver banner attached. A
poursuivant, gorgeously clad, detached himself from the mass and cried
out: “Montmaure!”
“Ha!” exclaimed Gaucelm the Fortunate. “Here is Count Savaric!” He
spoke to the seneschal. “Take five or six of the best and go meet him.
Bring him here with due honour.”
“Perhaps,” said Alazais, “he will joust. He is a mighty man of his arms
and bears down good knights.”
The unlooked-for guests were now riding close at hand, coming upon the
edge of the meadow, full before the platform of state. So important was
this arrival, that for the moment it halted interest in the tourney.
All turned to watch the troop with the green-and-silver banner.
Montmaure was less powerful than Roche-de-Frêne, but not greatly less.
Roche-de-Frêne held from the French King Philip. Montmaure did homage
for his lands to Richard, Duke of Aquitaine. But there was a certain
fief, a small barony,—to wit, the one that included Castel-Noir and
Raimbaut the Six-fingered’s keep,—for which Montmaure had put his
hands between the hands of Gaucelm of Roche-de-Frêne. To the extent of
three castles with their villages Gaucelm was his liege lord. Now, as
he came beneath the platform and immediately opposite that prince, he
gave ceremonious recognition of the fact. Turning in his saddle, he
drew his sword an inch from its sheath, holding the pommel toward the
prince, then let it slip home again. Gaucelm the Fortunate made a sign
of acceptance. The superb cavalcade passed on and in another moment was
met by the welcoming seneschal.
It seemed that Montmaure would not joust, though several of his knights
wished no better hour’s play. It was explained that he was travelling
to Montferrat, proceeding on a visit to the marquis his kinsman.
Last night he had slept with such a baron. To-day, servitors and
sumpter-mules had gone on, but the count with his immediate following
would halt at Roche-de-Frêne to enquire after the health and well-being
of Prince Gaucelm.
With ceremony Montmaure was marshalled to the gallery, and, mounting
the steps, came between the wreathed posts to the seats of state.
The prince with Alazais rose to greet him. In Gaucelm of the Star’s
time there had been trouble between Montmaure and Roche-de-Frêne.
Some harrying had taken place, the blood of a number of knights and
men-at-arms been shed, a few hundred peasants slain. But this present
Gaucelm was a man of peace, and had effected peace with Montmaure.
But Roche-de-Frêne was sceptical of its lasting forever. Who knew
Montmaure, knew an ambitious, grasping, warring lord—and a cruel and
unscrupulous.
He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, long-armed, with red-gold hair and
beard. When all courtesies of speech had been exchanged, when he had
saluted in courtly fashion the most beautiful Alazais and the Princess
Audiart, he took the chair of worth that was placed for him, and made
enquiry for the duke. He had heard last night that he was a visitor at
Roche-de-Frêne. Told that he would joust, and his pavilion pointed out.
Montmaure gazed at it for half a minute, then, just turning his head,
transferred his glance to the Princess Audiart. It was but an instant
that he looked, then came square again to the regard of the lists. He
turned a great emerald ring that he wore.
“Fair lord,” said Alazais, “your son, Count Jaufre, is not with you?”
Montmaure bent his red-gold head toward her. “Peerless lady, my son, in
hunting, came upon a young wolf who tore his side. He cannot ride yet
with ease. I have left him at Montmaure. There he studies chivalry, and
makes, I doubt not, chansons for princesses.”
“Travellers from Italy,” said Alazais, “have told us that he is an
accomplished knight.”
“It becomes not his father to boast of him,” said Montmaure. “I will
say though that Italy is the poorer since his return home and his own
land is the richer. I would that he were tilting to-day in the light,
princesses, of your four fair eyes!”
Again he looked at the Princess Audiart, and at the duke’s pavilion,
and turned his emerald ring.
The jousting began. Trumpets blew—two knights advanced against each
other with levelled spears—round and round the green arena the eager
folk craned necks. They had shows not a few in their lives, but this
was a show that never palled. Cockfights were good—baiting of bears
was good—a bull-fight passed the first two—but the tourney was
the prime spectacle by just as much as knights in armour outvalued
beasts of wood and field. The knights met with an iron clamour, each
breaking his lance against the other’s shield. Another two were
encountering—one of these was unhorsed. Others rode forth, coming from
either end of the lists....
Encounter followed encounter as knight after knight took part. Now
there were single combats and now mêlées. The dust rose in clouds, the
trumpets brayed, the sun climbed high. Knights were unhorsed; a number
had hurts, two or three had been dragged senseless to the barrier.
Stephen the Marshal was the champion; all who came against him broke at
last like waves against a rock.
It was high noon and the duke had not yet jousted. The crowd was
excited and began to murmur. It did not wish to be cheated—the greater
he that jousted, the greater the show! Moreover it wished to be able
to tell the points of him who might be going to wed Roche-de-Frêne. A
statement had spread that the duke was a bold knight in a tourney—that
he had an enchanted lance, a thread from Saint Martha’s wimple being
tied around its head—that his black stallion had been brought from
the land over the sea, and had been sired by a demon steed. The crowd
wanted to see him joust against Stephen the Marshal. His honour would
not allow him to strike a lesser shield. But then the prince would
not wish Stephen to unhorse his guest. But perhaps Lord Stephen could
not—the duke might be the bolder knight. But was the duke going to
tilt?
He was going to tilt. He came forth from his orange silk pavilion, in
a hauberk covered with rings of steel, and his esquires helped him to
mount the black stallion. He took and shook his lance; the sun made the
sheath of his sword to flash; they gave him a heart-shaped shield. All
around the lists sprang a rustling, buzzing, and clamour. The gallery
of state rustled, whispered.
“He is not a large man,” quoth Montmaure.
“I have heard that he jousts well,” Prince Gaucelm answered.
“My Lord Stephen the Marshal outmatches him.”
“The marshal is a passing good knight. But he is wearied.”
“Ha!” thought Montmaure, “you are so courteous that you mean the duke
to win the wreath. Crown your daughter Queen of Love and Beauty? God’s
teeth! I suppose he must do it if he wants Roche-de-Frêne—”
The black stallion and his rider crossed to the marshal’s pavilion. The
duke touched the shield with his lance, then backed the stallion to his
own end of the meadow. Stephen the Marshal mounted his big grey and
took a lance from his esquire. The field was left clear for the two.
They met midway, in dust-cloud and clangour. Whether the marshal was
tired, or whether he was as courteous as his lord, or whether the duke
was truly great in the tourney, may be left to choice. Each lance
splintered, but Stephen the Marshal, as his horse came back upon its
haunches, lost his seat, recovered it only by clutching at the mane and
swinging himself into the saddle. Every herald at once found voice—up
hurried the marshals—silver trumpets told to the four quarters, name
and titles of the victor.
Around and around rose applause, though indeed no immoderate storm of
sound. Stephen the Marshal was a valiant man. But there was enough to
let one say that nothing lacked. The duke turned his horse from side to
side, just bowed his head in its pointed helmet. Then, as the custom
was, a wreath of silken flowers and leaves was placed upon the point
of his spear. He made the stallion to curvet and caracole, and then to
pace slowly around the lists. A body of jongleurs began to play with
enthusiasm as passionate a love-air as they knew. All Roche-de-Frêne,
town and castle—all the barons and ladies from afar—all the knights
who jousted—all watched to see the duke lay the wreath at the feet of
the young princess—watched to see if he would lay it there. If he did
it might be said to announce that here, if he might, he would wed.
The duke rode around the lists; then before the wide platform of state
and the centre of that platform, before the chairs set arow upon a rich
Eastern rug and canopied with silk, he checked the black stallion, and,
lowering his lance, let the wreath slip from it and rest at the feet
of certainly the most beautiful woman there, Gaucelm’s princess, the
dazzling Alazais.
CHAPTER IX
GARIN SEEKS HIS FORTUNE
ONE day, from sunrise to sunset, Garin kept company with the train of
the Abbot of Saint Pamphilius. As the day dropped toward eve the road
touched a stream that, reflecting the western sky, blushed like a piece
of coral. It was the monks’ home stream. The ford passed, their abbey
would ere long rise before them. Some were tired of travel and had been
homesick for garden and refectory, cell and chapel—homesick as a dog
for its master, a child for its mother, a plant for its sunshine. Some
were not tired of travel and were not homesick. So there were both
glad and sorry in the fellowship that, midway of the ford, checked
the fat abbey mules and horses to let them drink. The beasts stooped
their necks to the pink water; monks and lay brothers and abbey knaves
looked at the opposite slope. When they reached its crest they would
see before them Saint Pamphilius, grey and rich. The abbot’s mule
drank first as was proper, raised its head first, and with a breath of
satisfaction splashed forward. The two monks immediately attendant upon
the Reverend Father must pull up their horses’ heads before they had
half drunken and follow their superior.
The abbot, mounting the gently shelving bank, looked at his sons in
God, yet dotting the small bright river. He just checked his mule.
“That limping youth is no longer in our company.”
The monk nearest him spoke. “Reverend Father, as we came through the
wood a mile back, he gave Brother Anselm thanks, then slipped from
behind him. Brother Bartholomew called to him, but he went away among
the trees.”
“Ah!” said the abbot; “in which direction?”
“Reverend Father, southwardly.”
Abbot Arnaut sat silent a moment, then shook the reins and his mule
climbed on toward the hill-top. “Ah,” he said to himself, and he said
it piously. “He is young, and when you are young perils do not imperil!
When you are young, you are an eel to slip through—I have done what I
could! Doubtless he will escape.”
That night there rose a great round moon. It lighted Garin through the
wood until he was ready to sleep,—it showed him where he could find
the thickest bed and covering of leaves,—and when he waked in the
night he saw it like a shield overhead. All day, riding behind Brother
Anselm, the monks about him, black as crows, he had felt dull and
dead. Waking now in the night, forest around him and moon above, sheer
unfamiliarity and wonder at his plight made him shiver and start like
a lost child. All that he had lost passed before him. Foulque passed,
transfigured in his eyes, he was so lonely and sick for home. Raimbaut
the Six-fingered passed, transfigured. The rude hall in Raimbaut’s
keep, the smoky fire and the lounging men—they were desirable to
him; he felt a cold pang when it crossed him that he would never win
back. He strove to plunge, head to heel, into the rich depths of the
feeling before this feeling, to recall the glow out of which he had
spoken at Castel-Noir, to go back to the nightingale’s singing. It was
there, that feeling; he knew that it had been born and was living. But
to-night half a chill and empty world was between him and it. There
in the forest, beneath the round moon, he had a bewildered brain and
an aching heart. Then at last he crossed the half-world to some faint
sweetness, and so slept.
With the dawn he was afoot. He had a piece of bread in his pouch, and
as he walked he ate this, and a streamlet gave him drink. The wood
thinned. In the first brightness of the day he came upon a road of so
fair a width and goodness that he saw it must be a highway and beaded
with towns. Apparently it ran northeast and southwest, though so broken
was the country that at short range it rounded almost any corner you
might choose. Where he was going he did not know, but he took the trend
that led him south by west. Dimly he thought of making his way into
Spain. Barcelona—there was a great town—and King Alfonso of Aragon
was known for a gallant king, rich, liberal and courtly. Garin looked
down at his serf’s tunic and torn shoon—but then he felt within his
breast. Foulque’s purse was there.
When he waked, it had been first to bewilderment and then to mere
relief in warmth and sunlight. Now as he walked courage returned,
the new energy and glow. Early as it was, the road had its travel
which increased with the strengthening day. It was a country rich in
beauty. He had never been so far from home. The people upon the road
were like people he had seen before. Yet there existed small, regional
differences, and his eye was quick at noting these. They pleased him;
imagination played. The morning was fair without and within.
A driver of mules—twenty with twenty loads of sawn wood and sacks of
salt and other matters—caught up with him. Garin and he walked side
by side and the former learned whence the road came and where it went.
As for the world hereabouts, it belonged to Count Raymond of Toulouse.
Garin, walking, began to sing.
“You sing well, brother,” said the muleteer. “If you dwelt with animals
as I do, your voice would crack! They do not understand me when I sing.
They think that I mean that they may stand still and admire.—Ha! May
God forget and the devil remember you there! Get up!”
They travelled with pauses, jerks, and starts, so at last Garin said,
“Farewell, brother!” and swung on alone. Half an hour later he, in
turn, came up with a pedlar, a great pack wrapt in cloth on his back,
sitting resting by the wayside. “Who’ll buy?” called the pedlar.
“Here’s your fine pennyworths!”
Garin stopped beside him and considered the pack. Travelling merchants
of a different grade, going with laden horses from fair to fair, might
have with them, cut, fashioned and sewed, a dress that would do for an
esquire. But not a poor pack-aback like this. He shook his head.
“No money?” asked the pedlar. “Thumb of Lazarus! how this sickness
spreads!”
Other wayfarers came in sight. “Who’ll buy?” called the pedlar. “Here’s
your fine pennyworths!”
Garin left him chaffering with a rich villein, and went his own way
along the sunny road.
Toward noon, rounding a hill, he came upon a little village. He bought
from the nearest house bread and cheese and a cup of goat’s milk, and
sat down under a mulberry tree to eat and drink. As he made an end of
the feast, two girls came and stood in the house door. They studied his
appearance, and it seemed to find favour. He smiled back at them.
“Where do you live?” asked one.
“In the moon.”
“Ha!” said the girl. “It was as round as an egg last night. You must
have dropped out. And where are you going?”
“To the sun.”
“Hè! You will be sunburned. Whose man are you?”
“Lord Love’s.”
The girls laughed for joy in him. “Hè! We see his collar around your
neck! What does he make you do?”
“He makes me to serve a lady.”
“‘Ladies!’ We do not like ‘ladies’! They are as proud as they were made
of sugar!”
“In the court of Lord Love,” said Garin, “every woman mounts into a
lady.”
One of the girls laughed more silently than the other. “Oh, the
pleasant fool!” she said. “You go on a long pilgrimage when you go to
Compostella. But to that court would be the longest I have ever heard
tell of!”
The other dug her bare foot into the ground. “If you are in no hurry,
the house can give you work to do, and for it supper and lodging.”
“I have to reach the sun. And who would do that,” said Garin, “must be
travelling.”
He stood up, left the mulberry tree, and because they were young and
not unfair, and there was to be seen in it no harm or displeasure, he
kissed them both. They laughed and pushed him away, then, their hands
on his shoulders, each kissed back.
Leaving them and the hamlet behind, he came again into fair country
where the blue sky touched the hill-tops. Morning had slipped into
afternoon. Not far away would be a town he had heard of. He meant to
get there a different dress. It was necessary to do that. Wandering
so, in this serf’s wear, he might at any hour be taken up, called to
account, made to name his master. “Lord Love” would not answer far. Say
that, without fathomless trouble, he got the dress, what was going to
follow upon the getting? He did not know.
Ahead of him walked a thin figure wrapped in a black mantle and wearing
a wide hat somewhat like a palmer’s. Garin lessened the distance
between them. The black-clad one was talking, or more correctly,
chanting to himself as he walked, and that with such abstraction from
the surrounding world that he did not hear the other moving close
behind him. Garin listened before speaking.
“In Ethiopia is found basilisk, cockatrice, and phœnix; in certain
parts of Greece the centaur, and in the surrounding seas mermaiden.
The dolphin is of all beasts the tenderest-hearted. Elephants worship
the sun.... Pliny tells us that there are eleven kinds of lightning.
Clap your hands when it lightens.... The elements are four—earth, air,
fire and water. To each of these pertaineth a spirit—gnome, sylph,
salamander, ondine. By long and great study a scholar at last may
perceive sylph or salamander. Such an one rises to strange wisdom....
The earth is not a plain as we were taught. Impossible for our human
mind to conceive how it may be round, and yet the most learned hold
that it is so. Holy Church denieth, _in toto_, the Antipodes, and
one must walk warily. Yet, if it is fancied a square, there are
difficulties. Aristotle—”
Garin came even with him. “God save you, sir!”
The black mantle started violently, returned the salutation, but looked
around him nervously. Then, seeing in a neighbouring field half a dozen
peasants, men and women, he recovered his equanimity. Moreover, when
he looked at him closely, the youth had not the face of a robber. He
addressed Garin in a slightly sing-song voice. “Do you know this road?
How far is it to the town?”
“I do not know the road. It is not much further, I think.”
The man in the black mantle was a thin, pale, ascetic-looking person.
He had a hungry look, or what, at first, Garin thought was such. The
esquire had seen hungry men, peasants starved and wolfish, prisoners
with a like aspect, fasting penitents. But it was the man’s eyes, Garin
decided, that gave him the look, and it was not one of hunger for
bread. They were large and clear, and they seemed to seek something
afar.
Their owner at first looked askance and with a somewhat peevish pride
at the peasant keeping beside him. Garin had forgotten his garb and the
station it assigned him. But the feeling, such as it was, seemed to
drift out of the black-clad’s mind. “I grow weary,” he said, “and shall
be glad to beg a night’s shelter.”
“Have you travelled far?”
“From Bologna.”
“Bologna! That is in Italy.”
“Yes. The University there. I am going to Paris. It may be that I shall
go to Oxford.”
“Ah,” said Garin, with respect. “I understand now why you were talking
to yourself. You are a student.”
“That am I. One day I may be Magister or Doctor.” He walked with a
lifted gaze. “I serve toward that—and toward the gaining of Knowledge.”
Garin was silent; then he said with some wistfulness, “I, too, would
have learning and knowledge.”
The other walked with a rapt gaze. “It is the true goddess,” he said,
“it is the Great Love.”
But Garin dissented from that with a shake of the head and a short
laugh of rapture.
The student turned his large eyes upon him. “You love a woman.—What is
her name?”
“I do not know,” said Garin. “Nor the features of her face, nor where
she lives.” Suddenly as he moved, he made a name. “The Fair Goal,” he
said, “I have named her now.”
The interest of the man in black had been but momentary. “Study is a
harsh mistress,” he said; “fair, but terrible! It would irk any pitying
saint to see how we students fare! Hunger and cold and nakedness.
Books, without warmth or cheer or light where we can con them. And we
often want books and nowhere can procure them. We live in booths or in
corners of other men’s dwellings, and none care to give us livelihood
while we master knowledge. There were several thousand of us in
Bologna, and in Paris there are more, and at Oxford they say there are
many thousands. I have seen us go blind, and I have seen us die of
hunger, and I have seen us unwitted—”
“But you go on,” said Garin.
“It is the only life,” answered the black mantle.
They walked in silence. After a few moments a thought seemed to occur
to the journeyer from Bologna. He looked more closely at his companion.
“By your dress you are out of the fields. But your tongue speaks
castle-wise.”
Garin had his vanity of revealment. “My tongue is my own, but this
dress is not,” he said; then, repenting his rashness, “Do not betray
me! I am fleeing from trouble.”
“No, I will not,” answered the student with simplicity. “I know
trouble, and he is hard to escape. You are, perchance, a young knight?”
“I was my lord’s esquire. But it is my meaning to become a knight.—I
would make poems, too.”
“Ah!” said the student, “a troubadour.”
Garin made no answer, but the word sank in. He had a singing heart
to-day. You could be knight and troubadour both. He wished now to write
a beautiful song for the Fair Goal.
They came in sight of the town. It was fairly large, massed, like most
towns, about a castle. As in all towns, you saw churches and churches
rising above the huddled houses.
“I will find,” said the student, “some house of monks. I will give
them all the news I know, and they will give me food and a pallet. Best
come with me.”
But Garin would not try the monastery.
The afternoon was waning. They entered the town not more than an hour
before the gates would shut, and parted in the shadow of the wall. When
Garin had gone twenty paces, he looked back. The student was standing
where he had left him, in a brown study, but now he spoke across the
uneven, unpaved way. “Choose knowledge!” he said.
Garin, going on through a narrow, dark, and tortuous lane, found
in his mind the jongleur to whom he had talked on the road from
Roche-de-Frêne. “Choose love!” had said the jongleur. Garin laughed. “I
choose what I must!” The dark way seemed to blossom with roses; jewels
and perfumes were in his hands.
He found, after an hour of wandering and enquiry, lodging in a high,
old, ruinous house above a black alley. Here he got a Spartan supper,
and went to bed, tired but hopeful. Morning seemed to come at once. He
rose in a high, clear dawn, ate what they gave him, sallied forth, and
in the first sunshine came to a shop where was standing a Jew merchant
in a high cap. Garin bought shirt, hose and breeches, tunic and mantle,
shoes and cap. The Jew looked questions out of his small, twinkling
black eyes, but asked none with his tongue.
Back to his lodging went Garin, his purchases under his arm, shifted
from serf’s garb into these, and stood forth in russet and blue—a
squire again to the eye, though not the squire of any knight or lord of
wealth. He counted over the moneys yet in his purse, and then, having
paid to a half-blind old woman the price of his lodging, went forth
again, and at a place for weapons bought a dagger with sheath and belt.
Near the weapon shop was a church porch. Garin wished to think things
out a little, so he went across to this and took his seat upon the
steps in the sunshine, his back to a pillar.
CHAPTER X
GARIN TAKES THE CROSS
THE bells of a neighbouring religious house were ringing with a mellow
sound. People passed this way and that before the church porch. The
doors were opened, and one and another entered the building. Garin paid
them no attention; he sat sunk in thought. What now? What next?
He was twenty years old—strong, of a sound body, not without education
in matters that the time thought needful. He could do what another
esquire of gentle blood could do. Moreover, he felt in himself further
powers. He was not crassly confident; he turned toward those bright
shoots and buds an inner regard half shy and wistful. He was capable
of longing and melancholy.... Danger from Savaric of Montmaure and
his son Jaufre he held to be fairly passed. Accident might renew it,
to-day, to-morrow, or ten years hence, but accident only took its
chance with other chances. He was out of Savaric’s grasp, being out
of his territory and into that of Toulouse, with intention to wander
yet farther afield. Extradition and detectives had their rough-hewn
equivalents in Garin’s day. But he was assured that there was no
spy upon his track, and he did not brood over the possibility of a
summons to Toulouse to deliver him or be warred against. He had his
share of common sense. He was an offender too obscure and slight
for such weightiness of persecution. Did they find him, they would
wring his neck, but they would not dislocate their usual life to
find him. He thought that, with common precaution, he was at present
safe enough from Montmaure. He could not go back to Raimbaut or to
Castel-Noir—perhaps not for many years ... though if he became
a famous knight he might ride back, his esquires behind him, and
challenge that false knight, Jaufre de Montmaure! To become that
knight—that was his problem, or rather, one great problem. He must
change his name, he must seek a lord, he must win back, first, to
squirehood. On the road yesterday, one had asked him his name. He had
replied with the first thing that came into his head. “Garin Rogier,”
he had said. He thought now that this would still answer. For his
country, he proposed to say that he was of Limousin.
It might take years to become a knight. His own merit would have to do
with that, but Fortune, also, would have to do with it. He knew not
if Fortune would be kind to him, or the reverse. He sat bent forward,
his hands clasped between his knees, his eyes upon the sunshine-gilded
stones. Find knighthood—And how should he find his lady?
He took into his hand a corner of his mantle. The stuff was simple,
far from costly, but the colour was that blue, deep but not harsh,
dark but silvery too, which had been worn by that form in the stone
chair beneath the cedar tree, by the Convent of Our Lady in Egypt. He
had bought it because it was of that hue. Now the sunshine at his feet
seemed of the very tissue of that day. He sat in a dream, his mind
now a floating mist of colour and fragrance, now an aching vision of
a woman’s form whose face he could not see. He drew and coloured the
face, now this way and now that, but never to his satisfaction....
Would ever he meet her face to face? He knew not. Where did she live?
He knew not. East, west, north, south—beyond the mountains or across
the sea? He knew not. It would be in some court. There were many
courts. His strong fancy was that she had come from far away. He knew
not if in this world he would again enter her presence.
An exaltation came upon Garin. And if he did not, still could he uphold
to the stars that dreamy passion! Still could he serve, worship,
sing! The Fair Goal—the Fair Goal! Music seemed to possess him and a
loveliness of words, and of rich and lofty images. The Fair Goal—the
Fair Goal! Garin stretched forth his arms. “O Love, my wingèd Lord! Let
me never swerve from the love of that lady!”
From the church behind him came a drift of music and chanting. A woman,
mounting the steps, caught his words and paused to look at him. She
was between youth and age, with a pale, ecstatic face. “Now all the
violets bloom,” she said, “and the leaves shiver on the trees as the
flowers come up between them! But earthly spring, fair brother, is but
a fourth part of Time, and in Eternity a grain, a wind-blown petal!
Choose thou Religion and find her the true love!”
She passed into the church. Garin, rising from the steps, looked about
him. While he sat there the space around had become peopled. Many folk
were entering the doors. As he looked, there turned a corner eight or
ten men walking in procession, behind and about them a throng. All
mounted the steps, pressing toward the entrance. The most had pale
faces of enthusiasm. Of the crowd some were weeping, some uttering
exclamations of praise and ecstasy. Garin touched a bystander on the
sleeve. “What takes place?”
“Do you not see the crosses?”
“I could not for the crowd,” said Garin. “I can now. They are going to
the land over sea?”
“Three ships with their companies sail from the nearest port. All the
churches are singing mass and sewing crosses on those who will take
them.”
“But there is no great and general going preached to-day,” said Garin.
“There has not been since Saint Bernard’s time.”
“They say it will soon be preached again,” answered his informant.
“Holy church must find a way to set off heresy that is creeping
in!—These are ships sailing with help for King Baldwin of Jerusalem.
The Pope has granted a great Indulgence, and many from these parts are
going that they may wipe out their sins.”
The informant moved toward the doors. Garin thought of entering and
hearing mass and seeing the crosses sewed on. But then he thought that
it would be wiser to keep his road. He waited until most of the people
had gone into the church, then found his way to the westward-giving
town gate and passed out into the country. In Foulque’s purse he had
still enough to purchase—not another Paladin, as he recognized with
a sigh, but yet some horse not wholly unworthy. But this town, he had
been told, had no good horse-market. Such and such a place, some miles
away, was better. So he walked in his russet and blue and suited so the
russet, sunshiny country and the profound blue arch of the sky.
Upon a lonely stretch of the road he came to a wayside cross, with a
gaunt figure carved upon it. A gaunt figure, too, sat beside the cross,
but rose as he approached and tinkled a small bell that it carried. As
he lifted his mantle and went by with averted face so that he might
not breathe the air that flowed between, it croaked out a demand for
alms. It came so foully across Garin’s dream that he shook his head
and hurried by. But when an eighth of a mile was between him and the
leper he stood still, his eyes upon the ground. At last, drawing out
Foulque’s purse, he took from it a coin and going back dropped it into
the leper’s cup. “In Love’s name!” he said.
The leper widened his lips. “What is Love’s name?” he asked. “If I had
its name, I might make it do something!”
Garin left him by the wayside cross, a terrible, unhelped person. He
darkened his mood for him, or the stress and strain and elevation of
the past week, flagging, left him suddenly in some dead backwater or
black pool of being. He walked on, putting the miles behind him, but
with no springing step and with a blank gaze. Light and colour seemed
to withdraw from the day and the landscape. The cross-taking in the
town behind him and the leper by the roadside conjoined with many
another fact, attitude, and tendency of his world. It could show itself
a gusty world of passion and energy, and also a world of asceticisms,
humilities and glooms, of winter days struggling with spring days, of
an inward fall toward lessening and annihilation. Here was an hour
impetuous and crescive, and here was its successor passive, resigned
and fading, and one man or woman might experience both. Garin had been
aloft; now he walked in a vale indeed, and could have laid himself upon
its ashy soil and wept.
Out of that mood he passed into one less drear. But he was still sad,
and the whole huge world came into correspondence. Lepers and outcast
persons, prisoners, and slaves, the poor and hopeless, the lovers
parted, the condemned for sin—Garin plodded on, his eyes upon the
earth.
A sound of distant bells aroused him. He lifted his head and looked
to see whence it came. At the base of an olive-planted hill appeared
a monastery, not large, but a simple-seeming, antique place. It had a
church, small too, with a bell-tower. The country hereabouts was rich
with woods and streams and purple crags, in the distance a curtain
of great mountains. Before him, two miles or so away, Garin saw a
castle crowning a cliff rising from a narrow valley. It, neither, was
large—though larger than Raimbaut’s castle.... The bells were ringing
sweetly, the light bathed the little vale and washed the crag and the
castle walls. Garin’s sadness fell, in part, from him. What stayed only
gave depth and charm to all that in that moment met his senses. In him
phantasy turned quickly, acted quickly. “I like all this,” it said in
effect. “And I tell myself that in the baron who dwells in that castle
I shall find a lord who will knight me!”
He resolved to go to the castle. He walked quickly now, with a
determined, light step. A spur of the road led off to the church where
the bells were yet ringing. Between the town he had quitted and this
spot he had met few people upon the way. Nor were there any here, where
the two roads joined. It lay a wide, clean, sunny space. But as he
continued upon the highway the emptiness of the world began to change.
Folk appeared, singly or in groups, and all were going toward the
ringing bells. Passing an old man, he asked, “What is the mass for?”
and was answered, “They are going over sea.”
A young man, an artisan with a bag of tools in his hand, approached.
Garin stopped him. “What lord lives in yonder castle?”
“Sir Eudes de Panemonde,” said the artisan. “He has taken the cross and
is going to the land over sea.”
Garin stood still, staring at him, then drew his breath, and with a
jerk of the head went on by. “The land over sea!” said Garin. “The land
over sea!”
There was a calvary built by the roadside. Men and women knelt before
it, then rising, hurried on toward the church. Close by, on a great
stone, sat a cowled monk, stationed there, it would seem, to give
information or counsel. Garin, coming up, gave and received salutation.
“Are you for the cross, fair son?” demanded the monk. “You would give
a lusty blow to the infidel! Take it, and win pardon for even the sins
you dream of!”
“Why, brother,” asked Garin, “does Sir Eudes de Panemonde go?”
“Long years ago,” answered the monk, “when he was a young man, Sir
Eudes committed a great sin. He has done penance, as this monastery
knows, that receives his gifts! But now he would further cleanse his
soul.”
“He is not then young nor of middle-age?”
“He is threescore,” said the monk.
Another claimed his attention. Garin moved away, kept on upon the
road. None now was going his way, all were coming from the direction
of the castle. There must be a little bourg beyond, hidden by some
arm of earth, purple-sleeved. He thought that he saw in the distance,
descending a hill, a procession. Under a lime tree by the road sat an
old cripple decently clad, and with a grandson and granddaughter to
care for him. Garin again stayed his steps. “What manner of knight,
father, is Sir Eudes de Panemonde?”
The light being strong, the cripple looked from under his hand at the
questioner. “Such a knight,” he said, in an old man-at-arms voice, “as
a blue-and-tawny young sir-on-foot might be happy to hold stirrup for!”
“I mean,” said Garin, “is he noble of heart?”
But the old man was straining his eyes castle-ward. The grandson spoke.
“He is a good lord—Sir Eudes! Sir Aimar may be a better yet.”
The procession was seen more plainly. “They are coming, grandfather!”
cried the girl. “Sir Eudes and Sir Aimar will be in front, and the men
they take with them. Then the people from the castle and Panemonde
following—”
“Yea, yea!” said the old cripple. “I have seen before to-day folk go
over seas to save the Holy Sepulchre and spare themselves hell pains!
They mean to come back—they mean to come back. But a-many never come,
and we hear no tales of what they did.”
The grandson took the word. “Jean the Smith says that from the castle
Sir Eudes walks barefoot and in his shirt to the church. That’s
because of his old sin! Then, when all that go have heard mass and
have communed, he will dress and arm himself within the monastery, all
needful things having been sent there, and his horse as well. Then all
that go will journey on to the port.”
Garin spoke to the girl. “Who is Sir Aimar?”
“He is Sir Eudes’s son.” She turned upon him a lighted face. “He is a
brave and beautiful knight!”
“Is he going to the land over sea?”
“Yes.”
A hundred and more people were coming toward the lime tree, the calvary
beyond it, the church and monastery beyond the calvary. Dust rose from
the road and that and the distance obscured detail. There seemed to be
horsemen, but many on foot. All the people strung along the road now
turned their heads that way. There ran a murmur of voices. But Garin
stood in silence beneath the lime tree, from which were falling pale
yellow leaves. He stood in a waking dream. Instead of Languedoc he saw
Palestine—a Palestine of the imagination. He had listened to palmers’
tales, to descriptions given by preaching monks. Once a knight-templar
had stayed two days with Raimbaut the Six-fingered, and the castle had
hearkened, open-mouthed. So Garin had material. He saw a strange, fair
land, and the Christian kingdoms and counties planted there; saw them
as they were not or rarely were, or only might be; saw them dipped in
glamour, saw them as a poet would, as that Prince Rudel did who took
ship and went to find the Lady of Tripoli—and went to find the Lady of
Tripoli....
The procession from the castle and the village beyond coming nearer,
its component parts might clearly be discerned. In front walked two
figures, and now it could be seen that they were both in white.
“Ah, ah!” cried the girl beside the old man; and there were tears in
her voice. “Sir Aimar that did not do the sin, goes like Sir Eudes—”
The cripple would be lifted to his feet and held so. Grandson and
daughter put hands beneath his arms and raised him. “So—so!” he said
querulously. “And why shouldn’t the son go like a penitent if the
father does? That’s only respect! But the young don’t respect us any
longer—”
The procession came close. There rode twenty horsemen, of whom three
or four wore knights’ spurs, and the others were mounted men-at-arms
and esquires. All wore, stitched upon the mantle, or the sleeve, or
the breast of the tunic, crosses of white cloth. Behind these men came
others, mounted, but without crosses or the appearance of travellers.
They seemed neighbours to the lord of Panemonde, men of feudal rank,
kinsmen and allies. Several might hold their land from him. There
might be present his bailiff and also the knight or baron who had
promised to care for Panemonde as though it were his own fief. In the
rear of the train came the foot-people, castle retainers and servants,
villagers, peasants, men, women and children, following their lord from
Panemonde through the first stage of his travel over sea. Throughout
the moving assemblage now there was solemn silence and now bursts of
pious ejaculation, utterances of enthusiasm, adjurations to God, the
Virgin and the Saints. Or, more poignant yet, there were raised chants
of pilgrimage. When this was done the people along the roadside joined
their voices. Moreover there were men and women who wept, and there
were those who fell into ecstasy. Of all things in the world, in this
age, emotion was the nearest at hand.
Garin felt the infecting wave. At the head of the train, dismounted,
barefoot, wearing each a white garment that reached half-way between
knee and ankle, bare-headed, moving a few paces before their own
mounted knights, appeared the lords of Panemonde, father and son. Sir
Eudes was white-headed, white-bearded, finely-featured, tall and lean.
His son, Sir Aimar, seemed not older—or but little older—than Garin’s
self, and what the girl had said appeared the truth.
The two came close to the lime tree. Garin, dropping his mantle,
stepped into the road and fell upon both knees, suppliant-wise. “Lord
of Panemonde,” he cried, “let me go with you to the land over the sea!”
Sir Eudes and his son stood still, and behind them the riders checked
their horses.
“What is your name, youth?” asked the first, “And whence do you come?”
“Garin Rogier,” answered Garin, “and from Limousin. I was a younger
brother, and have set out to seek my fortune. Of your grace, Lord of
Panemonde, place me among your men!”
Sir Eudes regarded him shrewdly. “I make my guess that you are a
runaway from trouble.”
“If I am,” said Garin, “it is no trouble that will touch your honour
if you take me! I fought, with good reason, one that was more powerful
than I.”
The other made to shake his head and go on by. But Garin spread out his
arms that he might not pass and still cried, “Take me with you, Lord of
Panemonde! I have vowed to go with you across the sea, and so to serve
you that you will make me a knight!”
The two gazed at him, and those behind them gazed. He kneeled, so
resolved, so energized, so seeing the fate he had chosen, that as at
Castel-Noir, so now, the glow within came in some fashion through the
material man. From his blue-grey eyes light seemed to dart, his hair,
between gold and brown, became a fine web holding light, his flesh
seemed to bloom. His field of force, expanding, touched them. “In the
name of the Mother of God!” cried Garin; but what the man within meant
was, “Because I will it, O Lord of Panemonde!”
The people on foot, too far in the rear to see more than that there was
a momentary halting of the train, began a louder singing.
“_Jerusalem!
Shall the paynim hold thee,
Jerusalem?
And shame our Lord Jesus,
Jerusalem?
And shame our blessed Lady, his meek Mother,
Jerusalem?
So that they say, ‘Why come not the men
To slay Mahound and cleanse our holy places?
Where are the knights, the sergeants and the footmen?’
Jerusalem!
Who takes the cross and wendeth over seas,
Jerusalem!
Will save his soul thereby, raze out his sins,
Jerusalem!_”
Sir Eudes de Panemonde stared at the kneeling figure. But the young
knight beside him who had stood in silence, his eyes upon the
suppliant, now spoke. “Let him go with us, father! Give him to me for
esquire.—There is that that draws between us.”
The father, who had a great affection for his son, looked from him to
Garin and back again. “He is a youth well-looking and strong,” he said.
“Perhaps he may do thee good service!”
The chant, renewed, and taken up from the roadside, came to his ear. He
crossed himself.
“Nor may I deny to our Lord Jesus one servant who will strike down the
infidel! Nor to the youth himself the chance to win forgiveness of
sins!” He spoke to Garin. “Stand up, Garin Rogier! Have you a horse?”
Garin rose to his feet. “No, lord. But I have money sufficient to buy
one.”
Sir Aimar spoke again. “Pierre Avalon will sell him one when we come to
the monastery.”
The father nodded. “Have you confessed and received absolution?”
“One week ago, lord. But when we come to the church I will find a
priest. And when I am shriven I will take the cross.”
“Then,” said Sir Eudes, “it is agreed, Garin Rogier. You are my man and
my son’s man. As for becoming knight, let us first see what blows you
deal and what measure you keep! Now delay us no longer.”
He put himself into motion, and his son walked beside him. The mounted
men followed, their horses stepping slowly. Then came the stream afoot,
and Garin joined himself to this.
“_Who takes the cross and wendeth over seas,
Jerusalem!
Will save his soul thereby, raze out his sins,
Jerusalem!_”
Here was the calvary again, and the monk sitting beside it—here was
the church, jutting out from the monastery—and people about it, and
priests and monks—and a loud and deep chanting—and a mounting sea
of emotion. Many broke into cries, some, phrensied, fell to the earth,
crying that they had a vision.
“_To slay Mahound, and cleanse our sacred places!_”
The mass was sung, the sacrament given those who were going to the land
over sea. Garin found his priest and was shriven, then knelt with the
esquires and men-at-arms and with them took the Body. Upon his breast
was sewn a white cross. He had, with all who went, the indulgence. He
was delivered from all the sins that through his life, until that day,
he had committed.
The mass was sung. A splinter of St. Andrew’s cross—the church’s
great possession—was venerated. The two de Panemondes, rising from
their knees, passed from the church to the monastery, and here, in the
prior’s room, their kinsmen and peers about them, they were clothed as
knights again. Without, in a grey square, shaded by old trees, Garin
purchased a horse from Pierre Avalon.
Sir Eudes and his son came forth in hauberk and helm. The knights for
the ships and the land over the sea mounted, their followers mounted.
Farewells were said. Those who were going drew into ranks. A priest
blessed them. The people wept and cried out blessings. The monks raised
a Latin chant. The sky was sapphire, a light wind carried to and fro
the autumn leaves. Sir Eudes de Panemonde and his son touched their
horses with their gilded spurs. The knights followed, the esquires
and men-at-arms. Behind them the voices, at first swelling louder,
sank as lengthened the road between. They pressed on, and now they
lost that sound and lost the church, the monastery, and the castle of
Panemonde.... Now the leper by the roadside was passed, still sitting
beneath the cross, tinkling his bell. In the distance was seen the town
that Garin had left that morning. The company did not enter it, but
turned aside into a road that ran to the southward and then east and
then south again. So at last, to-morrow at sunset, they would come to
the port and to the ships that would bring them to Syria.
Garin rode in a dream. He thought of Raimbaut and of Foulque, of
Castel-Noir and Roche-de-Frêne, but most he thought of the Fair Goal,
and tried to see her, in her court he knew not where.
CHAPTER XI
THIBAUT CANTELEU
“WHO would risk never, risks ever,” said the Princess Audiart, and
moving her rook, checked the marshal’s king.
Her cousin Guida, a blonde of much beauty, sitting watching the game,
made a sound of demurral. The marshal’s hand hovered over a piece.
“Do not play courtly, Lord Stephen,” said the princess. “Play fairly!”
Whereupon Stephen pushed forward a different piece and, releasing his
own king, put hers in jeopardy.
“Now what will you do, Audiart?” cried Guida. “You were too daring!”
“That is as may be,” answered the princess, and studied the board.
In the great fireplace of the hall beechwood blazed and helped the
many candles to give light. It was Lenten tide and cold enough to make
the huge fire a need and a pleasure. In the summer the floor had been
strewn with buds and leaves, but now there lay upon it eastern cloths
with bear-skins brought from the North. There were seats of various
kinds,—settles or benches, divan-like arrangements of cushions.
Knights and ladies occupied these, or stood, or moved about at will. So
spacious was the hall that these and other folk of the court—pages,
jongleurs, a jester with cap-and-bells, dogs, a parrot on a swinging
perch, two chaplains in a corner, various clerkly and scholarly persons
such as never lacked in Gaucelm’s court, two or three magnificently
dressed people in the train of a Venetian, half merchant, half noble,
and rich as a soldan, whom Gaucelm at the moment entertained—gave
no feeling of a throng. The raised or princely part of the hall, in
itself a goodly space, had quiet enough for rational converse, even for
sitting withdrawn into one’s self, studying with eyes upon the fire
matters beyond the beechwood flame.
Gaucelm the Fortunate, seated in his great, richly carved chair, talked
with the Venetian. Some paces away, but yet upon the dais, Alazais held
court. Between, the Princess Audiart played chess with Stephen the
Marshal. The castle and town and princedom of Roche-de-Frêne and all
that they held were seven years and some months older than upon that
autumn day when the squire Garin had knelt in the cathedral, and ridden
through the forest, and fought for a shepherdess.
The years had not made Alazais less beauteous. She sat in a low chair,
robed in buttercup yellow richly embroidered and edged with fur. She
held a silver ball pierced and filled with Arabian perfumes. The
Venetian had given it to her, and now she raised it to her nostrils,
and now she played with it with an indolent, slow, graceful movement of
her white hands. About her were knights and ladies, and in front, upon
a great silken cushion placed upon the floor, sat a slender, brilliant
girl with a voice of beauty and flexibility and a genius for poetic
narration. The court took toll of such a talent, was taking toll now.
The damosel, in a low and thrilling voice and with appropriate gesture,
told a lay of Arthur’s knights. Those around listened; firelight and
candle-light made play; at the lower end of the hall a jongleur, trying
his viol, came in at the pauses with this or that sweet strain.
At the other end of the broad, raised space Prince Gaucelm and the
Venetian left talk of Venice trade, of Cyprus and Genoa, and came to
status and event this side the Alps.
“Duke Richard of Aquitaine plays the rebel to his father the King
of England and quarrels with his cousin the King of France and wars
against his neighbour the Count of Toulouse. Count Savaric of Montmaure
and his son Count Jaufre—”
The Princess Audiart won the game of chess, won fairly. “You couch a
good lance and build a good house, Lord Stephen,” she said. “Yesterday,
it was I who was vanquished!”
Guida had moved away, joining the group about the girl on the silk
cushion. Stephen the Marshal took one of the ivory chessmen in his hand
and turned it from side to side. “Montmaure!” he said. “Montmaure grows
more puffed with pride than mortal man should be!”
The princess nodded. “Yes. My lord count sees himself as the great fish
for whom the ocean was built.”
The marshal put down the chess-piece and took up another. “Have you
ever seen Jaufre de Montmaure?”
“No.”
“I saw him at Périgueux. He is tall and red-gold like his father, but
darker in hue. He has a hawk nose, and there is a strange dagger-scar
across his cheek.—What is it, my Lady Audiart?”
The princess was sitting with parted lips and with eyes that
looked far away. She shivered a little, shrugging her shoulders.
“Nothing! A fancy. I remembered something. But a-many men have dagger
scars.—Jaufre de Montmaure! No, I think that I never saw him. Nor do I
wish to see him. Let him stay with Aquitaine and be his favourite!”
“I know not how long that will last. Now they are ruthless and reckless
together, and they say that any day you can see Richard’s arm around
his neck. But Duke Richard,” said the marshal, “is much the nobler man.”
The princess laughed. “You give faint praise! Jesu! If what they say of
Count Jaufre be true—”
There fell a silence. Stephen the Marshal turned and turned the
chess-piece. “The prince will send me presently with representations to
King Philip at Paris.”
“I know. It seems wise to do that.”
“I will do my best,” said Stephen the Marshal; and sat silent again.
Then, “I will find at Paris festivals and tourneys, no doubt, and
for Roche-de-Frêne’s honour and my own, I must play my part in those
matters also.” He put down the chess-piece, and brought his hands
together. “Queens and princesses may accept, in courtly wise, heart
and _devoir_ of true knights! My Lady Audiart! I plead again for some
favour of yours that I may wear. For, as God lives, I will wear no
other lady’s!”
The Princess Audiart looked at him kindly, a little mockingly, a little
mournfully. “Stephen—Stephen! will you be a better or a braver man, or
a fitter envoy to King Philip, with my glove in your helmet? No, you
will not!”
“I should be a happier man,” said Stephen the Marshal.
“Then almost I wish that I might give it to you! But I cannot—I
cannot!” said the princess. “I love earth, fire, air and water, the
stars in heaven, the people of the earth, and the thoughts in the mind,
but I love no man after the fashion that men desire!—Turn elsewhere,
Lord Stephen!”
But Stephen the Marshal shook an obstinate head. “Saint Mark, my
witness, I shall wear no other’s favour!”
Prince Gaucelm rose, the Venetian with him, and crossed to Alazais’s
side. The girl of the silken cushion had ended her story. The jongleurs
distant in the hall began to play viol, lute and harp. “Let us go
hearken,” said the princess; and, quitting the chess-table, went to sit
beside her step-dame. She had affection for Alazais, and Alazais for
Audiart. Stephen the Marshal followed. All drew together to listen to
sung poesy.
A favourite jongleur had come forward, harp in hand. He was a dark,
wiry, eastern-appearing man, fantastically dressed in brown dashed and
streaked with orange. When he had played a dreamy, rich, and murmuring
air, he began to sing. He sang well, a fair song and one that was new
to a court that was gracious and hospitable to songs.
“Ah, that goes,” said the Princess Audiart, “like the sea in June!”
“It is like a chanson of Bernart de Ventadorn’s,” said Alazais, “and
yet it is not like him either. Who made it, Elias?”
“It may have a sound of the sea,” answered Elias, “for it came over the
sea. I got it from a palmer. He had learned it at Acre, and he said
that, words and music, the troubadour, Garin de l’Isle d’Or, made it
there.”
“Oh, we have heard of him! Knights coming back have told us—But never
did we hear his singing before! Again, Elias!”
Elias sang. “It is sweet.—_The Fair Goal!_”
* * * * *
A day or two later, in this hall, the Princess Audiart sat beside her
father upon the dais, the occasion a hearing given to the town of
Roche-de-Frêne. There was another than Roche-de-Frêne to be received
and hearkened to, namely an envoy, arrived the evening before, from
Savaric, Count of Montmaure. But the town came first, at the hour that
had been set.
The hall presented a different scene from that of the other night. Here
now were ranged the prince’s officers of state, the bailiff-in-chief,
executives of kinds. At the doors were ushers and likewise men-at-arms.
Men of feudal rank stood starkly, right and left of the dais. Others
of the castle population, men and women, who found an interest in this
happening, watched from the sides of the hall or from the musicians’
gallery. Below the dais sat two clerks with pens, ink, sandbox, and
parchment. Before it, in the middle portion of the hall, were massed
fifty of the citizens of Roche-de-Frêne.
The Princess Audiart sat in a deep chair, her arms upon its arms. She
was dressed in the colour of wine, and the long plain folds of her robe
and mantle rested the eye. Her throat was bare, around it a thin chain
of gold and a pear-shaped ruby. The thick braids of her hair came over
her gown to her knee. Between the dark waves, below a circlet of gold,
showed her intent and brooding face.
Castle and town were used to seeing her there, beside her father.
Years ago—when castle and town undertook to remember back—it
had seemed strange, but now use and wont had done their work. She
was not fair—they remembered when they had called her “the ugly
princess”—but she was wise. It was usual enough among the great of the
earth for fathers to associate with them sons. Here was a prince-father
who associated with him his daughter. By degrees Roche-de-Frêne had
ceased to wonder. Now, for a long time, the fact had been accepted.
Strangeness gone, it seemed, for this one spot on the huge earth,
rational.
The town had digested that great meal of liberties obtained years
ago, that and smaller loaves since given. It was hungry again; hungry
now for no slight stop-gaps, but for another full and great meal.
For many months it had given the castle oblique indications that it
was hungry. Time was when Gaucelm, a prince not unbeloved, riding
through Roche-de-Frêne, met almost wholly broad smiles and faces of
welcome. That throughout a year had been changing. Roche-de-Frêne,
at first unconsciously reflecting growing desires, but then more and
more deliberately, now wore a face of hunger. Roche-de-Frêne saw
its interest, and that another meal was to its interest. But it did
not wholly expect its lord at once to see that, nor to identify his
interest with their interest. It might, it believed, have to fight
its lord somewhat as other towns fought theirs. Not with weapons of
steel,—it would not win there,—but with persistent and mounting
clamour and disaffection, and, most effectively, with making trouble as
to tolls, rents, taxes, lord’s rights, and supplies.
The deputation included men from every guild. Here were chief dyers in
scarlet, weavers of fine cloth, makers of weapons, workers in leather,
moulders of candles, and here were traders and merchants, dealers in
wine and handlers of cattle. Men of substance had been chosen, master
workmen and also master agitators.
The prince, addressing himself to a man of venerable aspect, a merchant
whose name was known in far places, asked if he were spokesman. There
ran a murmur through the deputation. It pressed forward a little, it
took on an anxious face.
The merchant advanced a step and addressed the dais. “Fair, good lord
and my Lady Audiart, as you both know, I am a judge of merchant’s law,
but have no gift of tongue. I know a cause when it is good, but God has
not made me eloquent to set it forth to another man—craving pardon, my
liege lord and my Lady Audiart! So I will not speak, may it please you
both. But here is Thibaut Canteleu, the master of the saddlers—”
“I had expected,” said Prince Gaucelm, “to hear from Thibaut
Canteleu.—Stand forth, Thibaut!”
The merchant stepped back. The throng worked like a cluster of bees,
then parted, and out of it came a man of thirty, square-shouldered and
sturdy, with crisply curling black hair, and black, bold, and merry
eyes. It was evident that he was his fellows’ chosen and favourite,
their predestined leader. The fifty slanted their bodies toward him,
grew suddenly encouraged and bold, hung upon what he should say.
Thibaut Canteleu was magnetic, like a fire for warmth, an instiller of
courage. He made a gesture of reverence toward the dais.
The prince smiled slightly. “Well, Thibaut Canteleu?”
“Sire and my Lady Audiart,” spoke Thibaut, “few words suffice when
here is right and yon is wisdom! Sire, these many years, back to the
beginning, have we and our fathers and grandfathers before us, given
to our lords duteous service. When the town was a poor village, when
there were but a few huts—when the old castle stood—in the old days
before the memory of man, we gave it! And this castle and the old
castle—and you, lord, and the old lords—have given us succour and
protection, holding your shield above us! Beau sire, we do not forget
that, nor that you are our lord.” As he spoke he kneeled down on both
knees, joined his hands palm to palm, and made a gesture of placing
them between other hands. “Sire and my Lady Audiart, many castles have
you and not a few towns and all are your sworn men. Shall this town
that grew up by your greatest castle and took name from it, be less
your man than another? Jesu forbid! Services, dues, rents and tolls,
fair-toll and market-toll, are yours, and when you summon us we drop
all and come, and if there is war we hold the town for you while there
is breath in us! Yea, and if there should chance to be needed in this
moment moneys for building, for gathering, clothing, and weaponing
men-at-arms, for castle-wants, for pilgrimages or sending knights to
the land over the sea, for founding of abbeys and buying of books and
holy relics, or for any other great and especial matter, we stand
ready, lord, to raise as swiftly as may be, that supply.”
He came to a period in his speech, still kneeling. “That is good
hearing, Thibaut Canteleu!” said Gaucelm the Fortunate. He spoke with
equanimity, with his large scope of humour. He was as big as a mountain
range, and as became mountains he seemed to be able to see in various
directions. “Now,” he said, “let us hear, Thibaut, what your lords must
do!”
“Fair, good lord—”
“We are yet to guard Roche-de-Frêne from wolf-neighbour and
fox-neighbour, Count Dragon and King Lion? Have you heard tell of the
siege in your grandfather’s time? But well I wot that the town has no
enemies, that none is jealous of its trade, that no wolf thinks, ‘Now
if I had its market—or if I had it with its market!’ and no dragon
ponders, ‘What if I put forth a claw and drag these weavers and dyers
and saddlers where they may weave and dye and work in leather for me?
When I have them in my den they may whistle not for new, but for old
freedoms!’—We are yet to keep Roche-de-Frêne in as fair safety as we
may?”
“Lord, lord,” said Thibaut, “are we not of one another? If you are
strong to keep us safe, are we not strong to make you wealth?”
“My father gave you freedoms, and often have I heard him say that he
repented his giving! Then I ruled, and for a time held to that later
mind of his. Then about many matters I formed my own mind, and in
larger measure than he had given, I granted freedom. For a fair space
of time you rested content. Then you began to ask again. And again, now
this grant and now that, I have given!”
He ceased to speak, sitting dressed in bronze samite, with a knight’s
belt of finest work, and on his head a circlet of gold.
Thibaut Canteleu still kneeled. Now he raised his black eyes. “Lord,
why did you give?”
“Because it seemed to me right,” said Prince Gaucelm.
Thibaut spread his hands. The corners of the Princess Audiart’s lips
twitched. She glanced aside at Gaucelm the Fortunate, and a very sweet
and loving look came like a beam of light into her face. She said under
her breath, “Ah, Jesu! Judgement in this matter has been given!” turned
her head and retook the intent and brooding look. Her eyes, that had
marked width between them, received impression from the length and
breadth of the hall. She gathered each slight movement and change in
the deputation of citizens; and as for Thibaut Canteleu, she saw that
Thibaut, also, grasped that judgement had been given.
Prince Gaucelm sat without movement of body or change of look. His size
did not give him a seeming of heaviness, nor the words that he had
spoken take power from his aspect. He did not seem conscious of their
effect upon others. He sat in silence, then shook himself and returned
to the matter in hand. “Tell us now, Thibaut Canteleu, what it is that
the town desires.”
“Lord,” said Canteleu, “we wish and desire to elect our own
magistrates. And our disputes and offences—saving always, lord, those
that are truly treasonable or that err against Holy Church—we wish and
desire to bring into our own courts and before judges of our choosing.”
A sharp sound ran through the hall—that portion of it that was
not burgher. Truly Roche-de-Frêne was making a demand immense,
portentous—The red was in the faces of the prince’s bailiffs and
in those of other officials. But Gaucelm the Fortunate maintained
a quietness. He looked at Thibaut Canteleu as though he saw the
generations behind him and the generations ahead. He spoke.
“That is what you now wish and ask?”
“Lord, that is what we wish and ask.”
“And if I agree not?”
“We are your merchants and artisans, lord! What can we do? But are love
and ready service naught? Fair good lord, and my Lady Audiart, we hold
that we ask a just—yea, as God lives, a righteous thing! Moreover, we
think, lord, that we plead, not to such as the Count of Montmaure, but
to Roche-de-Frêne!”
Behind him spread a deep, corroboratory murmur, a swaying of bodies
and nodding of heads. The winter sunshine, streaming in through long,
narrow windows, made luminous the positive colours, the greens, blues,
reds of apparel, the faces swarthy, rosy or pale, the workman hands and
the caps held in them, the smoother merchant hands and the better caps
held in them. It lighted Thibaut Canteleu, still kneeling, in a blue
tunic and grey hose, a blue cap upon the pavement beside him.
The prince spoke. “Get you to your feet, Thibaut, and depart, all of
you! A week from to-day, at this hour, come again, and you shall be
answered.”
Thibaut Canteleu took up his cap and rose from his knees. He made a
deep reverence to the dais, then stepped backward. All the deputation
moved backward, kept their faces toward the prince until they reached
the doors out of which they passed, between the men-at-arms. The blur
of red and blue and green, of faces pale or sanguine or swarthy,
filtered away, disappeared. The hall became again all castle—a place
of lord and lady, knight, esquire, man-at-arms, and page, a section of
the world of chivalry. All around occurred a slight shifting of place,
a flitting of whispers. The prince stirred, turned slightly in his
great chair, and spoke in an undertone to his daughter. She answered in
as low a voice, sitting quite still, her long, slender hands resting
upon the arms of her chair.
Gaucelm nodded, then spoke to the seneschal standing to the right of
the dais. “Now will we hear Montmaure’s envoy.”
CHAPTER XII
MONTMAURE
THERE came into the hall, ushered by the seneschal and walking with
Stephen the Marshal to whom had been confided his entertainment, a
knight banneret, very good-looking, very sumptuously attired, with an
air of confidence verging on audacity. Behind and attending him were
two other knights, lesser men; behind these, three esquires. All were
dressed with a richness; all, indefinably, stood in a debatable strip
between friend and foe.
The envoy came before the dais. On yesterday welcome had been given
him, and to-day set to hear the desires of Count Savaric of Montmaure.
Now, Gaucelm being, by virtue of three castles, his lord’s lord, the
envoy just bent the knee, then straightened himself and stood prepared
to give that forth which the count had preferred to send by word of
mouth rather than by written letter. There occurred, however, some
delay. A wider audience than had gathered to the town’s hearing would
come to hear what Savaric of Montmaure had to say. Lord and lady,
knight and squire, were entering, and now came Alazais, clad in white
bordered with ermine. Her lord made her welcome; the Princess Audiart,
rising, stood until she was seated. Her ladies, fair and gaily
dressed, made about her a coloured cloud. Two that were Audiart’s came
and stood behind that princess.
At last, quiet falling, the prince once more gave to Montmaure’s envoy
words of welcome, then, “We should have been glad,” he said, “to have
greeted in friendly wise Count Savaric himself! His son, too, who is
said to be a puissant knight.”
“So please you, they may come some day to Roche-de-Frêne, the one and
the other,” answered the envoy. “But now my master, the great count,
is busy at home where he makes a muster of lords who are his men. At
Autafort, with Duke Richard, is the young count, Sir Jaufre, red-gold,
shining and mighty, like a star of high fortune!”
“The ‘great count,’” said Gaucelm, with suavity, “is well employed. And
you grow a poet, Sir Guiraut of the Vale, when you speak of the young
count.”
“Sir,” said Guiraut of the Vale, “he is poet himself and theme of
poets! He is the emerald of knights, the rose of chivalry! That lady
counts herself fortunate for whom he rides in tournament. His lance
unhorses the best knights, and behind him, in his quarrels, are the
many spears of Montmaure—I will be highly bold and say the spears, for
number like the trees in the forest, of Duke Richard of Aquitaine!”
Gaucelm smiled. “Duke Richard,” he said, “hath just now, I think, need
of his spears before Toulouse.”
Guiraut of the Vale waved his hand. “Count Raymond will come to terms,
and the Duke’s spears be released. But all this, sir, is not the matter
of my message! Truly, when I think of Count Jaufre I forget myself in
praises!”
“_Guiraut, Guiraut!_” thought the Princess Audiart. “_You forget not
one word of what you have been taught to say!_”
Gaucelm the Fortunate spoke with serenity. “A servant so devoted is as
a sack of gold in the count’s treasury!—Now your message, sir envoy,
and the matter upon which you were sent?”
Guiraut of the Vale breathed deep, lifted his chest beneath bliaut and
robe of costly stuffs, made his shoulders squarer, included now in the
scope of his look alike Gaucelm and his daughter.
“Prince of Roche-de-Frêne,” he said, “it is to my point—though the
Blessed Virgin is my witness I am not so commissioned!—to cause you
and this priceless lady, the princess your daughter, to see Sir Jaufre
de Montmaure as the glass of the world shows him, the brightest coal
upon the hearth of chivalry! The world hears of the wisdom of the
Princess Audiart—well wot I that did she see and greet him, she would
value this knight aright! As for him, like his sword to his side, he
would wear there this wisdom! Fair prince, my master, the great count,
would see Montmaure and Roche-de-Frêne one in wedlock. Count Savaric of
Montmaure offers his son, Count Jaufre, for bridegroom to the Princess
Audiart!”
The great hall rustled loudly. Only the dais seemed quiet, or only
the two figures immediately fronting Sir Guiraut of the Vale. Out of
the throng seemed to come a whisper, electric and flowing, “Here is
a suitor that would hang Roche-de-Frêne at his belt!” It lifted and
deepened, the whispering and muttering. It took the tone of distant
thunder.
Gaucelm the Fortunate raised his hand for quiet. When it was attained
he spoke courteously to Guiraut of the Vale. “Count Savaric echoes my
soul when he would have peace and friendliness and not enmity between
Roche-de-Frêne and Montmaure. Certes, that may be brought about,
or this way or that way! For the way that he advances, it must be
considered, and that with gravity and courteousness. But, such is the
plenitude of life, the same city may be reached by many roads.”
“Beseeching your pardon,” said Guiraut of the Vale, “that is true of
many cities, but not, according to the count my master, of this one!”
The hall rustled again. The lord of Roche-de-Frêne sat quietly in his
great chair, but he bent upon Montmaure’s envoy a look profound and
brooding. At last he spoke. “We are not to be threated, Sir Guiraut of
the Vale, into a road whatsoever! Nor is this city, that is only to be
reached so, of such importance, perhaps, to Roche-de-Frêne as imagineth
the ‘great count.’” Wherewith he ceased to deal with Guiraut and spoke
aside to his daughter.
The Princess Audiart rose from her chair. She stood in long, flowing
red shading from the cherry of her under-robe through the deepened
crimson of the bliaut to the almost black of her mantle. At the base of
her bare throat glowed on its chain of gold the pear-shaped ruby.
“To-day, Sir Guiraut of the Vale,” she said, “we receive the count
your master’s fair proffer of his son for my bridegroom. For my part,
I thank the count for his courtesy and good-will and fair words to
me-ward. The prince my father consenting, one week from to-day, here in
the hall, you shall have answer to bear back. Until then, the prince
my father, and the princess my fair and good step-dame, and myself,
who must feel the honour your master does me, and all the knights and
ladies of this court give you fair welcome! An we may, we will make the
days until then pass pleasantly for a knight of whose valiancy this
castle is not ignorant.”
She spoke without pride or feeling in her voice, simply, in the tone
of princely courtesy. A stranger could not have told if she liked that
proffer or no. Guiraut of the Vale made obeisance. Prince Gaucelm rose,
putting an end to the audience.
Two hours later he came to the chamber of the ugly princess. It was
a room set in a tower, large, with narrow windows commanding three
directions. A curtained archway showed a smaller, withdrawing room.
Rugs lay upon the oaken floor and the walls were hidden by hangings
worked with the wanderings of Ulysses. The bed had silken curtains and
a rich coverlet. Jutting from the hearth came a great cushioned settle.
There were chairs, carven chests for wardrobe, a silver image of the
Virgin, nearby a row of books. Present in the room when the prince came
were the Lady Guida and the girl who had told in hall the story of
Arthur’s knights. These, upon his entrance, took embroidery-frame and
book, and disappeared into the smaller room.
Prince Gaucelm sat in the corner of the settle by the hearth. The
Princess Audiart now stood before him, and now walked with slow steps
to one or another window and back again. The prince watched her.
“Audiart, Audiart!” he said at last; “I doubt me that the hey-day and
summer of peace has passed for Roche-de-Frêne!”
“Winter is the time between summers.”
“Have it so.... It was wise to delay this knight the week out.”
“Ah, where is Wisdom? Even the hem of her mantle turns out to be a
stray light-beam in shadow. But it seemed wiser. So one may think a
little.”
“Now, by God Almighty!” said Gaucelm, “it needs not much thinking!”
“No. But still one may take time and speak Montmaure fair, while we
study what will come and how we meet and defeat it.... Let us deal
first with Thibaut Canteleu and Roche-de-Frêne.”
Gaucelm the Fortunate, leaning forward, warmed his hands at the fire
which was burning with a singing sound. “Aye, my burghers—Child, all
over the green earth they cease to be mine or another’s burghers!”
“They grow to be their own men. Yes.”
“Gaucelm of the Star thought that idea the strangest, most
abhorrent!—and his father before him—and so backward into time. It
outraged them, angering the very core of the heart within them! Late
and soon they would have fought the town!”
“Or late or soon they would have lost.—Does it in truth anger us
that Thibaut Canteleu and the others should wish to choose their
magistrates?”
“No. Montmaure angers me, but not Thibaut.”
“Then let us act toward the town from our own thought and mind, and not
from that of our fathers.”
She paced the floor. “I sorrow for Bishop Ugo’s disappointment. It will
be a sword thrust if we and the town embrace!”
“Aye. Ugo desires that quarrel for us.... Well, then we say to Thibaut
Canteleu, ‘Burgher, grow your own man!’”
“I counsel it,” said Audiart. “It is right.”
“And wise?”
She turned from the window. “Pardieu! If war is upon us Montmaure’s
self might say that it were wise!”
The prince pondered it. “Yes—Put, then, Thibaut Canteleu and the town
to one side. Now Montmaure—Montmaure—Montmaure!”
The princess came to the settle and sat down, leaning her elbow upon
a small table drawn before it. Upon the table lay writing materials,
together with a number of small counters and figures of wood. There
was also a drawing, a rude map as it were, of the territory of
Roche-de-Frêne, bordered by the names of contiguous great fiefs. She
drew this between them, and the two, father and daughter, studied it
as they talked. With her left hand she moved the little pieces of wood
to and fro. Upon each was painted a name—names of castles, towns,
villages, abbeys that held from Gaucelm. One piece had the name of that
fief for which Montmaure had been wont to give homage.
Gaucelm looked at the long space upon the drawing marked “Aquitaine.”
“Guiraut of the Vale is a braggart. I know not if he bragged beyond
reason of Richard’s great help.”
“It is like enough that he did. But Richard Lion-Heart has often backed
another’s quarrel. Pity he looks not to see if it be stained or clean!”
“Toulouse still holds him.... Stephen the Marshal must go quickly to
King Philip at Paris.”
“Yes. Before Guiraut of the Vale’s week is gone by—or right upon that
departure? Right upon it, I think.”
“Yes. No need to show Guiraut what you expect.” He touched the wooden
pieces with his finger, running over the names of his barons. “Letters
must be written and heralds sent. Madonna Alazais and Guida. Raimon
Seneschal and Aimeric the Gay, had best plan shining and dazzling
entertainment for Guiraut and his following.... I know well that the
‘great count’ is making his muster.”
“He makes no secret of it.... _But one road to peace for
Roche-de-Frêne._”
“That is not a road,” said Prince Gaucelm, “or it is a road of
dishonour. Savaric of Montmaure and his son have in them a demon. Waste
no words upon a way that we are not going!”
He took a quill from the table, dipped it into ink, and began to
write upon a bit of paper, making a computation of strength. He put
down many lords whose suzerain he was, and beneath each name its
quota of knights, sergeants, and footmen, the walled towns besides
Roche-de-Frêne that called him lord, the villages, the castles, manors,
and religious houses, Roche-de-Frêne itself, and this great castle that
had never been taken. He added allies to the list, and the sum of gold
and silver he thought he could command, and with part of it purchase
free companies. He paused, then added help—an uncertain quantity—from
his suzerain, King Philip. “It is a fair setting-forth,” said Gaucelm
the Fortunate. “Once, and that not so long ago, Montmaure would not in
his most secret dream have dared—. But he has made favour and wily
bargains, and snapping up this fief and that, played the great carp in
the pool! And now drifts by this fancy of Aquitaine for Count Jaufre,
and he seizes it.”
“Aye, it is Richard that gives sunshine to his war!”
Gaucelm rose from the settle. “I love not war, though we live in a
warring world. Little by little, child, it may change.”
The day passed, the evening of courtly revel, of paces woven around
Guiraut of the Vale. The Princess Audiart was again in her chamber, her
women dismissed, the candles extinguished, the winter stars looking in
at window, fresh logs upon the hearth casting tongues of light. These
struck in places the pictured hangings. Here Ulysses dallied with
Calypso and here he met Circe. Here Nausicaa threw the ball, and here
Penelope wove the web and unravelled it, and here Minerva paced with
shield and spear. The figures were as rude as the hues were bright,
but a fresh and keen imagination brought them into human roundness and
proportion.
Audiart lay in her bed, and they surrounded her as they had done since
early girlhood when at her entreaty this chamber in the White Tower had
been given her. She was glad now to be alone with the familiar figures
and with the fitful firelight and the stars that, when the hearth-blaze
sank, she could see through the nearest window. She was read in the
science of her time; those points of light, white or bluish or golden,
had for her an interest of the mind and of the spirit. Now, through
the window, there gleamed in upon her one of the astrologers’ “royal”
stars. She by no means believed all that the astrologers said. She
was sceptic toward much that was preached, doubted the usefulness of
much that was done, and yet could act though she doubted. When doubt,
growing, became a sense of probability, then—swerve her as it might
from her former course—she would act, as forthright as might be, in
the interest of that sense.
The star shone in the western window—red Aldebaran. “You look like
war, Aldebaran, Aldebaran!” thought the princess. “Come, tell me if
Gaucelm, the good man, will win over Savaric, the wicked man—You tell
naught—you tell naught!”
She turned on her side and spread her arms and buried her face between
them, and lay so for some minutes. Then she rose from the bed, and
taking from a chair beside it a long and warm robe of fine wool,
slipped her arms into its great hanging sleeves, girded it around
her and crossed to the southward-giving window. She looked forth and
down upon wall and moat, and beyond upon the roofs of Roche-de-Frêne.
A warder pacing the walk below, passed with a gleam of steel from
her sight. A convent bell rang midnight. There was no moon, but the
night burned with stars. One shot above the town, leaving a swiftly
fading line of light. She saw all the roofs that lay this way and
knew them. Castle and town, river and bridge, and the country beyond,
felt not seen to-night—they were home, bathed, suffused, coloured by
the profound, the inmost self, part of the self, dissolving into it.
She stood before the window, a hand upon either wall, and her heart
yearned over Roche-de-Frêne. Again a star shot, below her the warder
passed again. Suddenly she thought of Jaufre de Montmaure, and much
disliked the thought. She spoke to the stars. “Ah,” she said, “it is
much misery at times to be a woman!”
A week from that day, in the castle hall, crowded from end to
end,—Bishop Ugo here to-day with churchmen behind him, ranks of
knights, Gaucelm’s great banner spread behind the dais, and against it
his shield blazoned with the orbs and wheat-sheafs of Roche-de-Frêne
and the motto _I build_; everywhere a richness of spectacle, an
evidenced power, a high vitality, a tension as of the bow string
before the skilled arrow flies,—Thibaut Canteleu received the answer
for the town, and Guiraut of the Vale the answer for Count Savaric of
Montmaure. Behind Thibaut was the deputation that had attended before,
the same blues and greens and reds, bright as stained glass, the same
faces swarthy, or lacking blood, or pink and white of hue. Thibaut
knelt in his blue tunic and grey hosen, his cap beside him on the
pavement.
Henceforth the town of Roche-de-Frêne should choose its own
officers—mayor, council and others. Likewise it should give judgement
through judges of its election upon its own offenders—always excepting
those cases that came truly before its lord’s bailiff-court. Prince
Gaucelm gave decision gravely, without haughtiness, or warning against
abuse of kindness, or claim upon increased loyalty, and without
many words. Roche-de-Frêne took it, first, in a silence complete and
striking, then with a long breath and fervent exclamation.
Thibaut Canteleu lifted his cap and stood up. He faced the dais
squarely. “My lord the prince and my Lady Audiart, give you thanks! As
you deal justly, so may this town deal justly! As you fight for us so
may we fight for you! As you give us loving-kindness, so may we give
you loving-kindness! As you measure to us, so may we measure to you!
May you live long, lord, and be prince of us and of our children! And
you, my Lady Audiart, may you stay with us, here in Roche-de-Frêne!”
Whereby it might be guessed that Thibaut and Roche-de-Frêne knew well
enough of Guiraut of the Vale’s errand. Probably they did. The time was
electric, and Montmaure had been seen for some time, looming upon the
horizon. Roche-de-Frêne, nor no town striving for liberties, cared for
Montmaure. He was of those who would strangle in its cradle the infant
named Middle Class.
Gaucelm thanked the burghers of Roche-de-Frêne, and the Princess
Audiart said, “I thank you, Thibaut Canteleu, and all these with you.”
The fifty were marshalled aside. They did not leave the hall; it
behooved them to stay and hear the answer to Montmaure.
All the gleaming and coloured particles slightly changed place, the
bowstring tension grew higher. Here was now Guiraut of the Vale, the
accompanying knights behind him, standing to hear what answer he should
take to the Count of Montmaure. The answer given him to take was brief,
clothed in courtesy, and without a hint in its voice or eye of the
possibility of untoward consequences. Roche-de-Frêne thanked Montmaure
for the honour meant, but the Princess Audiart was resolved not to wed.
Guiraut of the Vale, magnificent in dress and air, heard, and towered
a moment in silence, then flung out his hands, took a tone, harsh and
imperious. “You give me, Prince of Roche-de-Frêne, an ill answer with
which to return to the great count, my master! You set a bale-fire and
a threat upon the one road of peace between your land and Montmaure!
And for that my master was foretold by a sorceress that so would you
answer him, I am here not unprovided with an answer to your answer!”
With that he made a stride forward and flung down a glove upon the
dais, at Gaucelm’s feet. “Gaucelm the Fortunate, Montmaure will war
upon you until he and his son shall sit where now you and your daughter
are seated! Montmaure will war upon you until men know you as Gaucelm
the Unhappy! Montmaure will war upon you until the Princess Audiart
shall kneel for mercy to Count Jaufre—”
The hall shouted with anger. The ranks of knights slanted toward the
envoy. Gaucelm’s voice at last brought quiet. “The man is a herald and
sacred!—My lord Stephen the Marshal, take up the Count of Montmaure’s
glove!”
So began the war between Roche-de-Frêne and Montmaure.
CHAPTER XIII
THE VENETIAN
THAT year Saladin was victor in Syria and the Kingdom of Jerusalem
fell. Many a baron, knight, and footman was slain that year in the land
over the sea! Those who could escape left that place of burning heat
and Paynim victory. Another crusade they might go, but here and now was
downfall! A part survived and reached their homes, and a part perished
at sea, or in shipwreck on strange shores.
Sir Eudes de Panemonde, an old man now and bent, came home to his
castle and fief. With him came his son, Sir Aimar, a beautiful and
brave knight, all bronzed with the sun, with fame on his shield and
crest. With them came a third knight, bronzed too by the sun, with
fame on his shield and crest. He had been Garin de Castel-Noir, and
then Garin Rogier, and now, for five years, Sir Garin of the Golden
Island,—Garin de l’lsle d’Or,—known in the land over the sea for
exploits of an extreme, an imaginative daring, and also for the songs
he made and sang in Frank and English fortress halls. He was knight and
famed knight, and three emirs’ ransoms stood between him and the chill
of poverty. Two esquires served him. He had horses,—better could not
be bought in Syria! He had brought off in safety men-at-arms in his
pay. He was known for wearing over his mail a surcoat of deep blue, and
on the breast embroidered a bird with outstretched wings. He was all
bronzed and rightly lean of face and frame, strongly-knit, adventurous,
courteous, could be gay and could be melancholy, showed not his entire
depth, but let the inner fountain, darkly pure, still send up jets and
hues of being. He and Sir Aimar were brothers-in-arms, were Damon and
Pythias. He was, also, true poet. Many a song had he made since that
first song, made where he lay upon a boundary stone, by the stream that
flowed past Castel-Noir and on to Our Lady in Egypt. And always he sang
of one whom he named the Fair Goal. That name was known in Crusaders’
cities, in tents that were pitched upon desert sands. He himself was
known and welcomed. Comrade-Frank or Englishman or German cried with
pleasure, “Here comes the singer!”—or “the lover!” as might be.
In the castle of Panemonde there was welcome and feasting. The strong
kinsman had not proved weak in fidelity, but had held afar from the
fief eagle and kite, while at home the Lady of Panemonde, a small,
fair, determined woman, had administered with great ability castle,
village, and the fields that fed both. Here were Crusaders who, unlike
enough to many, had not come home impoverished, or to lands ravaged and
debt-ridden. And Sir Eudes’s old sin was now wiped out of the memory of
God, and he could sit in the sun and wait death with a peaceful mind.
And Sir Aimar was so beautiful and strong a knight that his suzerain,
the Count of Toulouse, would be sure to give him opportunity by which
he might win fame for Panemonde beyond that which he had brought from
across the sea. Garin de l’Isle d’Or, too, looked for service that
should win him land and castle.
Toulouse! No sooner had their ship come to port than they learned that
Aquitaine warred against Toulouse, Duke Richard claiming the latter
through his mother, Duchess Eleanor. But hardly had they taken the road
to Panemonde before they heard the news that Richard and Count Raymond
had made in some sort peace, due, perhaps, to hold, and perhaps due
not to hold. Coming to Panemonde they found that the lady there had
furnished Count Raymond the spears that the fief owed, and that, the
fighting over, some of these had returned. Some would never return.
They feasted and rejoiced at Panemonde, giving and hearing news.
Kindred and friends came about the restored from over the sea. There
were feasts in the hall, exercises in the tilting yard, hunting and
singing. They carried in procession to the monastery church a vial
of water from the Jordan, a hands-breadth of silk from the bliaut of
Joseph of Arimathea. They gave holiday to the serfs and remitted a tax.
The early summer days went highly and well.
Sir Aimar had a sister, Aigletta, a fair, rose-cheeked, dark-eyed
lady. She was fain to hear stories of Saladin from her brother, and
she liked to listen to the lute and the deep, rich and sweet voice
of Garin of the Golden Island. He sang when she asked it, seated in
hall or in garden, or perhaps resting by the little stream without the
castle wall, where you looked across the bridge of one arch to the
eastward-stretching highway. Oftenest Garin sang other men’s songs, but
when she asked it, he sang his own. Aigletta listened with a pensive
look. Her brother found her alone one day in the garden, a white rose
by her knee, her smooth cheek resting upon her hand. He sat beside her.
“Sister, ladies more than two or three have wished that Sir Garin would
sing not so much for them as of them! And still he sings only of the
Fair Goal.”
“Who is she?” asked Aigletta.
“Who knows? He knows not himself. But she is as a hedge of white roses
to keep him from other loves. So I would not have you, sister, scorch
the finger-tip of your heart!”
“I? Not I!” said Aigletta. “I dip my finger-tips in cool, running
water!—But, truly, to sing for years of a lady whom he knows not by
sight—!”
“A poet can do even that,” said Aimar. “And it is not true that he hath
never seen her. He saw her once, where she rested at an abbey, though I
am not sure that he saw her face. But now for years he hath made her
famous—loving her, or loving the love of her.”
“By my faith!” said Aigletta. “Truly a poet finds roses where others
feel snow!—Well, I am no thief to take away a lady’s knight! And,
perhaps, as you say, fair brother, I could not do it.”
“I think that you could not, fair sister. His Fair Goal has become to
him as air and light, streaming through the house of being.”
They had not been long at Panemonde when they had news that eastward of
Toulouse the Count of Montmaure made bitter war against Roche-de-Frêne,
and that Aquitaine greatly helped Montmaure, while King Philip,
distracted by quarrels nearer home, sent to the aid of Roche-de-Frêne
but a single company of spears. Now, traditionally, Toulouse was
friendly to Roche-de-Frêne, but Toulouse was weary of war, and had made
pact with Duke Richard. Moreover Toulouse had present trouble with a
spreading heresy and Holy Church’s disfavour. Panemonde heard that
Montmaure made very grim war.
For Sir Garin and Sir Aimar the future pushed its head above the
present’s rich repose. When war swung his iron bell knights must
hearken—not the old knight, ready now for rest from war, for
contemplation of a Heaven where that bell lay broken—but the young
men, the inheritors of wrath. Aimar wished to ride to Toulouse, to
Count Raymond. Garin of the Golden Island would not show restlessness
in the house of his benefactor, but those who were awake saw him pacing
at dawn the castle wall, or leaning against the battlement, watching
the rose in the east.
Once he had assured Sir Eudes and his son that he was of Limousin. But
ere he received knighthood he had told plainly his birthplace and home,
name, and fealty, and that anger of Montmaure against him. In the land
beyond the sea much of the past had drifted toward remoteness, many
degrees of experience coming between it and him. But now, early and
late, he began to think of Castel-Noir and of Foulque—Foulque who had
heard naught of him since that night in which they had parted, beneath
the old cypress. The cypress itself rose before him, and the thought
of Sicart and Jean. Paladin might be living. Tower and crag and wood,
the stream that slipped through the wood—he wished to see them. Not
only Castel-Noir—even Raimbaut’s half-ruinous hold—even Raimbaut
the Six-fingered himself. Garin half laughed at the thought of the
giant. And he wished to follow down that stream again—to see again the
boundary stone of Our Lady of Egypt—to find again that little lawn
with the cedar, plane, and poplar—to touch again that carved seat, so
near the laurels....
He rose from his bed and, while the morning star was still shining,
went down the stair and crossing the court mounted the castle wall.
Here he rested arms against the stone and gazed at the east where was
now a little colour.
Montmaure warred against Roche-de-Frêne. Raimbaut held from Montmaure,
but Montmaure, for that fief, was vassal to Roche-de-Frêne. They said
that the war was bitter and far-flung. Garin knew not if Raimbaut,
carrying with him Castel-Noir, clave to Montmaure, or to the overlord
that was Roche-de-Frêne. There sprang within him wish and belief
that it was to Roche-de-Frêne. Montmaure! His lips moved, his brow
darkened. In imagination he wrestled again with Jaufre de Montmaure.
Then, athwart that mood, came again, and stronger than before, a great
longing to follow once more that southward-slipping stream, and to hear
the nightingale in the covert, and to come again through the laurels to
the lawn, the cedar, and the chair of stone. The east was like a rose.
“I will tarry no longer!” said Garin.
Five days later he and Aimar rode away toward Toulouse. Behind them,
well mounted, rode their esquires, bearing lance and shield; behind
these, threescore mounted men. The two knights kneeled for Sir Eudes’s
blessing, they kissed the cheek of the Lady of Panemonde and of the
dark-eyed Aigletta; they went away like a piece of the summer, and all
the castle out to see them go. Here was the bridge, here the road,
here a lime tree that Garin remembered, but in an autumn dress. Now it
was green and palest gold, fragrant, murmurous with bees. Farther,
and here was the calvary, and the way that branched to church and
monastery. Wherever there were people, they stopped in their tracks
upon the road, or in the fields dropped their work and stood to see the
knights go by, with the goodly men behind them. The sky was dazzling
blue, the world drenched with light and heat.
They meant to lodge that night in the town to which Garin had come with
the scholar, and where first he had seen the cross taken. Reaching it
before sunset, they looked up at its castle. But said Garin, “Let us
find some hostel! It is not in my mind to-night to be questioned of the
Holy Land, made to talk and sing.”
Aimar agreed; could tell, too, that anciently there was here a famous
inn. Passing through the town gate, they came into streets where
the folk abroad and at door and window turned at the sound of the
clattering hoofs, gazed at the well-appointed troop, and made free
comment. All the place was bathed in a red light.
“There are many heretics in this town,” said Aimar. “Catharists or
_bons hommes_—men of Albi, as they are now called. The strange thing
is that they seem very gentle, good people! I remember one who came
to Panemonde the year before we took the cross. He sat beneath the
great oak and talked to any who would listen as sweetly as if Our Lady
had sent him down from Heaven! I wondered—Some of the people took up
stones to stone him, but I would not let him be hurt, and he went
away. I wondered—”
Garin’s squire, Rainier, had been sent ahead to the inn, and now
rode back to meet them. “Sirs, a Venetian merchant-lord and his
people possess the house! But I have caught one fair chamber from the
Italian’s clutch and the hostess promises good supper and soon. For the
men, the next street hath the Olive Tree and the Sheaf and Sickle.”
They came to the great inn, a low, capacious building with a courtyard,
and in a corner of this a spacious arbour overrun by a grape-vine. It
was sunset. The knights and their squires dismounted, and a sumpter
mule with its load was brought from the rear. Men came from the inn
stable and took away the horses. Orders as to the morning start having
been given, the troop from Panemonde trotted off, down an unpaved lane,
to the lesser hostels. The hostess appeared, a woman of great size with
a face as genial as the sun. She poured forth words as to preëmpted
quarters, regrets, admirations, welcomes, hints that they were as well
off here as at the castle where the lord was healing him of a grisly
wound, and the lady had yesterday been brought to bed of a woman-child.
Then she herself marshalled the knights, the squire Rainier following,
to a chamber reasonably large and clean. Maids brought basins and ewers
of water. Rainier busied himself with squire’s duties. He, too, looked
to knighthood, somewhere in the future. The bright evening light came
through the window. Below, under the grape-arbour, serving-men placed
boards on trestles, and furnished forth a table.
The inn followed a good fashion, and on these warm and long days
spread supper in the largest, most open hall that might be. When they
descended to the court it was to find the Venetian great merchant
already at table, sitting with two others above the salt. He was a
lordly person, dressed in prune-coloured cendal, breathing potencies of
travel and trade. In his air were Venice and her doges, the equal sea
and the flavour of gold.
He greeted the two knights courteously, and they returned his greeting.
They took their places, the squire below them. Supper went well, with
the hum of life around the arbour, and the sky’s warm tint showing
between twisted branches of the vine. When hunger was satisfied, they
talked. They who spent years in the East came back to Europe with
certain Saracenic touches of conduct and manner that to such as the
Venetian told at least part of their history. He began at once to speak
of cities beyond the sea—of Jaffa, Tripoli, Edessa, Aleppo, Damascus.
In turn Garin and Aimar questioned him of Venice, paved with the sea.
When they had eaten, they washed and dried their hands. Serving-men
took away the dishes, the boards and trestles. The arbour was left,
a cool and pleasant place, with a table whereon was set wine of the
country, with the summer stars brightening overhead, and a vagrant
wind lifting the vine leaves. They tarried under the arbour, drinking
the red wine and talking now of matters nearer at hand than was Venice
or Damascus. Around was the hum of the town, of the long, warm evening
settling into night. Out from the inn door came voices of the inn
people. The hostess was rating some idle man or maid. “May Aquitaine
take you—!”
The Venetian, it seemed, was on his way to Barcelona, had travelled
yesterday from the city of Toulouse. He had left Venice the past
winter, and in the interest of that sea-queen and her trade had been
in many towns and a guest of many courts. Of late, war, blazing forth,
had disarranged his plans, preoccupied his hosts. He was in a most ill
humour with this warring.
“Fair sirs, I look not that you should believe me, but one day it will
be found that war is the name of the general foe! For what, say I, is
the mind given to you?” He drank his wine. “Now the Count of Montmaure
wars against the Prince of Roche-de-Frêne! In Montmaure trade is broken
on the wheel. In Roche-de-Frêne she is burned at the stake.” He tapped
the wine-cup with his fingers. “Trade is the true ship—War is the
pirate!”
Garin spoke. “I have hours in which I should believe that you were
right. Love, too, and the finer thought are broken on the wheel! But it
is the way of the world, and we are knights who go to war.”
“My lord of Montmaure fights,” said the chant, “like a fiend! Or so
the Count of Toulouse told me. The country of Roche-de-Frêne is harried
and wasted. Now he goes about to besiege the town and the castle.”
“We have been home no great while,” said Aimar, “and our castle is in a
corner of the land and away from hearing how the wind blows elsewhere.”
The Venetian sipped his wine, then set down the cup. “I spent a week,
before this war broke forth, in the castle of Roche-de-Frêne. I found
the prince a wise man, with for wife the most beauteous lady my eyes
have gazed upon!”
“Aye!” said Garin. “Alazais the Fair, men called her.”
“Just. Alazais the Fair.—While I was in the castle came the Count
of Montmaure’s demand for the prince’s daughter for wife to his son.
Certes, I think,” said the merchant, “that he knew she would be refused
him! Cause of war, or mask-reason for a meant war—now they war.”
“We heard something of all this,” said Aimar.
Garin spoke again. He was back in mind at Castel-Noir. “That is the
Princess Audiart. I remember their saying that she was ugly and unlike
others—like a changeling. They were praying for a son to Prince
Gaucelm.”
“She is not a changeling,” answered the Venetian. “She is a very wise
lady, though she is not fair as is her step-dame. I saw her sit beside
the Prince in council and the people love her. Now, they say, she is
as brave as a lion. Pardieu! If I were knight, or knight-errant—”
“Are they hard pressed?” Garin spoke, his hands before him on the table.
“So ’tis said. Montmaure has gathered a host and Richard of Aquitaine
gives to Count Jaufre another as great. At Toulouse there was much talk
of the matter.”
The Venetian emptied his glass, looked up at the stars, and, the day’s
travel having been wearying, thought of his bed. Presently he rose, his
people with him, said a courteous good night and quitted the arbour.
The two knights waited a little longer, sitting in silence. Then they,
too, left the arbour, and, Rainier attending, went to the chamber that
had been given. Here sleep came soon. But in the first light of morning
Sir Aimar, waking, saw Garin standing, half-clothed, at the window.
“Aimar,” said Garin, “you must to Toulouse, for Count Raymond is your
suzerain and Sir Eudes hath your promise that you follow no adventure
until you have received lord’s leave. But for me that makes too long
delay. I will ride on to Roche-de-Frêne.”
Sir Aimar sat upon the side of the bed. “I thought last eve that I saw
the knight-errant look forth from your eye! Will you rescue this ugly
princess?”
“Ugly or fair, she is a lady in distress—and Jaufre de Montmaure does
her wrong.... Her father is my liege lord. I have had a vision too,
of my brother Foulque, hard bestead. I cannot tarry to go about by
Toulouse.”
Aimar agreed to that. “My father hath my promise.—But I will follow
you as soon as I may. Pardieu! If what the Venetian said be true, every
knight will be welcome!”
“I think that it was true.—Ha!” said Garin to himself, “I see again
the autumn wood, and Jaufre de Montmaure who beats to her knees that
herd-girl!”
The two knights, Garin and Aimar, left the town together, in the
brightness of the morning. But a mile or two beyond the walls their
ways parted. Their followers were divided between them—each had now
two esquires and more than a score of men-at-arms. Each small troop
came in line behind its leader. Then the two knights, dismounting,
embraced. Each commended the other to the care of the Mother of God.
They made a rendezvous; they would meet again, brothers-in-arms, as
soon as might be. They remounted—each troop cried farewell to the
other—Sir Aimar and those with him turned aside into the way to
Toulouse.
Sir Garin waited without movement until a great screen of poplars came
between him and his brother knight. Then he spoke to his courser,
and with his men behind him, began to pursue the road to the country
of his birth. As he travelled he saw in fancy, coming toward him on
this road, Garin de Castel-Noir clad in a serf’s dress, fleeing from
Montmaure, in his heart and brain hopes and fears, a welling-up of
poesy, and the image of his lady whom he named the Fair Goal. Garin of
the Golden Island, older by nigh eight years of time and a world of
experience, rich, massy, and intricate, smiled on that other Garin and
saw how far he had to travel—but without finding as yet the Fair Goal!
CHAPTER XIV
OUR LADY IN EGYPT
THE air quivered above all surfaces; light and heat spoke with
intensity. But those who had been long years in Syria were used to a
greater intensity. They travelled now, not minding heat and glare. They
rode through a little village that Garin remembered, and at the farther
end passed a house with mulberry trees. Children played in their shade.
“Ha!” said Garin of the Golden Island. “Time’s wheel goes round, and
the fountain casts new spray!”
Rainier the squire knew this country-side. A certain castle was placed
conveniently for dinner-time, and to this they drew from the high road.
Where you did not war, there obtained, in the world of chivalry, a
boundless hospitality. The lord who held this castle made all welcome.
A great bell rang; here was dinner in the hall.
From the castle tower one saw afar, beyond the boundaries of Toulouse.
The baron could give information. Duke Richard had spared Jaufre de
Montmaure two thousand spears and ten thousand men-at-arms, archers,
and crossbowmen. Montmaure, himself, had a great force. Roche-de-Frêne
fought strongly, but the land suffered. Stories were told of the ways
of Montmaure. Garin made enquiry as to the Abbey of Saint Pamphilius,
not far to the northward. “Saint Pamphilius? Safe as though it held
by God the Father’s beard! Years ago it chose Montmaure for advocate.
Aye! Abbot Arnaut lives.” But the lord of the castle could not tell of
Raimbaut the Six-fingered, if he held with Montmaure, or, passing him,
clave to Roche-de-Frêne.
The castle would have had them bide the night, and the Crusader
discourse of the Holy Land. But Garin must on. His imagination was
seized; what lay before him drew him imperiously, like a loadstone.
He bade the lord and lady of the castle farewell, mounted his horse,
Noureddin, and with his men behind him took the road. The earth lay
drowned in light, the air seemed hardly a strip of gauze between it
and the sun. They must ride somewhat slowly through the afternoon. At
last the heat and dazzle of the day declined. Straight before them
lay the Abbey of Saint Pamphilius, and that were good harbourage for
the night, but not for any who meant to enter battle upon the side of
Roche-de-Frêne! The night would be dry, warm and bright. The men had
food with them, in leathern pouches. Forest lay to the right of the
road.
Garin spoke to his squires: “It is to my fancy to sleep in this wood
to-night. Once I did sleep here, but without esquires and men-at-arms
and war-horse.”
It chanced that the moon was almost full. Garin watched it mount
between the branches of the trees, and the past rose with it to suffuse
the present. He could recall the moods of that night, but they seemed
to him now frail and boyish.... Dawn broke; his men rose from where
they lay like brown acorns. Nearby, the stream that ran through the
wood widened into a pool. Knight, squires, and men-at-arms laid aside
clothing, plunged into the cool element, had joy of it. Afterwards,
they breakfasted sparely. When the sun lighted the hill-tops they were
again upon the road.
The road now trended eastward. They came to a chapel that was a ruin.
Beside it, scooped from the hillside and shaded by an oak, appeared a
hermit’s cell. At first they thought that it was empty, but at length a
grey figure, lean and trembling as a reed, peeped forth.
“Who broke down the chapel, father?” asked Garin.
The hermit stared at him. “Fair son and sir knight, are you from the
Toulouse side?”
“We have ridden two days from the westward. This is the boundary?”
The hermit looked with lack-lustre eyes, then wagged his head up
and down. “Aye, fair knight and son! The lords of Toulouse and
Roche-de-Frêne built the chapel, each bearing half the cost. But a band
belonging to the Lord of Montmaure came this way. Its captain said that
he pulled down only Roche-de-Frêne’s half—but all fell! The Holy
Father at Rome ought to hear of it!”
“Are Montmaure’s men still at hand?”
The hermit shook his head. “They harrowed the country and went. I saw
flames all one night and heard the cries of the damned!”
Garin and those behind him rode on. Immediately the way that once had
been good became bad. A bridge had spanned a swift stream, but the
bridge was destroyed. A mill had stood near, but the mill was burned.
There seemed no folk. They rode by trampled and blackened fields where
no harvest sickles would come this year. The poppies looked like blood.
Here, in a dip in the land, was what had been a village, and upon a low
hill a heap of stones that had been castle or armed manor-house. There
were yet fearful odours. They rode by a tree on which were hanged ten
men, and a place where women and children, all crouched together, had
been slain. Here were more blackened fields, splashed with poppies. The
sun, now riding high, sent into every corner a searching light.
Garin and his men, leaving the ruin, rode through a great forest. They
rode cautiously, keeping a lookout, neither singing nor laughing nor
talking loudly. But the forest slept on either hand, and there was
nothing heard but the hoofs of their horses, the song of birds, and the
whirr of insects.
This forest had been known to Garin the squire. He was going now
toward Raimbaut’s keep. Around were the wide-branching trees, the
birds flew before them, the startled hare ran, the deer plunged aside
into the deeper brakes, but they met with no human life. Travelling
so, they came to a broken country, wooded hills, grey falls of
cliff, streams that brawled over stony beds. Garin looked from side
to side, recognizing ancient landmarks. But when they rode out from
the dwindling wood upon fields that should have shone and shimmered,
yellowing to the harvest—these fields, too, were black with ruin. Here
was a meadow that Garin knew. But no cattle stood within it, seeking
the shade of the trees, and nowhere, field or meadow or narrow road,
were there people. All lay silent, without motion, under the giant
strength of the sun.
The road passed under the brow of a hill, turned, and he saw where had
been the grim old keep and tower and wall where he had served Raimbaut
the Six-fingered. In its shadow had clustered peasants’ huts. All was
destroyed; he saw not a living man, not a beast, not a dog. “How like,”
said Garin of the Golden Island, “are Paynimry and Christendom!”
He checked his men, and alone rode to the ruins. Dismounting, he let
Noureddin crop the parched grass while he himself entered through a
breach in the wall, the gateway being blocked by fallen masonry. All
was desolate under the sun. The well had been filled with stones.
Climbing a mass of débris, crushed wall and fallen beam and rafter, he
attained the interior of the keep. Here had been sword and fire; here
now were the charred bones, here the writing that said how had fought
Raimbaut the Six-fingered!
Garin came out of the keep and crossed the court, and, stepping through
the ragged and monstrous opening in the wall, called to his men. Three
hours they worked, making a grave and laying within it every charred
body they found, and making one grave for the forms of a giant and of a
woman who had fallen beside him.
“I knew this castle,” said Sir Garin. “This was its lord, and he could
fight bravely! Nor did he fail at times of kindness done. This was its
lady, and she was like him.”
At last they rode away from Raimbaut’s castle. First, came other
fields that this storm had struck, then a curving arm, thick and dark,
of forest. But, on the further edge of this flowed a stream where
the bridge was not broken, and nearby was the hut of one who burned
charcoal, and the man and woman and their children were within and
living. They fell upon their knees and put up their hands for mercy.
“We are not Montmaure!” said Garin. “Jean Charcoal-burner, have you
heard if they have done the like to Castel-Noir?”
The charcoal-burner, of elf locks and blackened skin, stared at the
knight, and now thought that he knew him, and now that he knew him
not. But he had comfort to give as to Castel-Noir. He had been there
within three days, and it stood. It was so small a tower and out of the
way—Montmaure’s band had ignored it, or were gone for the time to set
claws in other prey. “Sir Foulque?—aye, Sir Foulque lived.”
Garin came to Castel-Noir in the red flush of evening. The fir wood
lay quiet and dark, haunted by memory. The stream was as ever it was.
Looking up, he saw the lonely, small castle, the round tower—saw,
too, a scurrying to it, from the surrounding huts, of men, women and
children. They went like partridges, up the steep, grey road, across
the narrow moat, and in at the gate. The drawbridge mounted, creaking
and groaning.
“Ah,” said Garin with a sob in his throat, “Foulque thinks that we are
foes!”
He left his men among the firs, and rode on Noureddin up the path known
so well—so well! He rode without spear and shield, and unhelmed.
Watchers from loophole or battlement might see only a bronzed horseman,
wearing a blue surcoat, worked upon the breast with a bird with
outstretched wings. When he came to the edge of the moat, beneath the
wall, he checked Noureddin, sat motionless for a minute, then raised
his voice. “Castel-Noir!”
A man looked over the wall. “Who and whence, and, Mother of God! whose
voice are you calling with?”
“Sicart!” called Garin, “remember eight years, come Martinmas, and the
serf’s dress you found me! Put the bridge down and let me in!”
Foulque met him in the gateway.
“Brother Foulque—”
“Garin, Garin—”
Fir wood, crag, and black castle travelled from the sun, faced the
unlighted deeps. But an inner sun shone and warmed. The squires,
the troop, had welcome and welcome again. Nothing there was that
Sicart and Jean and Pol and Arnaut and all the others would not
do for them! Comforts and treasures were scant, but the whole was
theirs. The saints seemed benignant, so smoothly and fragrantly did
matters go! Pierre found savoury food for all. And there was forage
for the horses. And the courtyard on a summer night, with straw
spread down, was good sleeping. But before there was sleeping, came
tale-telling—a great ring gathered, with the round moon looking down,
and Castel-Noir men and boys and women and girls from the huts below,
listening—listening—gaping and exultant! Sir Garin of the Golden
Island—and how he had taken the cross—and what he had done in the
land over the sea, and the tale-tellers with him!
Fairyland had somehow come to Castel-Noir—a warm Paradise of pride in
the native-born, relish for brave deeds, forward felt glow from perhaps
vastly better days! Through all ran a filtering of Eastern wonder.
There was, too, simple veneration for the slayers of paynims, for
beings who had travelled in the especial country of God! The pride in
Garin was strong. They had thought him dead, though some had insisted
that, maybe, one day he would come back, a knight. These now basked in
their own wisdom. But even they had not dreamed the whole fairy tale
out! Sir Garin of the Golden Island—and how he got that name—and
how he fought and how he sang and how lords and kings were fain of
his company—and his brother-in-arms, Sir Aimar—and the three emirs’
ransoms! The people of Castel-Noir forgot Montmaure and danger, and
were blissful that night beneath the round and golden moon.
Garin and Foulque bided within the hall, talked there, Garin pacing
up and down while Foulque the Cripple gloated on him from his chair.
They had torchlight, but the moonlight, too, streamed in. Garin charted
for his brother the unknown sea of the years he had been away. Foulque
followed him to Panemonde, to the port, to Syria—and then all the
events and fortune there!
“Ha, ha!” laughed Foulque. “Ha ha! ha ha! Who knows anything in this
world? Oh, dire misfortune that it seemed to have fought with Jaufre
de Montmaure! And here he has given you knighthood and fame and
ransom-wealth! Ha, ha, ha! Let me laugh! Yesterday I was weeping.”
“If you push things in that direction,” said Garin, “before it was
Jaufre it was that herd-girl with the torn dress and streaming hair!
There is a path from all things to all things else.”
He stopped before a window embrasure and looked out upon the
moon-flooded court and the ring of his men and the Castel-Noir men.
When he turned back to Foulque they took up the years as they had gone
for the black castle. They had gone without great events until had
befallen this war. That being the case, the two were presently at the
huge happenings in the princedom of Roche-de-Frêne. Foulque knew of the
fate of Raimbaut the Six-fingered. Jean the Charcoal-burner had brought
the news. Since that, Castel-Noir had stood somewhat shiveringly upon
its rock, the probabilities being that its own hour was near.
And yet Foulque, and Garin with him, agreed that since the band that
had entered this fief and beat down Raimbaut and his castle was now
gone without finding Castel-Noir, it might not think to return upon its
tracks, leaving richer prey for sparrow or hare. Foulque considered
that the ravagers had been Free Companions, mercenaries bought by
Montmaure from far away, not knowing nook and corner of the country
they devastated. Montmaure, angered, had made his threat when Raimbaut,
renouncing the immediate allegiance, held for Roche-de-Frêne. He had
kept it, sending fire and death. But Castel-Noir might stay hidden in
its fir wood. Foulque, a born sceptic, here showed one contrary streak.
He was credulous now of all evil from Jaufre de Montmaure being turned
aside from aught that pertained to Garin. “Certes, not after procuring
you knighthood and gold!”
Garin learned of the war at large. In the spring Prince Gaucelm had
gathered a great host. Under Stephen the Marshal it had met and beaten
as great a number, Count Savaric at the head. Savaric had been wounded,
thrust back, him and his host, into his own land. Then had come with a
greater host Jaufre de Montmaure, like an evil wind. His father, too,
recovering, rushed again from Montmaure. Prince Gaucelm and all his
knights and a host of men withstood them. Everywhere there was ringing
of shields and flying of arrows. Where Montmaure came, came blight.
A walled town had been taken and sacked; another, they said, was
endangered. Rumour ran that Roche-de-Frêne itself must stand a siege.
Montmaure was gathering a huge number of spears and countless footmen,
and had an Italian who was making for him great engines. But naught
this side waking to find to-night a dream could now weaken Foulque’s
optimism! “Roche-de-Frêne’s no ripe plum to be picked and eaten! Pick
thunderbolts from an oak that will outlive Montmaure!”
Foulque was reconciled, when the talk came that way, to Garin’s early
departure from Castel-Noir. Neither dreamed but that he, knight and
able to help, must of course go. It was his _devoir_. But he might
bide a few days. It would presently be seen if the place were indeed
moderately safe, left a small, overlooked backwater. Foulque’s thin
face worked with laughter. “Ha, Jaufre!—and what was it that he said
touching flaying alive and razing your house? Jaufre makes me sport!”
His thought drove aside from the pleasant spice of Jaufre’s men
preserving just Castel-Noir. “And now he would wed the princess!”
Garin, in his pacing, crossed a shaft of moonlight. “What manner of
lady is the Princess Audiart?”
“Not fair, but wise, they say. I know not,” said Foulque, “if women can
be wise.”
“Ah, yes, they may!”
“I agree,” said Foulque, “that there is wisdom somewhere in not helping
into the world sons of Jaufre, grandsons of Savaric!—It is said that
the townspeople love the princess.”
Garin crossed again the shaft of light. “No harm has come to Our Lady
in Egypt?”
“No harm that I have heard of. Count Savaric is known for a good son
of the Church! He will not harm the bishop’s lands either. I hear
report—I have heard that the Abbot of Saint Pamphilius saith—that
if Montmaure conquers, Bishop Ugo will not be less but greater in
Roche-de-Frêne.—But what,” said Foulque, “do I know in truth to tell
you? A cripple, chained to this rock in a fir wood! Little of aught
do I know—save that there is wickedness on earth!” He tried to be
sardonic, but could not. “Eh!” said Foulque. “Three emirs? And at what
did they hold their lives?”
At last Castel-Noir slept, the fair moon looking down. The next day,
still there held fairyland. When another day came, Garin took Paladin
that had waited for him all these years, and, followed by Rainier,
rode to Our Lady in Egypt. He wished to see the Abbess and ask of her
a question. Eight years ago, come Martinmas, what lady had rested, a
guest, with Our Lady in Egypt?
The summer woods were passing sweet—fresh and sweet under whatever
strength of sun to those who had come from Syrian towns and Syrian
suns. Garin rode with an open heart, smelled sweet odour, heard every
song and movement, praised the green wood and the blue sky. At last
they saw the olives and the vineyards of Our Lady in Egypt—at last
the massy building. And now Paladin stopped before a portal that Garin
remembered.... All these years, Jaufre de Montmaure had been in the
back of his head, but hardly, it may be said, the herd-girl who first
had struggled with Jaufre. Memory might have brought her oftener to
view, but memory, when it came to women, had been preoccupied with the
Fair Goal—with the lady who wore the blue, fine stuff, the gem-wrought
girdle, the eastern veil! But now, sudden and vivid as life, came back
the herd-girl who had ridden behind him upon this horse, who, at the
convent door under the round arch, had looked back at him through dark
and streaming hair. The portress opened to her and she entered—rushed
back the very tone and sense of blankness and of wonder with which he
had regarded the closed door! “Saint Agatha! how that tastes upon my
tongue!” said Garin.
He sat staring at the convent portal. Around was midday heat and
stillness. Drowned in that past day, he gave no heed to a sound of
approaching horsemen. But now Rainier came to his side. “Sir, there are
armed men coming! Best knock and gain entrance—”
But Garin turned to see who came. A small party rode into sight beneath
the convent trees—not more than a dozen horsemen. One bore, depending
from a lance, a pensil of blue—the blue of Roche-de-Frêne. It hung
unstirring in the windless noon. In the air of the riders there was
something, one knew not what, of dejection or of portent. They came
neither fast nor slow, the hoofs of the horses making a sullen sound.
Garin looked. At times there blew to him, through appearances, a
wind from behind appearances. It gave no definite word, but he heard
the rustling of the sibyl’s leaves. He drew Paladin a little to one
side and awaited the riders. From the convent chapel rose a sound of
chanting—the nuns at their office.
The cluster of horsemen arrived in the space before the convent door.
The one who rode in front, a knight with grizzled hair and a stern,
lean face, directed an enquiry to the mounted men here before him.
Garin answered. “I am of Castel-Noir—ridden here to-day because there
is that which I would ask of the Abbess Angela.”
The grizzled knight shook his head. He spoke to one of those behind
him. “Strike upon the door, Raynold!” then, turning in his saddle,
addressed himself to the stranger knight in the blue surcoat. “Fair
sir, my lady Abbess, methinks, will not wish to deal to-day with any
matters that may be set aside.”
“I see that you bring heavy tidings,” said Garin. “I fight for
Roche-de-Frêne. What are they?”
“Well may you say that they are heavy! Our lord, Prince Gaucelm, is
slain.”
“The prince is slain!”
“There has been a great battle, ten leagues from here.... My master!”
cried the grizzled knight with sombre passion. “The best prince this
land has known—Gaucelm the Good!”
Garin knew that the head of Our Lady in Egypt was a sister of the dead
prince. No longer was it a day in which, after years and at last, he
might ask his question. As it had waited, so must it wait still. He and
Rainier rode back to Castel-Noir. The next day, with his troop behind
him, he left Foulque, the black tower, and the fir wood, and the next
he joined the host of Stephen the Marshal where it lay confronting
Montmaure.
CHAPTER XV
SAINT MARTHA’S WELL
THE Princess Audiart crossed the river that made a crescent south
and east of the town,—her errand, to see how went the defences on
that side. Two stout towers reared themselves there, commanding the
river-bank, guarding the bridge-head. Beyond the towers workmen in
great numbers deepened a fosse, heaped ramparts, strengthened walls,
and in the earth over which Montmaure must advance planted sharpened
stakes and all gins and snares that the inventive mind might devise. To
hold this bridge was of an importance!—South and east stretched the
yet unharried lands and the roads by which must come in food for the
town, the roads by which it might keep in touch with the world without,
the roads by which might travel succour!
The day was a blaze of light, a dry and parching heat. The river ran
with a glitter of diamonds. The stone of the many-arched bridge threw
back light. The hill of Roche-de-Frêne, the strong walls, the town
within them, the towered, huge church, the castle lifted higher yet,
swam in radiance. They lost precision of outline, they seemed lot and
part of the daystar’s self.
With the princess there rode three or four of her captains. Clearing
the river they must turn their horses aside, out of the way of a
multitudinous, approaching traffic that presently, embouching upon the
bridge, covered it from parapet to parapet. Noise abounded. A herd
of cattle came first, destined, these, for the slope of field and
meadow between the stream and the town walls. Wagons followed—many
wagons—heaped with provision and drawn by oxen. They held grain in
quantity, fodder, cured meat, jars of oil, dried fruit, pease and
beans, whatever might be gathered near and far through the land. They
came, a long line of them, creaking slow, at the head of the oxen
sometimes a man walking, oftener a lad or a woman. They kept the
princess and those with her in the glare of the sun. A knight spoke
impatiently. “They creep!”
“They creep because they are heavily laden,” said the princess. “Let us
thank our Lady Fortune that they creep!”
The wagons gave way to a flock of sheep, bleating and jostling each the
other. Followed swine with their herd, goats, asses bearing panniers
from which fowls looked unhappily forth, carts with bags of meal,
a wide miscellany of matters most useful to a town that Montmaure
proposed to besiege—with Aquitaine behind him! The princess noted all.
The stream flowed by her orders, and her mind appraised the store that
was adding itself this morning to the store already gathered in town
and castle. She turned her horse a little and gazed afar over the
green and tawny country.
Out of the sheen of the day came from another direction a straggling
crowd. Nearer at hand it resolved itself into a peasant horde—a
few men neither strong nor weak, but more very aged men, or sick or
crippled, many women from young to old, many children. They also had
carts, four or five, heaped with strange bits of clothing and household
gear. Lying upon these were helpless folk—an old, palsied man, a woman
and her day-old babe. They came on with a kind of deep, plaintive
murmur, like a wood in a winter blast.
“Ah, Jesu!” said the princess. “More driven folk!”
As they came near she pushed her horse toward them, bent from her
saddle, questioned them. They had come from a region where Montmaure
was harrying—they had a tale to tell of an attack in the night and a
burned village. Unlike many others, these had had time to flee. When
they found themselves upon the road, they had said that they would go
to Roche-de-Frêne and tell the princess, the prince being dead.
“Aye, aye!” said the princess. “Poor folk—poor orphans!”
She gave them cheering words, then sat as in a dream and watched them
faring on across the bridge and up the climbing road to the town gate.
There spoke to her one of her captains, a grey, redoubtable fighter.
“My lady, you are not wise to let them enter! In the old siege your
great-grandfather let not in one useless mouth!”
“Aye!” said the princess. “When I was little I heard stories from my
nurse of that siege. A great number died without the walls. Men, women,
and children died, kneeling and stretching their arms to the shut
gates!—That was my great-grandfather. But I will not have my harried
folk wailing, kneeling to deaf stone!—Now let us ride to see these
barriers.”
The day was at the crest of light and heat when with her following
she recrossed the bridge, rode up the slope of summer hill, and in at
the gate of the town called the river-gate. Everywhere was a movement
of people, a buzzing sound of work. The walls of Roche-de-Frêne were
strong—but nothing is so strong that it cannot be strengthened!
Likewise there were many devices, modern to the age or of an advanced
efficiency. The princess had sent for a master-engineer, drawing him
with rich gifts to Roche-de-Frêne. The town hummed like a giant hive,
forewarned of the strong invader. Prince Gaucelm lay in the crypt under
the cathedral. At night the horizon, north and west, burned red to show
the steps of Montmaure. Over there, too, was Stephen the Marshal with a
host—though with never so great a host as had Montmaure whom Aquitaine
aided. In the high white light and dry heat Roche-de-Frêne, town and
castle, toiled busily. The castle looked to the town, the town looked
to the castle. In the town, by the walls, were gathered master-workman
and apprentice, not labouring to-day at dyeing and weaving and
saddlery, at building higher the church-tower; labouring to-day at
thickest shield-making; studying to keep out sack and fire, death and
pillage, rape and ruin, studying to keep out Montmaure.
Thibaut Canteleu was mayor, chosen by the town last spring. He made the
round of the walls with the princess. “By all showing,” said Thibaut,
“the walls are greater and stronger than in the old siege.”
“Not alone the walls,” the princess answered.
“You are right there, my Lady Audiart! We are more folk and stronger.
We begin this time,” said Thibaut, “well-nourished, and, after a manner
of speaking, free. Also, which is a very big thing, liked and liking.”
“I would, Thibaut Canteleu, that my father were here!”
“Well, and my lady,” said Canteleu, “I think that he is. My father,
rest his soul! was a good and a bold man, and, by the rood, I think
that he is here—only younger and something added!”
The princess stayed an hour and more by the walls, moving from point
to point with the captains and directors of the work. At one place a
company of men and women were seated, resting, eating bread, salad, and
cheese, drinking a little red wine. She asked for a bit of bread and
ate and drank with them.
A child clung to its mother’s skirt, hiding its face. “It’s the
princess—it’s the princess—and I have not on my lace cap, mother!”
Audiart smiled down on her. “I like you just as well without!” She
talked with the workers, then nodded her head and rode on.
“Aye,” said Canteleu beside her. “This is such a tempered town as
Julius Cæsar or King Alexander might have been blithe to have about
them!”
The princess studied him, walking by the bridle of her white Arabian.
“What would you do, Thibaut Canteleu, if I gave you Montmaure for lord?”
Thibaut looked at Roche-de-Frêne spread around them, and then looked at
the sky, and then met, frank and full, the princess’s eyes with his own
black ones.
“What could we do, my Lady Audiart? Begin again, perchance, where we
began in your great-grandfather’s time. Give us warning ere it happen!
So all who love freedom may hang themselves, saving Count Jaufre the
trouble!”
“It will not happen,” said Audiart. She, too, looked at Roche-de-Frêne,
and looked at the sky. When she had made the round of the walls, she
rode through the street where the armourers and weapon-makers worked
at their trade more busily than in the days of peace, and to the
quarter where the fletchers worked, and to the storehouses where was
being heaped the incoming grain and other victual. Everywhere reigned
activity. Roche-de-Frêne contained not alone its own citizens,
together with the castle retainers, the poor knights, the squires, the
people of vague feudal standing and their followers whom ordinarily it
lodged, but in at the gates now, day by day, rode or walked fighting
men. There mustered to the town and the crowning great pile of the
castle lords and knights, esquires and mounted men and footmen. Men who
owed service came, and in lesser numbers free lances came. And all the
great vassals that entered had kneeled in the castle hall, before the
Princess Audiart, and putting their hands between hers, had taken her
for their liege lady. Where had reigned Gaucelm reigned Audiart.
Each day, before she recrossed the castle moat and went in at the great
gate between Red Tower and Lion Tower, she would go for a little time
to the cathedral. She rode there now, knights about her. The white
Arabian stopped where he was wont to stop. Dismounting, she passed the
tremendous, sculptured portal and entered the place.
Within abode a solemn and echoing dimness pointed with light. There
were a score of shadowy, kneeling folk, and the lights of the shrines
burned. The pillars stood like reeds in a giant elder world. Thin
ladders of gold light came down between them. Obeying the princess’s
gesture, the two or three with her stayed their steps. She went alone
to the chapel of Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne. Here, between the Saracen
pillars, before the tall, jewelled Queen of Heaven, before the lamps
fed with perfumed oil, lay a great slab of black stone. The Princess
Audiart knelt beside it, bowed herself until her forehead felt the
coldness....
She bent no long while over Gaucelm the Fortunate, lying still in the
crypt below. Sorrow must serve, not rule, in Roche-de-Frêne! Before she
rose from her knees and went, she lifted her eyes to the image in blue
samite, with the pierced heart and the starry crown. But her own heart
and mind spoke to something somewhat larger, more nearly the whole....
She quitted the cathedral, and mounting her Arabian, turned with her
following toward the castle heaped against the sapphire sky.
Riding that way, she rode by the bishop’s palace, and in the flagged
place, beside the dolphin fountain, she met Bishop Ugo. He checked
his mule by the spraying water, those with him attending at a little
distance.
“Well met, my Lord Bishop!” said Audiart. “I have wished to take
counsel with you as to these stones. Here are five hundred fit for
casting upon Montmaure.”
Ugo regarded the fair space between fountain and palace. “Then have
them taken up, princess, and borne to the walls.” He left the subject.
“Has there come any messenger from the host to-day?”
“No. None.”
“If there is battle,” said Ugo, “I pray the Blessed Mother of God that
the right may win!”
He spoke with attempted unction. What was gained was more acid than
balm.
The princess had a strange, hovering smile. “How may a man be assured
in this world,” she asked, “which of two shields is the right knight’s?”
Ugo darted a look. “How may a man?—May a woman, then?”
“As much, and as little, as a man,” answered the Princess Audiart. “My
Lord Bishop, if Count Jaufre strikes down Roche-de-Frêne, will you wed
him and me?”
Ugo kept a mask-like face. “I am a man of peace, my Lady Audiart! It
becomes such an one to wish that foes were friends, and hands were
joined.”
With this to think of, the princess rode through the chief street of
Roche-de-Frêne, the castle looming nearer and more huge with each
pace of the Arabian. Here was the deep moat and the bridge sounding
hollowly; here the barbican, Lion Tower and Red Tower. She rode beneath
the portcullis, through the resounding, vaulted passage, and in the
court the noblest knight helped her from her horse. She was dressed in
a dull green stuff, fine and thin, with a blue mantle for need, and
about her dark hair a veil twisted turban-wise. Her ladies came to meet
her, silken pages and chamberlains stepped backward before her. She
asked for Madame Alazais, and learning that she was in the garden, went
that way.
Cushions had been piled upon a bank of turf in the shadow of a fruit
tree. Here reclined Alazais, beautiful as Eve or Helen, her ladies
about her and Gilles de Valence singing a new-old song. Alazais’s face
was pensive, down-bent, her cheek against her hand—but here in the
shade the day was desirable, with air enough to lift away the heat—and
Gilles’s singing pleased her—and the world and life must be supported!
In her fashion she had felt fondness for the dead prince,—felt
it now and still,—but yonder was death and here was life.... As
for war in the land and impending fearful siege, Alazais held that
matters might yet be compounded. Until this garden wall were battered
in, her imagination would not serve to show her this great castle
death-wounded. At the worst, thought Alazais, Audiart might wed Count
Jaufre. Men were not so hugely different....
The reigning princess came and sat beside her step-dame. “It is singing
and beauty just to be here for a moment under this tree!” She shut
her eyes. “To cease from striving and going on! To rest the whole
at one point of achieved sweetness, even if it were not very high
sweetness—just there—for aye! It would tempt a god....”
The next day she rode westward from the town. Again the day was dry,
with an intense and arrowy light. She rode with a small train some
distance into the tawny land, to a strong castle that, strongly held,
might give Montmaure a check. She rode here to give wise praise,
to speak to those who garrisoned it words of the most courageous
expectation. She ate with her train in hall, rested in the cool of
the thick-walled room for the hour of extremest heat, spoke again
with feeling, wit, and fire to the knights and men-at-arms who must
desperately hold the place; then, with her following, said farewell and
good-speed. She turned back toward Roche-de-Frêne, through the burned,
high summer country.
The sun was in the western heaven. Tall cypresses by the road cast
shadows of immense length. There lay ahead a grove of pine and oak, a
certain famous cold and bubbling spring, and a meeting with a lesser,
winding road. “I am thirsty,” said the princess. “Let us draw rein at
Saint Martha’s Well.”
Entering the grove, they found another there before them, athirst and
drinking of the well. A knight in a blue surcoat knelt upon the grass
beside the water and drank. His shield rested against a tree, he had
taken off his helmet and placed it on the grass beside him, a squire
held his horse. As the princess and her train came to the well-side he
rose, stepped back with a gesture of courtesy. He had in his hand a cup
of horn set in silver.
Several of those with the princess dismounted—one spoke to the
stranger knight. “Fair sir, we have no cup! If you will be frank with
yours—”
Garin stooped again to the water, rinsed and filled the cup, and
carried it to the side of the white Arabian. The princess took it,
thanked him, and drank. Her eyes noted, over the rim of the cup, the
cross, proclaiming that he had fought in Palestine. Below it, on the
breast of his blue surcoat, was embroidered a bird with outstretched
wings. She drank, returned the cup and thanked the knight. He was
deeply bronzed, taller, wider of shoulder, changed here and changed
there from Garin the Squire. In his face sat powers of thought and
will that had hardly dwelled there so plainly years ago. She was not
aware that she had seen him before. She saw only a goodly knight, and
possessing, as she did, wide knowledge of the chivalry within her
princedom, wondered whence he had come. She had viewed famed knights
from many a land, but she could not recall this traveller with his
embroidered bird.
She spoke to him with her forthright graciousness. “Fair sir, are you
for Roche-de-Frêne?”
“Aye,” said Garin. “I come from the host, bearer of a letter to the
princess from my lord Stephen the Marshal. If, lady, you are she—”
“I am Audiart,” said the princess, and held out her hand for the letter.
Garin bent his knee, took from his breast the letter wrapped in silk,
and gave it. The princess drew off her glove, broke the seal and
read, sitting the white Arabian by the murmuring spring. Those with
her waited without movement that might disturb. Trees of the grove
whispered in the evening air, splashed gold from the sun lay here and
there like fairy wealth. The marshal wrote of ambushments, attacks,
repulses, conflicts where Roche-de-Frêne had been victorious. But the
two counts were together now, and the odds were great. New men had come
to them from Aquitaine. The host was great of spirit, and he, Stephen
the Marshal, would do his best. But let none be dismayed if there came
some falling back toward the town. So the frank marshal, a good general
and truth-teller.
The princess read, sat for a moment with her eyes upon the light
falling through the trees, then spoke, giving to her knights the
substance of the letter. “So it runs, sirs! So the wheel turns and
turns, and no mind can tell—But the mind may be courageous, though it
knows not the body’s fortunes.”
She folded the marshal’s letter, put it within her silken purse, and
drew on her glove. She spoke to Garin. “How do they call you, sir? Are
you man of ours?”
“I am your man, lady. I am Garin, younger brother of Foulque of
Castel-Noir, and I am likewise called Garin of the Golden Island.”
“Ride beside us to the town,” said the princess, “and give tidings of
the host.”
Garin mounted Noureddin. Rainier bore his helmet and shield. The
company left the grove for the open road. The road and all the earth
lay in the gold of evening, and in the distance, lifted against the
clear sapphire of the east, was Roche-de-Frêne. Garin rode beside
the princess and gave the news of the host. She questioned with keen
intelligence, and he answered, it seemed, to her liking.
When she had gained what she wished, she rode for a time in silence,
then, “I knew not that Foulque of Castel-Noir had a brother.”
“Years ago,” said Garin, “I took the cross and went to Palestine. This
summer I came home and found the land afire. With two score men I left
Castel-Noir, and with them joined the marshal and the host.”
“He speaks of you in his letter and gives you high praise. It is Lord
Stephen’s way to praise justly.”
“I would do my devoir,” said Garin.
Roche-de-Frêne lay before them. Castle and town and all the country
roundabout were bathed by a light golden and intense. “_Garin de l’Isle
d’Or_,” said the princess. “There is a troubadour named so—and he
sang, too, in the land beyond the sea. Are you he?”
“Yes.”
“You sing of one whom you name the _Fair Goal_?”
“Aye, princess,” said Garin. “She is my lady.”
“Lives she in this land?”
“I know not. I have been in her presence but once—and that was long
ago. I think that she lives afar.”
“Ah,” thought the princess, “behold your poet-lover, straining and
longing toward he knows not what nor whom—save that it is afar!” Aloud
she said, “If we are besieged in Roche-de-Frêne brave songs, as well
as brave deeds, will have room.”
Turning to the south and then to the east they rode by the river and so
came to the fosse, ramparts, and towers, guardians of the bridge-head,
and then upon the bridge itself. Right and left they saw the gilded
water, in front the hill of Roche-de-Frêne, with, for diadem, the
strong town walled and towered, and high and higher yet, the mighty
castle. The horses’ hoofs made a deep sound, then they were away from
the bridge and climbing the road to the river-gate. A horn was winded,
clear and silver. Now they were riding through the streets, filled
with folk. Garin thought of an autumn day, and looked at the tower of
the cathedral, higher now than then.... The street climbed upward, the
castle loomed, vast as a dream in the violet light.
“The castle will give you lodging, sir knight,” said the princess.
Here was the moat, across it Red Tower and Lion Tower. Garin looked
up at the great blue banner, and then along the battlements to where
waved the green of the garden trees. Again there flashed into mind that
autumn day, and that he had wondered if ever he would enter here, a
knight, and serve his suzerain.
CHAPTER XVI
GARIN AND JAUFRE
WITH a great host Montmaure encamped before Roche-de-Frêne and overran
the champaign half way around. Of the remainder, one fourth was, so
to speak, debatable ground,—now the field of the blue banner and now
that of the green and silver. The final fourth was stubbornly held by
Stephen the Marshal and the host. This gave to the east and included
the curve of the river, the bridge and its towers, and the road by
which still travelled, from unharried lands, food for the beleaguered
town.
Montmaure’s tents covered the plain. Off into the deep summer woods
fringed the myriad of camp-followers, sutlers, women, thieves, outlawed
persons. But the fighting mass showed from the besieged town like a
magic and menacing carpet spread half around it, creeping and growing
to complete the ring. What was for the time a great army besieged
Roche-de-Frêne.
The barons, vassals or allies of Montmaure, had each his quarter where
he planted his standard, and whence he led in assault the men who
called him lord. The Free Companies pitched among vineyards or where
had been vineyards. The spears from Aquitaine and a huge number of
bowmen covered thickly old wheat-fields, pastures, and orchards. Near
as might safely be to the walls of Roche-de-Frêne,—so near that the
din of the town might be heard, that the alarum bell, when it rang,
rocked loud in their ears,—were raised, in the fore-front of tents as
numerous as autumn sheaves, the pavilions of Count Savaric and of his
son, Count Jaufre. It was August weather, hot and thunderous.
Jaufre de Montmaure came to the door of his pavilion and looked at the
hill, the town and castle of Roche-de-Frêne. Behind the three were
storm clouds, over them storm light. The banner of the Princess Audiart
flew high. Against the grey, heaped vapour it showed like an opening
into blue sky.
Each day and every day assaults were made. One was now in progress,
directed against the bridge-head, very visible from Jaufre’s tent.
Aimeric the Bastard led it, and Aimeric was a fierce warrior, followed
by men whose only trade was fighting. The atmosphere was still, hushed,
grey, and sultry, dulling the noise that was made. The mass of the
force was not concerned.
Jaufre stood, tall and red-gold, hawk-nosed, and with a scar across
his cheek. He was without armour and lightly clothed, to meet the
still heat. Upon the ground without the tent had been spread skins of
wild beasts. He spoke over his shoulder, then, moving to these skins,
threw himself down upon them. Unconquered town and castle, the present
attack upon the bridge, the slow coming of the storm, the blue,
undaunted banner could best be noted just from here. A squire brought a
flagon of wine from the tent and set it beside him.
Out of a pavilion fifty yards away came Count Savaric, and crossed
the space to his son. With an inner tardiness Jaufre rose from the
skins and stood. “I have sent word to Gaultier Cap-du-Loup to take his
Company to Aimeric’s help,” said Count Savaric. He took a seat that
they brought him.
Count Jaufre lay down again upon the skins. There held the grey
breathlessness and light of the slow-travelling storm.
Count Savaric watched the dust-cloud that hid the bridge-head,
obscuring the strong tower and the supporting works that Roche-de-Frêne
had built and, with the aid of its encamped host, yet held against all
assault.
But Jaufre regarded moodily the walled town and the castle. He spoke.
“This tent has stood here a month to-day, and we have buried many
knights.”
“Just,” answered Count Savaric. “Barons and knights and a host of the
common people. A great jewel is a costly thing!”
“I miss my comrade, Hugues le Gai. And Richard will not lightly take
the loss of Guy of Perpignan.”
“Duke Richard knows how jewels cost.”
Jaufre waved a sinewy hand toward Roche-de-Frêne. The half-light and
the storm in the air edged his mood. “Well, they will pay!” he said.
He lay silent for a minute, then spoke again, but more to himself than
to Count Savaric. “Until lately I took that woman yonder—” he jerked
a thumb toward the high, distant, blue banner,—”for the mere earth I
must take in hand to get the diamond of Roche-de-Frêne! So I had the
diamond, the bride that came with it was no great matter. She had no
beauty, they said. But, Eye of God! there were other women on earth!
They are plentiful. Take this one that went with the diamond, get sons
upon her, and let her be silent.... Now, I care less for the diamond, I
think, than to humble the Princess Audiart!”
Count Savaric, leaning forward, regarded the bridge-end. “Gaultier
Cap-du-Loup is there.... Ha, they send men to meet him! That may
develop—”
The castle loomed against the grey curtain of cloud. The minutiæ of
the place appeared to enlarge, intensify. Each detail grew individual,
stubborn, a fortress in itself. The whole mocked like the heaped
clouds. “Ha, my Lady Audiart!” said Jaufre, “who will not have me for
lord—who takes a sword in her hand and fights me—”
He sat up upon the skins, poured himself a cup of wine, and drank.
His father, looking still at the bridge-tower, rose with suddenness
to his feet. “The lord of Chalus and his men are going in! There must
be yonder half Stephen the Marshal’s force! The plain stirs. Ha! best
arm—”
Jaufre rose now also. There was a gleam in his eye. “Breath of God!” he
said. “I feel to-day like battle!”
His squires armed him. While they worked the trumpets blew, rousing
every segment of the camp. Trumpets answered from beyond the bridge. In
the town the alarum bell began its deep ringing. The day turned sound
and motion. Count Savaric left his tent, mounted a charger that was
brought, and spurred to the head of a press of knights. The colours of
the plain shifted to the eye; dust hung above the head of the bridge
and all the earth thereabouts; out of it came a heavy sound with
shouting. The area affected increased; it was evident that there might
ensue a considerable, perhaps a general, battle. It was as though a
small stir in the air had unexpectedly spread to whirlwind dimensions.
And all the time the sky hung moveless, with an iron tint.
They armed Jaufre in chain-mail, put over this a green surcoat worked
with black, attached his spurs, laced his helmet, gave him knightly
belt and two-edged sword, held the stirrup while he mounted the war
horse, gave him shield and spear. He looked a red-gold giant, and he
was a bold fighter, and many a man followed him willingly. He shook his
spear at the castle, and at the banner waving above the huge donjon.
“Ha, Audiart the Wise! Watch now your lord do battle!”
Around the bridge-head, where Stephen the Marshal had his host,
the battle sprang into being with an unexpectedness. There had been
meant but a heavier than ordinary support to the endangered barriers,
a stronger outward push against Aimeric the Bastard and Gaultier
Cap-du-Loup. But the tension of the atmosphere, the menace and urge,
the storm-light affected alike Roche-de-Frêne and Montmaure. Each side
threw forward more men and more. From the bridge-head the shock and
clamour ate into the plain. The mêlée deepened and spread. Suddenly,
with a trampling and shouting, a lifting of dust to the skies, the
whole garment was rent. There arrived, though none had looked for it
on this day, general battle.... The leaders appeared, barons and famed
knights. Here was the marshal, valiant and cool, bestriding a great
steed, cheering on his people, wielding himself a strong sword. The
battle was over open earth, and among the tents and quarters of the
soldiery, and against and from the cover of the works that guarded the
bridge. Now it shrieked and thundered in the space between the opposing
camps, now among the tents of Roche-de-Frêne and now among those of
Montmaure. Banners dipped and fell and rose again, were advanced
or withdrawn. There were a huge number of banners, bright-hued,
parti-coloured. They showed amid the dust like giant flowers torn from
a giant garden and tossed in air. It became a fell struggle, where
riderless war horses galloped hither and yon, and the footmen fought
hard with pike and sword, and the crossbowmen sent their bolts, and
the archers sent whistling flights of arrows. And still the clouds hung
grey, and the town and castle drawn against them watched breathlessly.
Aimar de Panemonde had joined his brother-in-arms. A brave and
beautiful knight, he rode in the onset beside Garin of the Golden
Island. The two lowered lances and came against two knights of
Montmaure. The knights were good knights, but the men from Palestine
defeated and unhorsed them. One was hurt to death, the other his people
rescued. Garin and Aimar, sweeping forward, met, by a bit of wall,
mounted men of a Free Company.... The din had grown as frightful as
if the world was crashing down. Always Montmaure might remember that
Montmaure had in field twice as many as Roche-de-Frêne. Garin and Aimar
thrust through the press by the wall, rode with other knights where
the fight was fiercest. Garin wished to encounter Jaufre de Montmaure;
he searched for the green and silver banner. But there was a wild
toss of colours, shifting and indeterminate. Moreover the day, dark
before, darkened yet further; it was not possible to see clearly to any
distance.
And then, suddenly, a knight was before him, on a great bay horse
caparisoned with green picked out with black, the knight himself in
a green surcoat. The helmet masked the face, all save the eyes. Each
combatant shook a spear and drove against the other, but a wave of
battle surging by made the course not true. The green knight’s spear
struck the edge of Garin’s shield. But the latter’s lance, encountering
the other’s casque, burst the fastening, unhelmed him. Red-gold hair
showed, hawk nose, scar across the cheek.
“Ha!” cried Garin. “I know you! Do you, perchance, know me?”
But the battle drove them apart. Here in the press was no longer a
knight in green. Garin, looking around, saw only dim struggling forms,
knights and footmen. Aimar had been with him, but the waves had borne
Aimar, too, to a distance. He lost Rainier also, and his men. Here was
the grey, resounding plain beneath the livid sky, and the battle, that,
as a whole, went against Roche-de-Frêne. His horse sank under him, cut
down by Cap-du-Loup’s men. Garin drew his sword, fought afoot. He saw
a tossed banner, heard a long trumpet-call, hewed his way where the
press was thickest. A riderless horse coming by him, trampling the
dead and the hurt that lay thickly, he caught it by the bridle and
brought it in time to Stephen the Marshal full in the midst of that
seething war. “Gramercy!” cried Stephen, and swung himself into saddle.
Roche-de-Frêne rallied, swept toward Montmaure’s coloured tents.
Overhead the thunder was rolling.
Garin, his back to a heap of stones, fought as he had fought in the
land over the sea. A bay horse came his way again. Jaufre de Montmaure,
unhelmed, towered above him, sword in hand. Garin’s casque was without
visor; his features showed, and in the pallid light his blue surcoat
with the bird upon the breast. “Will you leave your horse?” quoth
Garin. “It were better chivalry so.”
“I meet you the second time to-day. Moreover we encountered a fortnight
ago, in the fight by the river. Beside that,” said Jaufre, “there is
something that comes back to me—but I cannot seize it! Before I slay
you, tell me your name.”
“Garin of the Golden Island.”
Jaufre made a pause. “You are the troubadour?”
“Just.”
“So that Richard knows not that I cut you down!” said Jaufre, and
struck with his sword.
But not for nothing had Garin trained in the East. The blade that
should have bitten deep met an upward glancing blade. The stroke was
turned aside. Jaufre made a second and fiercer essay—the sword left
his hand, came leaping and clattering upon the heap of stones. “Eye of
God!” swore Jaufre and hurled himself from his war horse.
“Take your sword!” said Garin. “And yet once, where I was concerned,
you lied, making oath that I struck you from behind and unawares—”
“Who are you with your paynim play? Who are you that I seem to know?”
“I was not knight, but squire—when I tied your hands with your horse’s
reins!”
A deeper red came to Montmaure’s face, the veins stood out upon his
brow, his frame trembled. “Now I remember—! Flame of Hell! You are
that insolent whom I sought—”
“I flew from your grasp, and I wintered well in Palestine.—And still
you injure women!”
Jaufre lunged with the recovered sword. “I will kill you now—”
“That is as may be,” said Garin, and began again the paynim play.
But he was not destined to have to-day Jaufre’s death upon him, nor to
spill his own life. With shouting and din, through the blackening air,
Count Savaric swept this way, a thousand with him. The mêlée became
wild, confused and dream-like. Jaufre sprang backward from the sword,
like a serpent’s darting tongue, of Garin of the Golden Island. The
Lord of Chalus pushed a black steed between and with a mace struck
Garin down. He sank beside the heap of stones, and for a time lost
knowledge of the clanging fight. It went this way and it went that. But
the host of Roche-de-Frêne had great odds against it, and faster and
faster it lost....
Garin came back to consciousness. Storm-light and failing day, sound
as of world ruin, odour of blood, oppression of many bodies in narrow
space, faintness of heat—Garin looked upward and saw through a cleft
in the battle Roche-de-Frêne upon its hill-top, and the castle grey
against the grey heaven, a looming grey dream. He sank again into the
sea and night, but when he lifted again, lifted clear. He opened his
eyes and found Aimar beside him, and Rainier.
Aimar bent to him. “What, Garin, Garin! All saints be praised! I
thought you dead—”
“I live,” said Garin. “But the day is going against us.”
He spoke dreamily, and rose to his feet. Before and above him he still
saw the grey castle. It lightened, and in a wide picture showed the
broken host and the faces of fleeing men. One came by with outspread
arms. “Lord Stephen is down—sore hurt or dead! Lord Stephen is down—”
Thunder crashed. Beneath its long reverberations sounded a wailing
of trumpets. This died, and there arose a savage shouting, noise of
Montmaure’s triumph. It lightened and thundered again. Other and many
trumpets sounded, not at hand but somewhat distantly, not mournfully,
but with voices high and resolved and jubilant. Garin thought that they
came from the castle, then that they were blowing in the streets of the
town, then that they sounded without the walls, from the downward slope
of the great road. Rose came into the grey of the world, salt into its
flatness.
“Blessed Mother of God!” cried Aimar. “See yonder, rescue streaming
from the gates—”
Forth from Roche-de-Frêne poured the castle garrison, poured the
burghers. They came, each man armed as he would run, at the alarum
bell, to the walls. Knight and sergeant rode; the many hasted afoot.
All the old warriors and the young warriors, whose post of duty had
been within the place, sprang forth, and followed them the host of
the townsmen, at their head Thibaut Canteleu. But at the head of
all, chivalry, foot-soldiers and townsmen, rode the Princess of
Roche-de-Frêne. Down came the torrent, in the light of the storm, down
the hill of Roche-de-Frêne, over the bridge, then widened itself and
came impetuous, with a kind of singing will, freshness, and power upon
the plain, to the battle that the one side had thought won and the
other lost.
All lethargy passed from Garin’s senses. He beheld the rallying of the
host, beheld Stephen the Marshal, sore wounded but not to death, lifted
and borne to the great tower, beheld the princess, wearing mail like
a man, a helmet upon her head, in her hand a sword. She rode a grey
destrier, and where her banner came, came courage, hope, and victory.
The battle turned. Montmaure was thrust back upon his tents. When the
tempest broke, with a great rain and whistling wind, with lightning
that blinded and pealing thunder, when the twilight came down and the
battle rested, it was Montmaure that had lost the day.
CHAPTER XVII
OUR LADY OF ROCHE-DE-FRÊNE
STEPHEN the Marshal lay in a fair chamber in the castle of
Roche-de-Frêne, very grievously hurt and fevered with his hurt. A
physician attended him, and his squires watched, and an old skilled
woman, old nurse of the Princess Audiart, sat beside his bed. Sometimes
Alazais, with the Lady Guida, came to the room, stood and murmured
pitiful words. Through the windows, deep set in the thick wall,
entered, through the long day, other sound, not pitiful. At times it
came as well in the long night. Montmaure might assault three, four
times during the day and, for that he would wear out the defenders,
strike again at midnight or ere the cock crew.
Montmaure had so many fighting men that half might rest through the
day or sleep at night while their fellows wore down Roche-de-Frêne.
Count Jaufre had ridden westward and northward,—after the day of the
wounding of Stephen,—and coming to Autafort where was Duke Richard,
had procured, after a night of talk and song, dawn mass, and a
headlong, sunrise gallop between the hills, the gift of other thousands
of men wherewith to pay the cost of the jewel. Normans, Angevins, men
of Poitou and Gascony, Englishmen, soldiers of fortune, and Free
Companions—they followed Jaufre de Montmaure to Roche-de-Frêne and
swelled the siege. They were promised great booty, plenary license when
the town was sacked, a full meal for the lusts of the flesh.
The host defending Roche-de-Frêne grew smaller, the host grew small and
worn. Vigilance that must never cease to be vigilant, attack by day and
by night, many slain and many hurt, death and wounding and, at last,
disease—and yet the host held the bridge-head and the bridge, made no
idle threat against Montmaure, but struck quick and deep. It did what
was possible to the heroic that yet was human.... There came a day when
the entire force of Montmaure thrown, shock upon shock, against the
barriers, burst a way in. The strong towers, guardians of the bridge,
could no longer stand. The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne must draw a
shattered host across the river, up the hill of Roche-de-Frêne, and in
at the gates to the shelter of the strong-walled town.
It was done; foot by foot the bridge was surrendered, foot by foot
the host brought off. From hillside and wall the archers and the
crossbowmen sent their bolts singing through the air, keeping back
Montmaure.... Company by company, division by division, the gates were
passed; when the host was within, they closed with a heavy sound. Gate
and gate-towers and curtains of walls high and thick—the armed town,
the huge, surmounting castle, looked four-square defiance to the
Counts of Montmaure. Now set in the second stage of this siege.
Montmaure held the roads to and from Roche-de-Frêne. Montmaure lay
as close as he might lie and escape crossbow bolts and stones flung
by those engines caused to be constructed by men of skill in the
princess’s pay. From the walls, look which way you might, you saw the
coils of Montmaure. He lay glittering, a puissant dragon, impatient
to draw his folds nearer, impatient to tighten them around town
and castle, strangle, and crush! To hasten that final hour he made
daily assay with tooth and claw. Sound of fierce assault and fierce
repulse filled great part of time. The periods between of repose, of
exhaustion, of waiting had—though men and women went about and spoke
and even laughed—the feeling of the silence of the desert, a blank
stillness.
The spirit of the town was good—it were faint praise, calling it that!
Gaucelm the Fortunate, Audiart the Wise, and their motto and practice,
I BUILD, had lifted this princedom and this town, or had given room for
proper strength to lift from within. Now Thibaut Canteleu supported
the princess in all ways, and the town followed Thibaut. Audiart the
Wise and Roche-de-Frêne fought with a single will. And Bishop Ugo made
attestation that he wished wholly the welfare of all. He preached in
the cathedral; he passed through the town with a train of churchmen and
blessed the citizens as they hurried to the walls; he mounted to the
castle and gave his counsel there. The princess listened, then went
her way.
Lords, knights, and squires, the chivalry of Roche-de-Frêne, was hers.
They liked a woman to be lion-hearted, and they forgot the old name
that had been given her. Perhaps it was no longer applicable, perhaps
it had never, in any high degree, been applicable. Perhaps there had
been some question of fashion, and a beauty not answered to by the eyes
of many beholders, a thing of spirit, mind, and rarity. Her vassals,
great and less great, gave her devout service; they trusted her, warp
and woof. She had a genius and a fire that she breathed into them and
that aided to heroic deeds.
Garin of the Golden Island did high things in the siege of
Roche-de-Frêne. Where almost all were brave, where each day deeds
resounded, he grew to have a name here for exquisiteness of daring
as he had had it in the land beyond the sea.... He found himself,
in one of those periods of stillness between assaults, alone by the
watch-tower above the castle garden. He had left Aimar at the barbican,
Rainier he had sent upon some errand. It was nearing sunset, and the
trees in the garden had an autumn tint. The year wheeled downward.
Garin, mounting the watch-tower, found upon the summit a mantled
figure, leaning against the battlement overlooking the wide prospect. A
moment, and he saw that it was the princess and would have withdrawn.
But Audiart called him back. In the garden below waited a page and an
attendant of whom the princess was fond—the dark-eyed girl who told
stories well. But for the rest there held a solitude. She had come
from the White Tower to taste this quiet and to look afar, to bathe
her senses in this stillness after clamour, and to feel overhead the
enemyless expanse.
“You are welcome, Sir Garin of the Golden Island!” she said, and turned
toward him. “I watched you lead the sally yesterday. No brave poet ever
made men more one with him than you did then—”
Garin came to her side, bent and kissed her mantle edge where her arm
brought it against the battlement. “Princess of Roche-de-Frêne!” he
said, “watching you, in this war, all men turn brave and poets.”
He had spoken as he felt. But, “No!” said the Princess Audiart. “No man
turns what he is not.” She looked again at the wide prospect. “My heart
aches,” she said, “because of all the misery! At times I would that I
knew—”
She rested her brow upon her hands. The sun touched the mountains,
jagged and sharp, shaped long ago by central fires. The castle and
town of Roche-de-Frêne were bathed in a golden light. The princess
uncovered her eyes. “Well! we travel as we may, or as the inner will
doth will.—How long do you think that this castle will go untaken by
Montmaure?”
“I think that it will go forever untaken by Montmaure.”
“He is strong—he has old strength.... But I came to the garden and the
watch-tower not to think of that and of how the battle goes.... Look at
the violet stealing up from the plain.”
“In the morning comes the sun once more! I believe in light.”
“Yea! so do I.” She looked from the cloud-shapes of the western sky to
the clear fields of the east and the deeps overhead. Her gaze stayed
there a moment, then dropped, a slow sailing bird, to the garden trees
below the tower, the late flowers, and the sunburned turf. “The autumn
air.... I like that—have always liked it.... In the hurly-burly of
this siege, you think yet of the Fair Goal?”
“Yes, lady.”
“Listen to the convent-bells! That is the Convent of Saint Blandina....
Pierol, down there, has a lute. I am tired. I would rest for an hour
and forget blood and crying voices. I would think of fairer things.
I would forget Montmaure. Let us go down under the trees, and I will
listen to your singing of your Fair Goal.”
They descended the tower-stair and came into the garden. Here was a
tall cypress and a seat beneath it for the princess, and a lower one
for the singer. Pierol gave the lute, then with the dark-eyed girl drew
back into the shade of myrtles. Garin touched the strings, but when he
sang it was of love itself.
The Princess Audiart listened, wrapped in her mantle. When the song was
ended, “That is of love itself, and beautiful it was!—Now sing of
your own love.”
Garin obeyed. When it was done, “That is loveliness!” said the
Princess. “This very moment that fair lady has you, doubtless, in her
thought.”
“She whom I sing, lady, and call the Fair Goal, has never seen me. She
knows not that such a man lives.”
“What!” exclaimed the princess and turned upon him. “You have seen her
once, and she has not seen you at all! You know not her true name nor
her home, and she knows not that you are in life! Now, by my faith—”
She broke off, sitting staring at him with a strangely vivid face. “I
have heard troubadours sing of such loves,” she said slowly, “but I
have not believed them. Such loves seemed neither real, nor greatly
desirable to be made real. It was to me like other pretences.... But
you, Sir Garin of the Golden Island, I hold to be honest—”
Garin laid the lute upon the earth beside him. He looked at the trees
of the garden, and he seemed to see again a nightingale that flew
from shade to shade and sang with a sweetness that ravished. “If I
know my own heart,” he said, “it loves with reality!” And as he spoke
came the first confusion, strangeness, and doubt, the first sense of
something new, or added. It was faint—so underneath that only the
palest dawn-light of it came over the horizon of the mind—so far
and speechless that Garin knew not what it was, only divined that
something was there. Whatever recognition occurred was of something not
unpleasing, something that, were it nearer, might be known for wealth.
Yet there was an admixture of pain and doubt of himself. He fell
silent, faint lines between his brows.
The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne likewise sat without speaking. A colour
was in her cheek and her eyes had strange depths. There was softness in
them, but also force and will. She looked a being with courage to name
her ends to herself and power to reach them.
The dusk was coming, the small winged creatures that harboured in the
castle garden were at their vesper chirping. The page Pierol and the
dark-eyed girl whispered among the myrtles.
The princess rose. “I am not so tired nor so melancholy now! I thank
you for your singing, Sir Garin.”
“I would, my princess,” answered Garin, “that, like the singers of old,
I might build walls where they are broken! I would that, with armèd
hand, I might bring you victory!”
“One paladin alone no longer does that,” said Audiart. “If we win, we
all have part—you and Sir Aimar and Lord Stephen, for whom I grieve,
and all the valiant chivalry and those who fight afoot. And Thibaut
Canteleu and every brave townsman. And the women who are so brave,
ready and constant. And the children who hush their crying. All have
part—all! Account must be taken, too, of my father’s jester, who, the
other day, penned a cartel to Montmaure. He tied it to an arrow and
shot it from the point of highest danger. And it was a scullion who
threw down the ladder from the northern wall. All share. The value is
in each!”
“And you, my Lady Audiart, have you no part?”
“I take account of myself as well. Yes, I, too, have part.”
She turned her face toward the myrtles. “Come, Pierol—Maeut!” then
spoke again to Garin of the Golden Island. “It seems to me sad that
the Fair Goal, whoever she be, wherever she bides, should know naught
of you! Did you perish to-morrow in Roche-de-Frêne, her tears would
not flow. If she were laughing, her laughter would not break. No sense
of loss where is no sense of possession! This siege never threats her
happiness—so little do you know of each other!” Her voice had a faint
note of scorn, with something else that could not be read.
“That is true,” said Garin, and was once more conscious of that appeal
beyond the horizon, under seas. He felt that there had been some birth,
and that it was a thing not unsweet or passionless. It seemed other
than aught that had come before into his life. And yet, immediately,
he saw again and loved again the inaccessible, veiled figure, the
traveller from far away,—it had fixed itself in his mind that she was
a traveller from far away,—the lady who had been the guest of Our Lady
in Egypt! He loved, he thought, more strongly, if that might be, than
before. And again came the note of pain and bewilderment. “It is true,
my princess! And still I think that in some hidden way—hidden to her
and to me—she knows and answers!” He took the lute from the grass
and drew from it a deep and thrilling strain. “So,” he said, “is the
thought of her among my heart-strings.”
The princess drew her mantle about her. “Let us go,” she said.
“To-night I hold council. There is a thing that must be decided,
whether to do it or not to do it.”
They left the garden, Maeut and Pierol following.
Garin was not among the barons and the knights in the great hall when
the council was held. He might have been so, but he chose absence.
The castle was so vast—there were so many buildings within the ring
of its wall—that it lodged a host. He, with Aimar, their squires and
men-at-arms, had quarters toward the northern face. Here he came, there
being a half moon, and all the giant place in black and silver. But he
did not enter his lodging or call to Aimar or to Rainier. He went on to
where a wooden stair was built against the wall. Here stood a sentinel
to whom he gave the word, then, passing, climbed the stair. At the top
was space where twenty might stand, and a catapult be worked. Here,
too, a soldier kept guard. Garin gave him good-evening, and the man
recognized him.
“Sir Garin of the Black Castle, I was behind you in the sally
yesterday! Thumb of Saint Lazarus! yonder was enough to make dead blood
leap!”
Garin gave him answer, then crossed to the battlements, and leaning
his folded arms upon the stone, looked forth into the night. This
angle of the castle turned from the crowded town. The wall was built
on sheer rock, and below the rock was the moat; beyond the moat rose
scattered houses, and then the ultimate strong wall enclosing all, town
and castle alike. And below, on the plain, was Montmaure, islanding
Roche-de-Frêne.
The autumn air struck cool. Montmaure had camp-fires flaring here and
flaring there, making red-gold blurs in the night. Garin, watching
these, came, full-force, upon an awareness of fresh misliking for
Montmaure—for Jaufre de Montmaure; misliking so strong that it came
close to hatred. He had misliked him before, calling him private no
less than public foe. But that feeling had been tame to this.
The inner atmosphere thickened and darkened. Could he have forged
material lightning, Jaufre might then have perished. He stood staring
at the red flare upon the horizon. His lips moved. “Jaufre, Jaufre!
would you have the princess?”
The autumn wind blew against him. Overhead, the moon came out from
clouds and blanched the platform where he stood and the long line of
the wall. He turned, and looking to the huge castle, saw the rays
silver the White Tower. He knew that this was where the princess lived.
Hate went out of Garin’s heart and out of his eyes. “What is this,” he
cried, but not aloud, “what is this that has come to me?”
He stayed a long while on the platform, that was now in light and
now in shadow, for the sky had fleets of clouds. But at last he said
good-night to the pacing sentinel, and, descending the stair, went to
his lodging. Here, before the door, watched one of his own men. “Has
Sir Aimar returned, Jean the Talkative?”
“No, lord,” said Jean from Castel-Noir. “He sent to find you, but no
one knew where—It seems that all the lords and famous knights have
been called into hall. Moreover, there are townsmen in the great court,
and the mayor is inside with the lords. The bishop came up the hill at
supper-time with a long train. There was a monk here, an hour agone,
who said that there had been a miracle down there in the cathedral.
One Father Eustace, who is very holy, was kneeling before Our Lady of
Roche-de-Frêne, and he put up his hands to her, like a child to his
mother, and he said ‘Blessed, Divine Lady, when will Roche-de-Frêne
have peace and happiness?’ Then, lord, what favour was granted to the
holy man! Our Lady’s lips opened smilingly, and words came out of them
in a sweet and gracious voice, to this effect: ‘When those two wed.’
Holy Eustace fell in a swoon, so wonderful was the thing, and when he
came to went to my lord the bishop. Whereupon—”
But, “Talk less, Jean—talk less!” said Sir Garin, and went by,
leaving Jean staring. Within the house, stretched upon the floor of
the great lower room, lay his men asleep. They needed sleep; all in
Roche-de-Frêne knew the strain of watching overtime, of fighting by day
and by night. Two only whispered in a corner, by a guttering candle.
These springing up as Garin entered proved to be Rainier and the
younger squire of Aimar, the elder being with his master. “Stay till I
call you,” said Garin to Rainier, and passing between the slumbering
forms, ascended the stair to the chamber above. Here, before a small
window was drawn a bench. He sat down, and looked forth at the moon
passing from cloud to cloud.
Eight years ago he, like Father Eustace, had knelt before Our Lady of
Roche-de-Frêne and asked for a sign.... Of his age, inevitably, in a
long range of concerns, Garin had not formerly questioned miracles.
They occurred all the time, sworn to by Holy Church. But now, and
passionately enough, he doubted that Father Eustace lied.
Here, sometime later, Aimar found him. “Why did you not come to the
hall? Saint Michael! It had been worth your while!”
“I know not why I did not come.... I have been on the walls—I think
that I have been struck by the moon.... What was done in hall?”
Aimar stood beside him. “This princess—I have not seen another like
her in the world!”
“She came from fairyland and the wise saints’ land and the bravest
future land.—What was done?”
“Have you heard of the miracle of Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne?”
“I have heard of it. I do not believe it.”
“Speak low!” said Aimar. “Bishop Ugo related it with eloquent lips.”
“Bishop Ugo is Montmaure’s man.”
“Speak lower yet!... Perchance he thinks that Montmaure is his man.”
“Perchance he does. Let them be each other’s. What was answered?”
“The princess rose and spoke. She said that there were so many twos in
the world that we must remain in doubt as to what two the Blessed Image
meant.”
“Ha!” cried Garin, and laughed out.
“So,” said Aimar, “did we all—barons, knights, and no less a soul than
Thibaut Canteleu. But the bishop looked darkly.”
“No doubt Father Eustace will presently be vouchsafed an
explanation!—Light wed darkness, and Heaven approve!—Ha! what then,
is Heaven?”
“But then Ugo became smooth and fine, and wove a sweet garland of words
for the wise princess. And so, for this time, that passed.—Came that
which the council had been called to judge of. Heralds from Montmaure,
appearing this morning before the river-gate, asking for parley, were
blindfolded and brought to her in hall.”
Garin turned. “What said Jaufre de Montmaure?”
“What is wrong with you, Garin of the Golden Island? Heaven forfend
your sickening with the fever!—Montmaure offers a truce from sunrise
to sunrise, offers, moreover, to pitch pavilions two bow shots from
the walls. Then, saith the two of him,—or rather saith Jaufre with
a supporter signed by Count Savaric,—then let this be done! Let the
Princess of Roche-de-Frêne, followed by fifty knights, and Count Jaufre
de Montmaure, followed by fifty, meet with courtesy and festival before
these pavilions—the end, the coming face to face, the touching hands,
the speaking together of two who never yet have had that fortune. So,
perchance, a different music might arise!”
“How might that be? Her soul does not accord with his.” Garin left the
window, paced the room, came back to the flooding moonlight. “What said
the princess?”
“She gave to all in hall the words of the heralds and asked for
counsel. Then this baron spoke and that knight and also Thibaut
Canteleu, and they spoke like valiant folk, one advising this course
and one that. And Bishop Ugo spoke. Then the princess stood up, thanked
all and gave decision.”
“She will take her knights, and with courtesy and festival she will
meet and touch hands and speak with Jaufre, there by his pavilions?”
“Just,” said Aimar.... “Do you know, Garin, that when you make poems of
the Fair Goal, you make men see a lady not unlike the princess of this
land?”
CHAPTER XVIII
COUNT JAUFRE
THE day was soft and bright, neither hot nor cold, and at the
mid-morning. Half-way between the walls of Roche-de-Frêne and the host
of Montmaure, in a space clear of any cover that might be used for
ambushes, rose a blue pavilion, a green and silver pavilion, and one
between that carried these colours blended. Before the blue pavilion
hung a banner with a blue field and the arms of Roche-de-Frêne, before
the green and silver Montmaure’s banner; before the third pavilion
the two ensigns were fixed side by side. Those who had pitched the
pavilions and made lavish preparation were servants of Montmaure.
Montmaure was the host this day. Led blindfold into Roche-de-Frêne,
through the streets and in at the castle gate, had gone four great
barons, hostages for the green and silver’s faith.
A trumpet sounded from the town. A trumpet answered for Montmaure.
The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne rode through the gates upon her white
Arabian. Behind her came two ladies, Guida and Maeut, and after these
rode fifty knights. All wound down the hillside that was pitted and
scarred and strewn with many a battle token. To meet them, started from
the tented plain fifty knights of Montmaure, and at their head Count
Jaufre. Count Savaric, it was known, suffered yet at times with the
wound he had got in the spring from Stephen the Marshal. It seemed that
it was so in the week of this meeting. He was laid in his tent in the
hands of his leech. But by cry of herald he had made known that his
son’s voice and presence were his own. The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne
would meet in Count Jaufre no less a figure than the reigning count.
Thus Jaufre rode alone at the head of the fifty knights.
He rode a great steed caparisoned as for a royal tourney. He himself
wore mail beneath a surcoat of the richest samite, but he had
embroidered gloves, not battle gauntlets, and in place of helmet a cap
sewn with gems and carrying an eagle feather. The one train came down
the hill, the other crossed the level, overburned, and trodden earth.
The two met with fanfare of trumpets and caracoling of steeds and
chivalrous parade, close at hand the coloured pavilions, overhead the
sapphire sky, around the breath of autumn.
Jaufre sprang from his courser, hastened to the Arabian and would aid
the princess to dismount. He swept his cap from his head. Red-gold
locks and hawk nose, and on the right cheek a long scar, curiously
shaped.... The Princess Audiart sat very still upon her white Arabian.
Then she smiled, dismounted, and gave Jaufre de Montmaure her gloved
hand.
Jaufre was adept, when he so chose, in _courtoisie_. He had learned
the value and the practice of it in Italy, and learned, in his
fellowship with Richard Lion-Heart, to temper it with the cool snow
of exaltation and poetry—or to seem to temper it. Richard truly did
so. To-day this one acre of earth was a court, and he was prepared to
behave to the ruler of Roche-de-Frêne as to a fair woman who chanced
to be high-born. All the past fighting should be treated with disdain
as a lovers’ quarrel! Count Jaufre had chosen a rôle, and practised
it in his mind, with a smile upon his lips. He did not forget, nor
did he wish the princess to forget, how much stronger was the host of
Montmaure, and that the siege must end in humbling for Roche-de-Frêne
and victory for Montmaure. Male strength—male strength was his! He
was prepared to show his consciousness of that. He had had lovers’
quarrels before—he could not remember how many. He remembered with
complacence that—usually—the other side had come to its knees. If
the other side had given him much trouble, made him angry, he then
repaid it. That was what was going to happen here. But, to-day, joy and
courtesies and the _gai science_! Show this Audiart the Wise the lord
she thought she could refuse! So he met the princess, curled, pressed,
and panoplied with courtliness. He out-poetized the poets, beggared the
goddesses of attributes. He strewed painted flowers before the Princess
of Roche-de-Frêne, then, his count’s cap again upon his head, led her
over the battle-cleansed space to the three pavilions.
Her ladies followed her. The hundred knights, dismounting, fraternized.
The air was sweet; over high-built town and castle, sweep of martial
plain, cloud-like blue mountains, sprang a serenest roof of heaven.
The knights gave mutual enmity a day’s holiday, and, having done a
good deed, gained thereupon a line in stature. Many of them knew one
another, name and appearance and fame. They had encountered in tourney,
in hall and bower, and in battle. Fortune had at times ranged them
on the same side. A fair number wore the sign of the crusader. Under
either banner were famous knights. The time craved fame and worshipped
it. War, love, song, and—the counter-pole—asceticism were your
trodden roads to fame. Now and then one reached it by a path just
perceptible in the wilderness; but more fell in striving to make such
a path. There were famous knights among the hundred, and by this time
none more famed than Garin of Castel-Noir, Garin of the Golden Island.
Sir Aimar de Panemonde was as brave, but Garin was troubadour no less
than knight, and about what he did, in either way, dwelt a haunting
magic.
Montmaure led the princess to the blue pavilion. It was hers, with her
ladies, to refresh herself therein. He himself crossed to the green and
silver, drank wine, and looked forth upon the mingling of knights. “Let
us see,” ran his thought, “the jade’s choice!” He saw valiant men,
known afar, or come in this siege to their kind’s admiration. “Ha!” he
said to Guiraut of the Vale who stood beside him. “She knows how to
cull her garden!”.
“She has more mind, lord, than a woman should have!”
He thought to please Count Jaufre, what he said differing not at all
from what he had heard his lord say. But Jaufre frowned. Reckoning
the princess his own, it was not for a vassal to speak slightingly!
A shifting of the knights took place. It brought into view one whom
Montmaure had not earlier seen. “Eye of God! will she bring that devil
with her?”
Guiraut followed the pointing finger. “That is the crusader and
troubadour, Garin de Castel-Noir.”
“Devil and double-devil!” burst forth Jaufre. “When I take
Roche-de-Frêne, woe to you, devil! I hope you be not slain before that
day!”
The blood was in his face, his eyes narrowed to a slit, his red-gold
locks seemed to quiver. Another movement of knights in the giant
cluster, and Garin was hid from his sight. He turned and drank again,
with an effort composed his countenance and, a signal being given, left
his pavilion. At the same moment the princess quitted the blue; they
came together to the great pavilion of the blended colours and the two
banners. Here, beneath a canopy, were chairs, with a rich carpet for
the feet. Jaufre had provided music, which played,—not loudly, nor so
as to trouble their parley.
The princess had a robe of brown samite, with a mantle of the same; but
over the robe, in place of silken bliaut, she wore fine chain-mail, and
in a knight’s belt of worked leather, a rich dagger. Her braided hair
was fastened close, with silver pins, beneath a light morion. She sat
down, looked at Jaufre opposite. “In this war, my lord, we have not met
so near before.”
“Never have we met, princess, so near before!” He bent toward her,
warm, red-gold, and mighty. This meeting was for condescension, grace,
spring touches in autumn! He found her face not so bad, better much
than long-ago rumour had painted. His memory carried pictures of her
in this siege—upon her war horse before the bridge was taken, or in
sallies from the gates, in a night-time surprise, by the flare of
torches, or upon the walls, above the storming parties. But he had seen
her somewhat distantly, never so close as this. That was the inward
reason why he had urged this meeting: he wished to see her close. He
felt the stirring of a thwart desire. He wished to embrace—since that
was what she refused—and to crush. He could admire the courage in
her—he had courage himself, though little did he know of magnanimity.
“We should have met,” he said, “before we went to war!”
Audiart regarded him with a stilly look. “Perhaps, my lord, we should
have warred where’er we met.—It has been eight years since you came
from Italy.”
“Eight years.—Eye of God! they have been full years!”
“Yes. Each has been an ocean. I remember, it was near this season.”
Jaufre’s brows bore a marking of surprise. “Tell me why you hold that
year in memory—”
The princess sat with a faint smile upon her face, her eyes upon
the world beyond the canopy. The latter stretched but overhead;
the hillside, the town, the tented plain were visible, and in the
foreground the company of knights where they were gathered beneath
olive and almond trees.
“That year, my lord count, I first saw your father, the ‘great count.’
The prince my father made a tourney in honour of a guest who, like
you, my lord, sought a bride. And by chance there came riding by
Roche-de-Frêne—that you must know, my lord, gave always frank welcome
to neighbours—Count Savaric of Montmaure. My father gave him good
welcome, and also my step-dame, Madame Alazais, and myself, and he
sat with us and watched the knights joust.... There is where you come
in, my lord! One asked why you were not with Count Savaric, for it
was known that you had lately come back to Montmaure from Italy.” She
turned her eyes upon him and smiled again. “I remember almost Count
Savaric’s words! ‘My son,’ he said, ‘would go a-hunting! Giving chase
to a doe, he outstripped his men. Then burst from a thicket a young
wolf which attacked him and tore his side. He cannot yet sit his
horse. I have left him at Montmaure where he studies chivalry, and
makes, I doubt not, chansons for princesses.’”
The blood flooded Montmaure’s brow and cheek. He stared, not at the
Princess of Roche-de-Frêne, but forth upon the train of knights. “Eye
of God!” he breathed. “That wolf—! Eye of God!”
“My lord count,” said the princess, “did you afterwards hunt down and
kill the wolf? I never heard—and I have always wished to hear.”
“No! He ran free! Heart of Mahound—!”
Light played over the princess’s face, but Jaufre, choking down the
thought of the wolf, did not note it. He opened his lips to speak
further of that eight-years-past autumn, thus brought up by chance, and
of the wolf; then thought better of it. As for Audiart, she thought,
“Vengeful so toward a poor squire who but once, and long ago, crossed
his evil will! Then what might Roche-de-Frêne hope for?”
Jaufre, regaining command of himself, signalled for wine. A page
brought rich flagons upon a rich salver. Jaufre filled a cup, touched
it with his lips, offered it to the princess. He was growing cool
again, assured as before. There was flattery, in her recalling the
moment of his return from Italy, in her remembering, across the years,
each word that had been spoken of him!
She took the cup—he noted how long and finely shaped were the fingers
that closed upon it—and drank, then, smiling, set it down. “That is a
generous wine, my lord—a wine for good neighbours!”
“It is not a wine of Montmaure but of Roche-de-Frêne,” said Jaufre.
“Save indeed that, as I have taken the fields that grew the grapes
and the town that sold the wine, it may be said, princess, to be of
Montmaure!”
Audiart the Wise sat silent a moment, her eyes upon her foe. She was
there because the need of Roche-de-Frêne sucked at her heart. But she
knew—she knew—that it would not avail! Yet she spoke, low, deep and
thrillingly. “My lord, my lord, why should we fight? Truth my witness,
if ever I wished Montmaure harm, I’ll now unwish it! Do you so, my
lord, toward Roche-de-Frêne! This sunny, autumn day—if we were at
peace, how sweet it were! This land garlanded, and Montmaure—and men
and women faring upward—and anger, hate, and greed denied—and common
good grown dearer, nearer! Ah, my Lord Count Jaufre, lift this siege,
and win a knightlier, lordlier name than warring gives—”
Jaufre broke in. “Are marriage bells ringing in your pleading, my
princess? If they ring not, all that is said says naught!”
She looked at him with a steadfast face. “Marriage bells?... Give me
all that is in your mind, my lord.”
Jaufre drank again. “Marriage bells ringing over our heads where we
stand in the Church of Saint Eustace in Montmaure.”
“_In Montmaure...._ Did you and I wed, my lord, I must come to you in
Montmaure?”
“So! I will give you escort—a thousand spears.”
“And Roche-de-Frêne?—and Roche-de-Frêne—”
“As I may conceive,” said Jaufre, “dealing with my own.”
The princess sat very still. Only her eyes moved, and they looked from
Count Jaufre to the walled town and back again. Montmaure had pushed
back his seat. He sat propping his chin with his hand, his hot gaze
upon her. “Roche-de-Frêne,” she said at last,—”Roche-de-Frêne would
have no guaranty?”
“Eye of God!” answered Jaufre. “I will not utterly destroy what comes
to me in wedlock! What interest would that serve? It shall feel
scourges, but I shall not tumble each stone from its fellow! Take that
assurance, princess!”
She sat silent. “After all,” said her thought, “you have only what you
knew you would get!” Within she knew grim laughter, even a certain
relief. Would she sacrifice or would she not, no good would come from
Montmaure to Roche-de-Frêne! Then, fight on, and since thus it was,
fight with an undivided will! Resistance rose as from sleep, refreshed.
She smiled. “I am glad that I came, my Lord of Montmaure,” she said,
and spoke in a pure, limpid, uncoloured voice. “Else, hearing from
another your will, I might not have believed—”
“Eye of God! Madame, so it is!” said Jaufre, and in mind heard the
bells of the Church of Saint Eustace, and the shouting in Montmaure.
The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne stood up in her brown samite, and sheath
of chain-mail and morion that reflected the sunbeams. “Having now your
mind, my lord count, I will return to Roche-de-Frêne!”
She signed to her train that was watching. The squires brought before
the pavilion her white Arabian and the palfreys of Guida and Maeut. The
movement spread to the knights beneath the trees.... Jaufre, rising
also, inwardly turned over the matter of how soon she had willed to
depart, to bring short this splendidly-prepared-for visit. That she
would be gone from him and any further entertainment displeased, but
was salved by the thought that she was in flight to conceal her lowered
and broken pride. He was conscious that he had not maintained his
intention of suavity, _courtoisie_. When Richard was not there, he did
not well keep down the pure savage. That talk of hers of the “wolf”
had poured oil on the red embers of a score unpaid. That the wolf was
there in presence—that he, Jaufre, did not wish to tell as much to
the world and Audiart the Wise, letting them see what score had gone
unpaid—increased the heat. It burned within Jaufre with a smouldering
that threatened flame. On the other hand, the person of this princess
pleased him more than he had looked for. And it was delightsome to
him, the taste of having made her taste him, his power, purpose, and
mode of dealing! He felt that longer stay would accomplish no more; he
was not without a dash of the artist. He, too, signed for his great
bay—for his knights to prepare to follow him from these gay pavilions.
To-morrow morn this truce would shut—unless, ere that, she sent a
herald with her plain surrender!
She was speaking, in the same crystal, uncoloured voice. “Are you so
sure, my lord, that you win? Do you always win? What were we talking
of at first? A doe that escaped from under your hand, and a wolf that
laid you low in a forest glade and went his way in safety?—My Lord of
Montmaure, I defy you! and sooner than wed with you I with this dagger
will marry Death!” She touched it where it hung at her belt, moved to
her Arabian, and sprang to the saddle.
Her following, though but a few had heard what passed between her
and Montmaure, saw that there was white wrath, and that the meeting
was shortened beyond expectation. Montmaure’s knights marked him no
less—that suddenly his mood was black. All of either banner got to
horse.
The veins of Jaufre’s brow were swollen. The company of knights forming
about the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne, the “wolf” came suddenly into his
field of vision.... The “singing knight” placed in her chosen band by
Roche-de-Frêne’s princess—the “wolf” protected by her and favoured!
Till that instant he had not thought of them together—but now with
lightning swiftness his fury forged a red link between them. He did
not reason—certainly he gave her no place in the forest, eight years
agone—but he desired, he lusted to slay the one before the eyes of the
other! He thrust out a clenched hand, he spoke with a thickened voice.
Whatever in him had note of a saving quality was passed by the stride
of its opposite.
“Ha, my Princess Audiart, that men call the Wise! I will tell you that
your wisdom will not save you—nor Roche-de-Frêne—nor yonder knight,
my foe, that I hold in loathing and will yet break upon a wheel!” He
laughed, sitting his great bay horse, and with a gesture shook forth
vengeance. “To-morrow morn, look to yourselves!”
“My Lord of Montmaure, we shall!” The princess gave command, the
train from Roche-de-Frêne drew away from the pavilions, the knights
of Montmaure and Count Jaufre. “Farewell, my lord!” cried Audiart the
Wise, “and for hospitality and frank speech much thanks! I love not
war, but, if you will have it so, I will war!”
The trumpets sounded. They who watched from the walls saw the two
trains draw apart and their own come in order up the winding road that
climbed to the town. Their own reached the gates and entered.... In the
market-place, the bell having drawn the people together, the princess
spoke to them, her voice, clear, firm, and with hint of depth beyond
depth, reaching the outermost fringing sort. She spoke at no great
length but to the purpose, then asked their mind and waited to hear it.
Raimon, Lord of Les Arbres, a great baron, the greatest vassal of
Roche-de-Frêne there present, spoke from the train of fifty, speaking
for those lords and knights and for all chivalry in Roche-de-Frêne.
“My Lady Audiart, we are your men! Hold your courage and we shall hold
ours! There is not here lord nor belted knight nor esquire who wishes
for suzerain the Counts of Montmaure! We will keep Roche-de-Frêne until
we know victory or perish!”
The captain of the crossbowmen, a giant of a man, spoke with a booming
voice. “The sergeants, the bowmen, the workers of the machines and the
foot-soldiers sing Amen! The princess is a good princess and a noble
and a wise, and no man here fails of his pay! Montmaure is a niggard
and a hard lord. We are yours to the end, my Lady Audiart!”
Thibaut Canteleu spoke for the town. “Since the world will have it that
we must have lords, give us your like for lord, my Lady Audiart! We
know what a taken and sacked town is when Montmaure takes and sacks it!
But open our gates to him at his call, and what better would we get?
Long slavery and slow pain, and our children to begin again at the foot
of the stair! So we propose to hold this town, how hard it is to hold
soever!”
A clerk, standing upon the steps that led to a house door, sent his
voice across the crowded place. “I will speak though I be excommunicate
for it! We hear of the miracle of Father Eustace, and one tells us
that God and His Mother would have our princess marry Montmaure! I do
not believe that Father Eustace knows the will of God!”
From the throng came a deep, answering note, a multitudinous humming
doubt if Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne had been truly understood. The
people looked at the cathedral tower, and they looked at the castle and
around at their town, their houses, shops, market, and guild-halls, at
the blue sky above and at their princess. The note sustained itself,
broadened and deepened, became like the sound of the sea, and said
forthright that whatever had been meant by Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne,
it was not alliance with Montmaure!
The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne and her train of knights rode through
the town and mounted to the castle. Some change in the order of those
about her brought Garin for a moment beside the white Arabian. The
princess turned her head, spoke to him. “Count Jaufre holds you in some
especial hatred. Why is that?”
“I crossed him in his will one day, long ago. He would have done an
evil thing, and I, chancing by, came between him and his prey. He it
was who caused me to flee the land.—But not alone for that day is
there enmity between us!”
“Ah!” said the princess. “Long is his rosary of ill deeds! Into my mind
to-day comes one that was long ago, and on a day like this. It comes so
clear—!”
CHAPTER XIX
THE SIEGE
MONTMAURE had wooden towers drawn even with the walls of
Roche-de-Frêne. From the tower-heads they strove to throw bridges
across, grapple them to the battlements, send over them—a continuing
stream—the starkest fighters, beat down the wall’s defenders, send
the stream leaping down into the town itself. Elsewhere, under cover
of huge shielding structures, Montmaure mined, burrowing in the earth
beneath the opposed defences, striving to bring stone and mortar down
in ruin, make a breach whereby to enter. Montmaure had Greek fire,
and engines of power to cast the flaming stuff into the town. He had
great catapults which sent stones with something of the force of
cannon-balls, and battering rams which shook the city gates. He had
archers and crossbowmen who from high-built platforms sent their shafts
in a level flight against the men of Roche-de-Frêne upon the walls.
He had a huge host to throw against the town—men of Montmaure, men,
a great number, given by Duke Richard. He had enough to fight and to
watch, and to spare from fighting and watching. He ravaged the country
and had food.
Roche-de-Frêne fought with the wooden towers, threw down the grappling
hooks and the bridges, thrust the stream back, broken and shattered
into spray. It sallied forth against those who mined, beat down and
set afire the shielding structures, drove from the field the sappers
at the walls. It had some store of Greek fire and used it; it had
engines of power and great catapults that sent stones with something
of the force of cannon-balls against those towers and scaffolds of the
foe. Roche-de-Frêne had archers and crossbowmen, none better, who from
walls and gate-towers sent shafts in level flights against the high
platforms, and in slant lines against Montmaure attacking in mass,
against men upon scaling ladders. It had men whose trade was war,
knight and squire, sergeant and footman, lord and Free Companion,—and
men whose trade was not war, but who now turned warrior, burghers
fighting for their liberties, their home and their work. But it had not
the numbers that had Montmaure. It knew double-tides of fighting and
watching. It had deep wells and an immemorially strong-flowing spring.
But food was failing—failing fast! It had heroism of man, woman, and
child. But hunger and watching and battle at last must wear the highest
spirit down, or if not the spirit, the body with which it is clothed.
It was late, late autumn—Saint Martin’s summer. The days that had
passed since that short truce and meeting with Montmaure had laid
shadows beneath the eyes of the Princess Audiart.... To-day had seen
heavy fighting and slaughter. Now it was night, and Audiart in the
White Tower knelt within the window and looked forth upon the castle
buildings, courts, towers, and walls, and upon the roofs of the town,
and the cathedral tower, and further to where showed red light of
Montmaure’s vast encampment. She had been, through the day, upon the
walls.... Her head sank upon her arms. “Jesu, and Mother Mary, and
whoever is pitiful, I, too, am weary of slaughter! A better way—a
better way—”
She stayed so for some minutes; then, lifting her head, gazed again
into the night. “Who has the key?” she said. “Duke Richard has the
key.” Presently she stood up, rested hands upon the stone sill, drew a
deep breath. Her lips parted, her glance swept the wide prospect, then
lifted to the stars. “If I have wit enough and courage enough—that
might be—” A colour crept into her face. “Was never a right way seemed
not at first most hazardous and strange—so much more used are we to
the wrong ways!”
She looked at the clusters of stars, she looked at the town below that
seemed to sigh in its restless and troubled sleep, she looked at the
dimly seen, far mountains behind which sank the stars. The cool autumn
air touched her brow. “Where all is desperate, be more desperate—and
pass!” She stretched out her hand to the night. “I will do it!”
Morning broke, a sky of rose and pearl over Roche-de-Frêne. The sun
rose, and the rays came into the chamber where was being nursed back to
life and strength Stephen the Marshal. Each day now saw improvement; as
the year ebbed, the vital force in him gained. Gaunt and spectre-pale,
he yet left his bed each day; arm over his squire’s shoulder, walked
slowly to a great chair by the window, sat there wrapped in a furred
robe, and listened to the ocean of sound that now was Roche-de-Frêne.
Sometimes the ocean had only a murmuring voice, and sometimes for long
hours it raged in storm. Stephen prayed for patience and from minute
to minute sent page and squire for news. This morn dawned in quiet;
yesterday, all day there had been storm. The sun gilded the court
beneath and the chapel front, built at angles with the great pile in
which he was lodged. He could hear the chanting of the mass. That
was ended, the sunshine strengthened, somewhere a trumpet was blown.
Stephen prayed again for patience, and despatched his squire Bertran
for authentic tidings. Bertran went, but presently returned, having met
without a page sent by the princess. She would know of Lord Stephen’s
health this morn, and if he felt strength for a visit from her and some
talk of importance. Stephen sent answer that he wished for no greater
cordial.
Audiart came, with her Maeut, who, with the squires and the old nurse,
waited in a small ante-room. That which the princess had to say wanted
no auditors other than those whom she chose—and for this matter she
would choose but few. Stephen, gaunt and drained of blood, stood to
greet her, would not sit until she had taken the chair they had placed.
She looked at him very kindly. “Lord Stephen, much would I give to see
the old Stephen here—”
“Ah, God, madam!” said Stephen, “not here would you see him, but out
there where they fight for Roche-de-Frêne.”
“Aye, that is true!”
“I shall soon be there, my Lady Audiart—a log here no longer!”
“Maître Arnaut tells me that. I talked with him before coming here. He
says that yet a few days, and you might take command.”
“As I will, princess, if you give it me—But no man lives who can
better your leading!”
“My leading or another’s, Stephen, our case is desperate. The deer
feels the breath of the hounds.... Now listen to me, and let not
strangeness startle your mind. At the brink of no further going, then
it is that we fare forth and go further!”
The sun rode higher by an hour before she left Stephen the Marshal.
She left him a flushed, half-greatly-rallied, half-foreboding man, but
one wholly servant of her and of Roche-de-Frêne’s great need,—one,
too, who could follow mind with mind, and accept daring, when daring
promised results, with simplicity.
From this chamber she went to the castle-hall and found there, awaiting
her, Thibaut Canteleu, for whom she had sent. She took him upon the
dais, her attendants clustering at the lower end of the hall, out of
hearing.
“Thibaut,” she said, “there is good hope that in a week Lord Stephen
may take again his generalship.”
“I am glad, my lady,” answered Thibaut, “for Lord Stephen, for ’tis
weary lying ill in time of war. But we have had as good a general!”
“That is as may be.... Thibaut, do you see victory for Roche-de-Frêne?”
Thibaut uttered a short groan. “My Lady Audiart, the road is dark—”
“I think that if we strain to the uttermost we may hold out yet two
months.”
“Montmaure could never do it, but for Duke Richard’s men!”
“Just.... Thibaut, Thibaut, now listen to me, and when you have heard,
speak not loudly! If this is done, it must slip through in silence.”
She spoke on for some moments, her voice low but full of expression,
her eyes upon the mayor. She ended, “And I well believe that you can
and will hold the town until there is seen what comes—”
Thibaut drew a deep breath. “My Lady Audiart, trust us, we will!” His
black eyes snapped, a laugh passed like a wave across his face that
grew ruddier. “By Peter and Paul! Now and again in life I myself have
come to places where I must see further than my fellows and dig deeper,
or they and I would perish!—This is a bold thing that you propose, my
lady, and may go to the left instead of the right! Aye! without doubt
Faint-Heart would say, ‘You follow marsh-fire and trust weight to a
straw!’”
“Yes.... In the story of things what seemed a beam has been found to be
a straw, and what seemed a straw a beam. May it be so this time!... Now
what we have talked of rests until Lord Stephen takes command.”
A week of days and nights went by, filled with a bitter fighting. But
Stephen the Marshal grew stronger, like the old iron soldier and good
general that he was. Arrived an evening when he came into hall, walking
without help, and though gaunt and pale so nearly himself that all
rejoiced. The next day he mounted horse and rode beside the princess
through the town to the eastern gate where was now the fiercest
fighting. The knights, the men-at-arms and citizens cried him welcome.
That night Audiart held full council. When morning came it was heralded
through Roche-de-Frêne that the princess had made Lord Stephen general
again.
Audiart listened to the trumpets, then with Maeut she went into the
castle garden and found there Alazais and Guida. She sat beside Alazais
beneath a tree whereon hung yet the gold leaves, and taking her
stepdame’s hand, caressed it. “Come siege, go siege!” she said, “you
rest so beauteous—!”
“Audiart! Audiart! when is anxiousness, misery, and fear going to end?
And now they say that you command that every table alike be given less
of food—”
The princess stroked the other’s wrist, smiling upon her. “You know
that you do not wish bread taken from another to be laid in your hand!”
“No, I do not wish that, but—” The tears fell from Alazais’s eyes.
“What have we done that the world should turn so black?”
“Be of cheer!” said Audiart. “The black may lighten!” She laughed at
her step-dame, and at Guida’s melancholy look. “In these earthy ways
loss has its boundary stone no less than gain! Who knows but that
to-day we turn?—Come close, Guida and Maeut, for I have something
to say to you three, and want no other—no, not a sparrow—to hear
me!” She spoke on, in a low voice, with occasionally an aiding
gesture, Maeut kindling quickly, the other two incredulous, objecting,
resisting, then, at last, catching, too, at the straw....
That morning Montmaure did not push to the assault. Viewed from the
walls, it seemed that the two counts made changes in the disposition of
the besieging host. Here battalions were drawing closer, here spreading
fan-wise.
Invest as closely as Montmaure might, Roche-de-Frêne had gotten out
now a man and now a man, with a cry for aid to the King of France, to
Toulouse and others. One had returned with King Philip’s assurance
that he would aid if he could, but harassed by revolts nearer Paris,
could not. Other messengers had made no return....
To-day there seemed a redrawing of the investing lines, a lifting and
pitching afresh of encampments. Roche-de-Frêne, beginning to know
hunger, saw, too, long forage trains come laden to its enemy. Watching,
Roche-de-Frêne thought justly that Montmaure might be meaning to rest
for a time from assaults in which he lost heavily, heavily—to rest
from assaults and lean upon starvation of his foe. Famine, famine was
his ally—famine and Aquitaine! It was the last that made him able to
serve himself with the first.
Garin, going toward the castle from the town’s eastern gate, heard in
the high street the trumpet and the cadenced notice that Stephen the
Marshal, healed of his wound, again commanded for the princess. The
people cried, “Long live the princess! Long live the marshal!” then,
silent or in talk, turned to the many-headed business of the day. In
front of Garin rose the great mass of the cathedral, wonderful against
the November sky.
As he came into the place before it, there met him Pierol, the trusted
page of the princess. “Sir Garin de Castel-Noir, I was sent in search
of you! The princess wishes to speak with you—No, not this hour! Two
hours from now, within the White Tower.”
He was gone. “Go you, also,” said Garin to the squire Rainier. “Or
wait for me here by the door. I will spend in the church one hour of
those two.”
He went from out the autumn sunshine into the dusk of the huge
interior. An altar-lamp burned, a star, and light in long shafts
fell from the jewel-hued windows. The pillars soared and upheld the
glorious roof, and all beneath was rich, dim and solemn. A few figures
knelt or stood in nave or aisle. Garin moved to where he could see the
columns brought by Gaucelm of the Star from the land beyond the sea
and set before the chapel of Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne. He knelt,
then, crossing himself, rose and took his seat at the base of a great
supporting pillar. He rested his arm upon his knee, his chin upon
his hand, and studied the pavement. He had not passed the columns
and knelt before the Virgin of Roche-de-Frêne, because in his heart
was an impulse of hostility. He did not name it, made haste to force
it into limbo, hastened to bow his head and murmur an _Ave Maria_.
Nevertheless it had made itself felt. This was the gemmed, azure-clad
Queen who wanted marriage between Montmaure and the Princess of
Roche-de-Frêne!... But doubtless it was not she—Father Eustace had
slandered her—a lying monk, Heaven knew, was no such rarity! Garin
came back into her court, but still he did not kneel, and, stretching
his arms to her, beg her favour and some sign thereof, as he had done
eight years ago. He was a graver man now, a deeper poet.
An inner strife racked him, sitting there at the base of the
pillar, emotion divided against itself, a mind bewildered between
irreconcilables, a spirit abashed before its own inconstancy. One
moment it was abashed, the very next it cried, “_But I am constant!_”
Then came mere aching effort to bring old order out of this pulsing
chaos, and then, that slipping, an unreasoning, blind and deaf,
poignant and rich, half bliss, half pain—emotions so fused that there
was no separating them, no questioning or revolt. He sat there as in a
world harmonized—then, little by little, reformed itself the discord,
the question, the passionate self-reproval for disloyalty and the
bewildering answering cry from some mist-wreathed, distance-sunken
shore, “_I am not disloyal!_” and then the query of the mind, “_How can
that be?_” Garin buried his face in his hands, sat moveless so in the
cathedral dusk. Within, there was vision, though not yet was it deep
enough. He was seeing the years through which he had sung to the Fair
Goal.
The time went by. He dropped his hands, rose, and after a genuflection
left the great church. Without, Rainier joined him. Together they
climbed the steepening street, crossed the castle moat, and entering
between Lion and Red Towers, went to the building that lodged De
Panemonde and Castel-Noir. Thence, presently, fresh of person and
attire, he came alone, and alone crossed courts and went through rooms
and echoing passage-ways and by the castle garden until he came to the
White Tower.
CHAPTER XX
THE WHITE TOWER
UPON the wide steps that led to the door he found Pierol, who, turning,
went before him through a hall or general room to a flight of stone
steps winding upward. From this he was brought into a small room where
were ladies and pages. Pierol, motioning to him to wait, vanished
through an opposite door, then in a moment reappeared. Garin, answering
his sign, went forward and, passing beneath the lintel, found himself
in the princess’s chamber.
She sat beside a table placed for the better light before the southern
window. She had been writing; as she looked up, the light behind her
made a kind of aureole for her head and long throat and slender,
energetic form. “Give you good day, Sir Garin de Castel-Noir!” She
nodded to Pierol and the girl Maeut, who left the room. Near her stood
a middle-aged, thin, scholarly-appearing man in a plain dress—her
secretary, Master Bernard. She spoke to him, giving directions. He
answered, gathered up papers from the table, and bowing low, followed
Pierol and Maeut. The princess sat on for a few moments in silence, her
forehead resting upon her hand. To Garin, standing between table and
door, the whole fair, large room, the figured hangings, the beamed
ceiling, the deep-set windows, the floor where were strewn autumn buds
and shoots from the garden, seemed a rich casket filled with a playing
light. The light had a source. Garin felt a madness, a desire to sink
wholly into the light, a wish to unclasp once and forever the hold of
the past, accompanied by a dizzying sense that in no wise might it be
done. The inner man put steadying hands upon himself, forced himself to
look into the eye of the day and of duty.
The princess let fall her hand, turned slightly in her chair, and faced
him. Her look was still and intent; behind it stood a strong will,
an intelligence of wide scope. There might seem, besides, a glow,
a tension, an urging as of something that would bloom but was held
back, postponed, dominated. She spoke and her voice had a golden and
throbbing quality. “I have sent for you, Sir Knight, because I wish to
ask of some one great service, and it has seemed to me that you would
answer to my asking”—
Garin came nearer to her. “I answer, my lady.”
“You will be, and that for long days, in great peril. Peril will
begin this very eve. I do not wish now to tell you the nature of your
adventure—or to tell you more than that it is honourable.”
“Tell me what you will, and no more than that.”
“Then listen, and keep each step in mind—and first of all, that the
matter is secret.”
“First, it is secret.”
“At dusk a jongleur will come to your lodging, bringing with him a
dress like his own, his lute and other matters. Clothe yourself like
him, cut your hair closer, somewhat darken your face. Let him aid you;
he is faithful. Wear a dagger, but no other arms nor armour. You will
go, too, afoot. Knightly courage you will need, but keen wit must do
for hauberk and destrier, sword and lance. When you are dressed you are
henceforth, for I know not how many days or weeks, the jongleur Elias
of Montaudon.”
“Thus far, I have it in mind.—_Elias of Montaudon._”
“You know the postern called the rock-gate, on the northern face,
between Black Tower and Eagle Tower?”
“Yes.”
“When the bells are ringing complin you will go there alone. You will
wait, saying naught to any who may come or go. If you are challenged
you will say that you are there upon the princess’s errand, and you
will give the word of the night. It is _Two Falcons_.”
“At complin. _Two Falcons._”
“You will wait until there comes to you one mantled. That one will give
you a purse, and will say to you, ‘Saint Martin’s summer.’ You will
answer ‘Dreams may come true.’”
“‘_Saint Martin’s summer._’—‘_Dreams may come true._’”
“The purse you will take and keep—keep hidden. It will be for need.
That mantled one you are to follow, and, without question, obey.—Now
tell over each direction.”
Garin told, memory making no slip. He ended, “I am to follow that one
who, giving me a purse, says _Saint Martin’s summer_. He commands and I
obey—”
“As you would myself,” said the princess.
She turned in her chair, looked beyond him out of the window upon
tower and roof and wall and the November sky of a southern land. “I
hold you true knight, true poet, true man,” she said. “Else never
should I give you this charge! Keep that likewise in memory, Sir
Garin de Castel-Noir, Sir Garin de l’Isle d’Or!—And now you will go.
Tell Sir Aimar de Panemonde that you have been set a task and given
an errand full of danger, but that, living, he may see you again by
Christmas-tide. Tell no one else anything.”
“Going on such an errand and so long,” said Garin, “and one from which
there may be no returning, I would kiss your hands, my liege—”
She gave her hand to him. He knelt and kissed the slender, long,
embrowned fingers. As they rested, that moment, upon his own hand,
there came into his mind some association. It came and was gone like
distant lightning, and he could not then give it name or habitation.
He rose and stepped backward to the door. “God be with you, my Lady
Audiart—”
“And with you,” the princess answered gravely.
Outside the White Tower he paused a moment and looked about him, his
eyes saying farewell to a place that in actuality he might not see
again. It was the same with the garden through which he presently
passed. Now it was sunshine, but he thought of it in dusk, the eve when
he had been there with the princess. Later in the day he found Aimar,
and told him as much as he had been told to tell and no more. The two
brothers-in-arms spent an hour together, then they embraced and Aimar
went to the men of both, defending the city wall. When the sun hung low
in the west, Garin sent there also his squire Rainier. The sun sank and
he stood at his window watching.
Around the corner came a man in brown and yellow like autumn leaves.
Slung from his neck by a red ribbon he had a lute, and under his arm a
bundle wrapped in cloth. He reached the entrance below, spoke to the
porter and vanished within. Garin, turning from the window, answered
presently to a knock at the door. “Enter!” There came in, the room
being yet lit by the glow from the western sky, the brown and yellow
man. He proved to be a slender, swarthy person, with long, narrow eyes
and a Moorish look. “I speak,” he asked, “to the right noble knight
and famed troubadour Sir Garin of the Black Castle—also called of the
Golden Island?”
“I am Sir Garin. I know you for the jongleur, Elias of Montaudon.”
“That poor same, fair sir!—Moreover I have here that which will make
in the castle of Roche-de-Frêne two of me!” He laid the bundle on a
bench, and slipping the ribbon from his neck placed there the lute as
well. “When I think that from so famous a troubadour I am set to make a
poor jongleur, I know not how to take my task! But princesses are to be
obeyed, and truly I would do much for this one! And for your comfort,
lord,—only for that and never for vain-glory,—I would have you to wit
that Elias of Montaudon hath a kind of fame of his own!” As he spoke he
untied the bundle. “It is an honour that you should deign to wear me,
so to speak, in whatever world you are repairing to—and Saint Orpheus
my witness, I know not where that world may be! So, noble sir, here is,
at your pleasure, a holiday suit—only a little worn—and a name no
more frayed than is reasonably to be expected!”
“Gramercy for both,” answered Garin. “How have you fared between the
days of Guy of Perpignan and now?”
He took the lute from the bench, swept the strings, and sang, though
not loudly:—
“In the spring all hidden close,
Lives many a bud will be a rose!
In the spring ’tis crescent morn,
But then, ah then, the man is born!
In the spring ’tis yea or nay,
Then cometh Love makes gold of clay!
Love is the rose and truest gold,
Love is the day and soldan bold—”
He owned a golden voice. The notes throbbed through the room. The last
died and he laughed. “That song of Guy of Perpignan!—I heard it first
from you.”
The jongleur stood staring. “I have been in many a castle hall and
bower, at an infinity of tournaments, and two or three times where
baron and knight were warring in earnest. Up and down and to and fro
in the world I practice my art, riding when I can and walking when I
must! But when I had the honour of striking viol, lute or harp before
you, sir, I do not recall. Being so famous a knight and poet, I should
remember—. And then men say that you have been long years in the land
over the sea!”
“It was before I went to the land over the sea.—But come! the sky is
fading, it is growing dusk. Light the candles there, and begin to turn
me into your other self!”
The candles lighted, the jongleur shook out the clothing he had
brought. “Earth-brown and leaf-green,” he said, “with a hooded mantle
half the one and half the other.—Now, noble sir, I can play the squire
as well as the squire himself!”
He took from Garin the garments which the latter put off, gave him
piece by piece those that were to transform. The two, jongleur and
knight and troubadour, were much of a height. Garin was the more
strongly built, but the garb of the time had amplitude of line and fold
and Elias of Montaudon’s holiday dress fitted him well enough. “Of
deliberation and answering to command,” said the jongleur, “it has been
slightly rent and patched here and discoloured there. If the Blessed
Virgin herself asked me why, I could not tell her! I have also a phial
of a brown stain which, lightly used, makes for a darker complexion
than the sun has painted you with.... Sir Garin of the Golden Island,
in hall and bower and wherever chivalry gathers, I have sung songs of
your making. But when and where have I sung _to_ you? I have curiosity,
without which life would be a dull dream! Give largesse, sir, in the
coin of a wiser world—that is to say, give knowledge!”
Garin smiled. “I was esquire then, and you sat by a boulder in the
forest, not so many miles from Roche-de-Frêne and discoursed of
jongleur merits and of an ingrate master, to wit, Guy of Perpignan!
Also you sang certain lines of his, and spoke sapiently of Lord Love.
That, too, was an autumn day, and when I was a squire I wore brown and
green.”
The jongleur lifted both hands and beat a measure upon his brow. “Ha!
and by Saint Arion and his dolphin you did! A proper squire, singing
a hunting stave—Ha!” cried Elias of Montaudon, “I have heard sing a
master-poet before he was poet!
“‘In the spring ’tis crescent morn,
But then, ah then, the man is born!’
though, certainly, it was autumn!... I remember as clear as crystal! I
was asleep, and you waked me, coming up on a great horse—”
“Just so. I left the saddle and let Paladin graze, and we talked.”
“Clearer than Saint Martha’s well!... The talk was of love, and that
you had not yet a lady—By all the saints!” said Elias, “how soon must
that have been remedied!”
Garin laughed, but there was rue in his laughter. He suddenly grew
grave, the rock-gate before his mind’s eye. “Come! let us have this
stain. Shorten, too, my hair.” He took up Elias’s lute and tried its
strings. “Play the jongleur—play the jongleur. Every man has in his
_garde-robe_ every dress! The king can play the beggar, and the beggar
play the king. Be quick, courageous, and certain in the change—so is
the trumpet answered!” He put the lute’s ribbon over his head. “It
falls night. Hasten, Elias of Montaudon, and while you work tell me
your own life these six years! If I make another of you, I will make it
like!”
The man in brown and yellow worked.... At last there stood in the
lighted room, not a knight and crusader and troubadour, but a jongleur
with a brown face, with a somewhat tarnished brown and green attire,
with a lute slung by a red ribbon, on his head a cap with a black
cock’s feather, at his belt a dagger and sheath of the best Italian
make. Dagger and sheath the knight had supplied. It was now full
night, and not so long before, from every house of the religious in
Roche-de-Frêne, complin would ring. The jongleur in brown and yellow
took his leave. He had his fee, he said; likewise a command as to a
bridled tongue. The jongleur in brown and green saw him go, then put
out the candles, pushed a bench to the window, and sitting down waited
for the signal next in order.... At last the bells spoke.
Garin, rising, left the room and descended the stair. The passage below
was in darkness, at the exit but one smoky torch. He drew the wide
mantle closely about him, pulling the hood over head and face. His step
said to the man at the door, “Sir Garin.” He passed, an unquestioned
inmate, not clearly seen in the light blown by the autumn wind.
CHAPTER XXI
THE ROCK-GATE
AT the northern point of the Mount of Roche-de-Frêne, castle wall and
wall of the town made as it were one height, so close did each approach
the other. Huge rock upon rock, Roche-de-Frêne lifted here from the
plain. This was the impregnable face, sheer rock and double wall, at
the bottom a fosse, and, grim at the top, against cloud or clear sky,
Black Tower and Eagle Tower. In the high and thick curtain of stone
between was pierced the postern called the rock-gate. Here Garin came,
on a night not cold and powdered with stars.
The gate had its turret, and within the shadow of the wall a long bench
of stone. Ordinarily, day or night, there might be here a watch of
twenty men. To-night he saw that this was not the case. There was a
sentinel pacing to and fro before the turret. This man stopped him.
“The princess’s errand,” said Garin.
“The word?”
“_Two Falcons._”
“Just.” The speaker paced on.
Garin, going on to the gate, pondered voice and air. They seemed to
him not those of any customary sentinel, but of a knight of renown,
a foster-brother of the princess. By the turret were other shadowy
figures—three or four. These also kept silence, or, if they spoke
among themselves, spoke briefly and too low for their words to be
distinguished.
Garin, Elias of Montaudon’s mantle close about him, sat down upon
the bench in the angle made by wall and turret. He thought that the
shadowy figures took note of him, but they did not speak to him nor
he to them. They and he were silent. There fell the sentinel’s step,
and sounds now vague, now distinct, from Black Tower and Eagle Tower,
both of which were garrisoned. For the rest came the usual murmur of
the armed and watchful night. Garin lifted his eyes to the starry
sky. At first his faculties drank simply the splendour of the night,
the blended personalities of scene and hour; then some slight thing
brought Palestine into mind. There came before the inner vision the
eve of his knighthood, when he had watched his armour in the chapel
of a great castle, crusader-built. That was such a night as this.
There had been an open window, and through the hours, as he knelt or
stood, he had seen the stars climb upward. The emotion of that night
rekindled. It came from the past like a slender youth and walked
beside the stronger-thewed and older man. Garin watched the stars,
then with a long, sighing breath, let his gaze fall to the sky-line,
vast, irregular, imposing, and to the mass of buildings that the earth
upheld. Here was deep shadow, here a pale, starlight illumination. Here
light rayed out from narrow windows, or a carried torch or lanthorn
displayed some facet of the whole.
He turned toward the White Tower. He could see it dimly between two
nearer buildings.... He rose from the bench. Figures were approaching,
two or three. They also were mantled, face and form. Two stopped a few
steps away, the third came on. He advanced to meet it. He could only
tell that it was slender, somewhat less tall than himself. The mantle
enveloped, the cowl-like hood enveloped. A hand held out a purse which
he took. It felt heavy; he put it within the breast of his robe.
“_Saint Martin’s summer_,” said a voice.
He answered. “_Dreams may come true._” His heart beat violently, his
senses swam. The stars overhead seemed to grow larger, to become
vast, throbbing, living jewels. It appeared that the world slightly
trembled....
The mantled form turned head, motioned to those who had stopped short.
These came up, then after a word all moved to the rock-gate. To right
and left of this now stood the men who had waited by the turret. The
night had grown still. Montmaure, busy with changes of position, let
night and day go by without attack. Roche-de-Frêne kept watch and ward,
but likewise, as far as might be, sank to needed sleep. The investing
host, the great dragon that lay upon the plain, seemed, too, to sleep.
The castle up against the stars slept or held its breath. The small
rock-gate opened. Garin and that one who had given him the purse and
changed with him the countersign passed through. After them came the
two who had accompanied that one. Garin now saw that the taller of
these was Stephen the Marshal. The gate closed behind them.
They stood upon a shelf of rock. Below them they saw the stars mirrored
in the castle moat. One of the accompanying men now passed in front
and led the way. They were in a downward-sloping, tunnel-like passage.
It wound and doubled upon itself; for a time they descended, then
trod a level, then felt that they were upon a climbing path. At last
came again descent. At intervals they had seen through the crevices
overhead the stars of heaven; now the passage ended with the stars at
their feet, dim light points in the still water of the moat, stretching
immediately before them, closing their path. A boat, oared by one man,
lay upon it. The four from the castle towering overhead stepped into
this; it was pushed from the sheer rock. In a moment there showed
no sign of the road by which they had come. The boat went some way,
then turned its prow to the opposing bank. It rose above them dark
and sheer. No lasting stairway was here, but as the boat touched the
masonry, a hand came over the coping above, and there dropped one end
of a ladder of rope. The man who had led the way through the tunnel
caught it and fastened it to a stanchion at the water’s edge.
“Go first,” said Stephen the Marshal to Garin.
The latter obeyed, went lightly up the ladder, and upon the moat’s
rugged bank found himself among two or three men, kneeling, peering
down upon the boat and its occupants. That one who had said “Saint
Martin’s summer” came next, light and lithe as a boy. Last of the four
mounted the one who had fastened the ladder and gone ahead in the
tunnel. Garin thought him that engineer whom the princess highly paid
and highly trusted.
They were now between the moat and the wall of the town, rising, upon
this northern face, in the very shadow of the castle rock. About them
were roofs of houses. They went down a staircase of stone and came into
a lane-like space. Before them sprang, huge and high, the burghers’
wall, with, on this side, no apparent gate, but a blankness of stone.
On the parapet above, a sentinel went by, larger than life against the
sky that was paling before the approach of the moon. Some sound perhaps
had been made, at the moat or upon the stair between the houses; for
now a guard with halberds, a dozen or more, came athwart their road
with a peremptory challenge to halt.
A word was given, the guard fell back. The four from the castle,
followed by those who had met them at the moat, went on, walking in
the shadow of the wall that seemed unbroken, a blank, unpierced solid.
They had moved away from the most precipitous point of the hill of
Roche-de-Frêne, but now they were bearing back. High above them,
almost directly overhead, hung that part of the castle wall where was
set the rock-gate.
They came to a huge buttress springing inward from the city wall,
almost spanning the way between it and the moat. Here, in the angle
was what they sought. From somewhere sprang a dim light and showed
a low and narrow opening, a gate more obscure even and masked than
that by which they had left the castle. Here, too, awaited men; a
word was given and the gate opened. A portcullis lifted, they passed
under, passed outward. There was a sense of a gulf of air, and then of
Montmaure’s watch-lights, staring up from the plain. As without the
gate in the castle wall, so here, they stood upon a ledge of rock,
masked by a portion of the cliff and by a growth of bush and vine.
Behind them was Roche-de-Frêne, castle and town; before them the
rock fell sheer for many feet to a base of earth so steep as to be
nearly precipitous. This in turn sank by degrees to a broken strip,
earth and boulder, and to a wood of small pines which merged with the
once-cultivated plain.
The dragon that lay about Roche-de-Frêne watched less closely here to
the north. He could not get at Roche-de-Frêne from this side: he knew
that no torrent of armed men could descend upon him here. His eyes
could not read the two small, ambushed doors, out of which, truly, no
torrent could come! Perhaps he was aware that the besieged might, some
night-time, let down the cliff spy or messenger striving to make a way
north to that distant and deaf King of France. If so, that daring one
might not at all easily pass the watch that the dragon kept. Gaultier
Cap-du-Loup and his Free Companions encamped in this northern quarter.
Those who stood without the wall of Roche-de-Frêne looked from their
narrow footing forth and down upon the fields of night and the
flickering tokens of the dragon their foe. The men who had handled the
rope-ladder at the moat now knelt at the edge of this shelf, made fast
a like stair but a longer, weighted the free end with a stone, and
swung it over the cliff side. It fell: the whole straightened itself,
hung a passable road to the foot of the rock. That attained, there
would rest the rough and broken hillside that fell to the wood, the
wood that fell to the plain where the dragon had dominion. The night
was still, the waning moon pushing up from the east.
That one who alone had used the phrase “Saint Martin’s summer” spoke
to Garin: “Go you first,” and then to Stephen the Marshal: “Now we say
farewell, Lord Stephen!”
Garin, at the cliff edge, heard behind him the marshal’s low and
fervent commendations to the Mother of God and every Saint. He himself
set his feet upon the rope-stair, went down the rock-side, touched
the stony earth at the base, stood aside. That other, that strange
companion of this night, came lightly after—not hurriedly, with a
light deliberateness—and stood beside him on the moon-silvered hill.
The moon showed a woman, slender and lithe, with a peasant’s bodice
and ragged, shortened kirtle and great mantle of frieze. At her word
he loosened the weighting stone, drew at the rope three times. Those
at the top of the rock receiving the signal, the ladder was drawn
slowly up, vanished. Above the two soared the clean rock, and loftier
yet, the bare, the inaccessible wall of Roche-de-Frêne. Black Tower
and Eagle Tower seemed among the stars. There was a gulf between them
and those small, hidden, defended entrances. The strained gaze could
see naught but some low, out-cropping bushes and a trailing vine. Up
there the men who had brought them to that side of the gulf might yet
be gazing outward, listening with bated breath for any token that that
dragon was awake and aware; but they could not tell if it were so. Up
there was the friendly world, down here the hostile. Up there might be
troubadour-knight and princess, down here stood jongleur and peasant.
They stood yet a moment at the foot of the crag, then she who was
dressed as a worker among the vines or a herd to drive and watch
the flocks turned in silence and began to descend the moonlit
boulder-strewn declivity. She was light of foot, quick and dexterous
of movement. Garin, who was now Elias of Montaudon, moved beside her.
They came down the steep hill, bare and blanched by the moon. The
dragon had no outpost here; did he plant one, the archers upon the
town wall might sweep it away. But the shafts would not reach to the
wood—there perhaps they might hear the dragon’s breathing. They went
without speech, and with no noise that could be helped of foot against
stone.... Here was a slight fringe of pine and oak. They stood still,
listened—all was silent. They looked back and saw Roche-de-Frêne and
the castle of Roche-de-Frêne bathed by the grey night.
“Cap-du-Loup and his men hold in this quarter,” said the woman in a
low voice. “We had a spy forth who got back to us three days since.
Cap-du-Loup’s tents and booths are thrown and scattered, stony
ground and seams in the earth between the handfuls. He does not keep
stern watch, not looking for anything of moment to descend this way.
Hereabouts is the ravine of the brook of Saint Laurent, and half a mile
up it a medley of camp-followers, men and women.”
She had not ceased to move as she spoke. They were now in the midst of
a spare growth of trees, under foot a turf burned by the sun and ground
to dust by the tread, through half a year, of a host of folk. Some
distance ahead the night was copper-hued; over there were camp-fires.
They were now, also, in the zone of a faint confused sound. They
moved aside from the direction of the strongest light, the deepest,
intermittent humming, and came, presently, to the brook of Saint
Laurent. It flowed through a shallow ravine with rough, scarped banks.
Down it, too, came faint light and sound, proceeding from the camp of
followers.
“Our aim,” said she in peasant dress, “is to be found at dawn among
that throng, indistinguishable from it, and so to pass to its outermost
edge and away.”
They were standing above the murmuring stream. Overhead the wind was in
the pine-tops. There were elfin voices, too, of the creatures of the
grass and bush and bark. All life, and life in his own veins, seemed to
Garin to be alert, awake as never before, quivering and streaming and
mounting like flame.
“I am Elias of Montaudon,” he said. “I understand that, and how to
play the jongleur, and that if peril comes and stands like a giant and
questions us, I am no jongleur of Roche-de-Frêne nor allied there—”
“Say that you are of Limousin.”
“I have not dropped from the sky into the camp of Cap-du-Loup, but
have been singing and playing, telling japes and tales, merry or sad,
vaulting and wrestling elsewhere in the host—”
“With the men of Aquitaine. Say that in Poitou Duke Richard himself
praised you.”
“And should they question me of you?”
“I also am of Limousin. There I watched sheep, but now I am your _mie_
and a traveller with you.”
“By what name am I to call you?”
“I am Jael the herd. You will call me Jael.”
They were moving this while up the stream. Did any come upon them
now, it would hardly be held that they had flown from the battlements
of Roche-de-Frêne. The ground was rough, the trees, crowding together,
shut out the light from the moon, while the fires at the end of vistas
grew ruddier. The muttering and humming also of the host in the night
increased.
Jael the herd stood still. “It will not suit us to stumble in the dark
upon some wild band! Here is Saint Laurent’s garden of safety. Let us
rest on the pine-needles until cock-crow.”
They lay down, the jongleur wrapped in his mantle, the herd-girl in
hers. “We must gather sleep wherever it grows,” said the latter. “I
will sleep and you will watch until the moon rounds the top of that
great pine. Wake me then, and look, Elias, that you do it!”
She pillowed her head upon the scrip or wallet which she carried
slung over her shoulder, and lay motionless. The jongleur watched....
The barred moon mounted higher, the night wheeled, eastern lands
were knowing light. Garin, resting against a pine trunk, lute and
wallet beside him on the earth, kept his gaze from the sleeper,
bestowed it instead upon the silver, gliding boat of the moon, or
upon the not-distant, murky glare of unfriendly fires. But gaze
here or gaze there, space and time sang to one presence! Wonder
must exist as to this night and the morrow and what journey was
this. Mind could not but lift the lanthorn, weigh likelihoods, pace
around and around the subject. That quest drew him, but it was not
all, nor most that drew.... _Jael the herd! Jael the herd!_ Here
came impossibilities—dreams, phantasies, rain of gold and silver,
impossibilities! He remembered clearly now a herd-girl, and that when
he had asked her name she had answered “Jael.” Many shepherdesses
trod the earth, and a many might be named Jael! Moreover sheer,
clear impossibility must conquer, subdue and dispose of all this
mad thinking. She who lay asleep was like that herd-girl—he saw it
now—shape, colouring, voice—That and the name she had happened to
choose—that and the torn, shepherdess garb—to that was owed this
dizzy dreaming, this jewelled sleet of fancy, high tide of imagination,
flooding every inland.... Things could not be different, yet the
same—beings could not be separate, yet one—or in some strange, rich
world, could that be so? But here was mere impossibility! Garin strove
to still the wider and wider vibrations. _The Fair Goal—The Fair
Goal!..._ The moon rounded the top of the pine tree.
He crossed to the sleeper’s side, knelt, and spoke low. “My liege—”
She stirred, opened her eyes. “My liege, the moon begins to go down the
sky.”
With her hand pressed against the pine-needles she rose to a sitting
posture. “I slept—and, by my faith, I wanted sleep! Now it is your
turn. Do not again call me liege or lady or princess or Audiart. The
wind might carry it to Cap-du-Loup. Say always to me, ‘Jael.’ And now
lie down and sleep. I will wake you when the east is grey.”
Garin slept. The Princess Audiart rested against a tree, and
now watched the moon, and now the fires kindled by her foe and
Roche-de-Frêne’s, and now she watched the sleeping man. The attire
which she wore, the name she had chosen for the simple reason that once
before she had chanced to take it up and use it, brought brightly into
mind a long-ago forest glade and a happening there. But she did not
link that autumn day with the man lying wrapped in Elias of Montaudon’s
cloak, though she did link it with Jaufre de Montmaure who had kindled
those fires in the night. It came, a vivid picture, and then it slept
again. There was, of need, a preoccupation with this present enterprise
and its chaplet, necklace, girdle, and anklets of danger, no less
than with its bud of promise which she meant, if possible, to make
bloom. Her own great need and the need of Roche-de-Frêne formed the
looming presence, high, wide, and deep as the night, but, playing and
interblending with it, high, wide, and deep as the day, was another
sense.... She gazed upon Garin of the Golden Island lying wrapped in
the jongleur’s cloak, and the loss of him was in the looming night, and
the gain in the bud of promise and the feeling of the sun. To-night,
her estate seemed forlorn enough, but within she was a powerful
princess who did not blink her own desires though she was wise to curb
and rein and drive them rightly.
CHAPTER XXII
THE SAFFRON CROSS
MOON and stars began to pale. The camp-followers up the stream had
poultry with them, for from that direction a cock crew and was
answered. The herd-girl waked the jongleur. “I have black bread in my
scrip,” she said. “Look if you have not the same.”
He found a portion of a loaf; they sat by the brook Saint Laurent and
he cut the bread with his dagger and they ate and drank of the water.
Light strengthened, it became grey-pearl under the pines. “Chill!
chill!” said the herd-girl. “Often I think of how it would be to lie
out under the sky, winter, spring, summer and now! So many thousands
do.—Now, we will be going.”
They moved along the bank of the stream. “We go north,” said Garin’s
mind. “Will she go to the King at Paris?” But he waited without
question until she was ready to say. Jongleur and herd-girl, they
walked through the grey and dewy world. The trees now stood further
apart, they were coming to open ground. To their right the east showed
stripes of carnation. The cocks crew again; the mutter and murmur of
the night suddenly took height and depth, became inarticulate clamour
of the day and an encamped, huge host. The light strengthened. Between
the stems of trees they saw, at no great distance, huts and booths of
autumn branches. They stood still for a little in the flush of the
brightening dawn—divers regarding the sea into which they were to
plunge, the sea whose every wave was inimical. They looked, then, each
turning a little, their eyes met. It was but for a moment; immediately
they went forward.
Elias of Montaudon was all dusk and green of garb, and dusk of brow
and cheek. But his dagger hung in a gilt sheath and his lute by a red
ribbon, and his eyes were grey with glints of blue. Jael the herd,
too, was hued like a Martinmas leaf, and her hair hung over her bosom
and to her knee, in long, dusk braids. The jongleur had a vision of
dark hair loosened and spread in elf-lock and wave, half hiding a face
more girlish than this face, but as this face might have been, eight
years agone. Impossibilities—dreams, phantasies, magic somewhere,
impossibilities!
They were now almost clear of the broken ground and the remnant of
wood. They looked back and saw Roche-de-Frêne lifted against the solemn
sky; stood still and for a minute or more gazed, and as though the
walls were glass, viewed the tense life within.
“Did you ever see Richard of Aquitaine?” asked the herd-girl.
“No,” answered the jongleur, and felt a momentary wonder, then the dawn
of a conjecture.
The herd-girl turned again to their wandering and he followed her,
then walked beside her.... Leaving the last group of trees, they came
with suddenness upon a little pebbly shore of the stream and upon half
a dozen women, kneeling and beginning the washing of clothes. Several
ragged children sat by a fire of sticks and made an outcry when the two
came from the wood. The women looked up. “Hè! a jongleur!” cried one.
“Come trill me a love-lay while I wash my sergeant’s one shirt!”
Elias and Jael came near, sat by the fire of sticks, and felt the
warmth pleasant. The first drew his hand across the strings of his lute
and sang:—
“Sweet May, come! the lovers’ sweet season.
In May Love seems the height of reason!
Try your love when the year grows older,
The birds depart and the earth is colder.—”
He stopped. “Saint Michael! the mist is yet in my throat. Your fire,
gossips, is the sweet, crackling singer—”
One of the women sat back upon her heels, and, hands on hips, regarded
the two. “From what camp are you? You are not of our camp?”
“No. We have been over yonder—near to the young count.”
“If Cap-du-Loup saw you he would have your lute broken and you sent to
wait on fighting men! Cap-du-Loup loatheth jongleurs and monks! Your
_douce_ there he might take—but no, I think that he would not. She is
not fair, and she has the look of one with claws—”
“I have claws, sister,” said Jael. “But I know how to keep them
sheathed.” She yawned. “This good fire makes you sleepy. Pretty
children, let me rest my head upon that log for a bit! Play to us,
Elias, if you cannot sing.”
She put her head down, closed her eyes, lying in the firelight. The
jongleur played and he played strange quaint airs that made the
washerwomen laugh, nod their heads, and pat with their hands. After
this he played quieter strains, a dreamy and monotonous music, humming
to it a thought of the East. They listened, then turned to their
rubbing and beating of clothes, working as in a dream, to a soothed and
unquestioning mood.
Jael sat up, warmed her hands at the fire, looked to the west. On
the other side of the brook of Saint Laurent a trampling sound arose
and grew. The mist yielded a grey vision of horsemen approaching in
number. They loomed, there ran before them noise—harsh voices, ribald
laughter. The washerwomen sprang to their feet, gathered hastily into
their arms the scattered garments, seized by the hands the children.
“Jacques le Noir and his men! Get out of their way! Jesu! What a world
where your own side tramples and abuses—”
They turned up the stream, quarrelling as they went. With them and the
children went the jongleur and the herd-girl, all faring along the
bank together, in the mist that was now being torn by golden arrows.
One of the women, with a load of wet, half-washed clothing, let fall
a part of the burden. The herd-girl, stooping, gathered it up. “I’ll
help you here, sister!” A child struck its foot against a stone, fell,
and began to cry. The jongleur lifted him to his shoulder. Behind them
they heard Jacques le Noir splash with his horsemen into the stream.
The washerwomen and the two from Roche-de-Frêne went on like one family
or like old acquaintances, and so came into the thickly peopled camp of
the followers of Cap-du-Loup and his fighting men.
The sun was now risen. The pied and various world in which they found
themselves had breakfasted or was breakfasting. Noise prevailed,
self-wrought into some kind of harmony. Here were women, soldiers’ and
others’ wives, and frank harlots, and here were children, seraphic,
impish, and all between. Here harboured men of sorts, men who cared
for horses, were smiths, menders of harness and armour, fitters of
lance-heads to lances, fletchers of arrows. Here were barber-surgeons,
cooks, and servitors of servitors. Sutlers and merchants of small wares
showed both men and women, as did also the amusement-mongers. There
abounded folk of nondescript and uncertain trades, or of no trades
at all, mere followers and feeders, a true rabble. And there were
gamesters and cunning thieves.
Elias of Montaudon and Jael the herd came into this throng in the
company of the women who had washed by the brook of Saint Laurent. The
air was yet hung with mist-wreaths; they entered with these about them,
and none took especial notice.
The washerwomen did not stray from the brook. Down they flung their
half-washed, wet, and dripping loads, and complained loudly to any who
would listen of Jacques le Noir and his demon band. Some listened,
some did not; the most had recitals of their own. Voices sprang like
grass-blades, were confounded.... With the others Jael threw upon the
ground her load, Elias set down the child he had carried. Then in the
confusion they went away, leaving without staying word or hand the
group that had brought them thus far. They followed the brook Saint
Laurent and they passed many folk, buried in their own concerns. To
an eye not observant beyond a certain point, the two would seem a
loitering couple of the camp, vacant and idly straying, being set at
the moment to no task. None greeted them as acquaintances—but there
seemed here no eye to note that fact. Units and groups shifted like
the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. Continually the tube was shaken
and there came up new arrangements. The two went on, and none saw in
them wandering bodies from outer and hostile space, pursuing a course
athwart the field of the kaleidoscope.... The mist was gone, the sun
poured light; looking back, they saw Roche-de-Frêne, indeed, but always
farther, farther from them.
They approached the edge of the camp-followers’ demesne. It frayed out
among trees and gullies and heaps of refuse. Presently came a strip of
bare earth, recently burned over, licked clean by the flame, and desert
of human works or being. Beyond, flung widely, grey reefs across their
way, were soldiers’ tents. Jael the herd’s lips moved. “Come down, for
a minute, into this hollow where none will see.”
Descending a miniature slope, they stood in a narrow space between
walls of parched earth. The camp behind them, the camp before
them, sank abruptly from view, though the sound of each remained.
Roche-de-Frêne sank from view; they were roofed by the blue sky. A
lizard ran from stone to stone; a wind, circling the place, lifted into
air dead leaves and particles of earth. The herd-girl, seating herself,
opened the scrip that she carried. The jongleur watched her take from
it something at which he started. It was a piece of saffron-coloured
cloth, cut in the shape of a cross. The upright measured near two feet,
it and the arms had a palm’s breadth. The next thing that she did was
to find a needle and thread; then she took her frieze mantle, and after
an instant of looking into the pure, deep heavens, began to fasten upon
the mantle the saffron cross.
Garin held his breath. Holy Church had many penances for erring souls,
and the most were acquiesced in with the least possible inner pain,
and some were dreaded, and a few were direfully dreaded, shudderingly
looked upon. The most were burdensome but matter-of-fact; some gave
the weak flesh sharp pain, but did not necessarily humble one in the
eyes of the world and the neighbours. A certain number had for label,
_Humiliation_, and they were dreaded. A few were more sinister than
these, frightening the imagination. One or two brought a dark terror,
dark and cold. These did not partake of the nature of prostrations,
or of prayers in multiplied repetition, or of flagellations, or
pilgrimages, or amercement of goods. Flagellation was of temporary
account; pilgrimages a way to see the world as well as to wipe out
sin; loss in money and land a serious thing, God knew! but though
bitter, without ignominy. None of these came under the same sky with
excommunication, which was not penance, but doom and living death! But
to wear a cross like this came under the same sky.
It carried no physical pain with it, nor imprisonment within material
walls. Of itself, it did not dip into the purse, or shear away house
and land. Of itself, it did not say, “Leave your home, penitent, and
wander to many a shrine, know many calvaries!” Incidentally it might
have come after—most often it did come after—these lesser things. It
was rarely bound, like the mark of Cain, upon the young in offending.
It came somewhat rarely upon any but the poor. So long as there was
any wealth there might be compounding for something less than the
millstone.... It was not likely to be imposed for any less time than
a long, long while. Perhaps it was worn for years, perhaps they died
wearing it. It weighed hardly anything materially, but it weighed life
down. The people regarded it with superstitious horror. It said, “Lo,
shadow and substance of sin that may hardly be pardoned! Lo, here the
Obdurate, the Ancient and Resigned to the Prince of the Power of the
Air—preserved that ye may see—set aside in the midst of you that ye
may know! Not to be touched, not to be dealt with in pleasant, human
ways—any more than a leper!”
Garin looked. His face had paled beneath the stain applied by the
true Elias. “Ah!” he said, “what people of the future comes, my Lady
Audiart, from such as you!”
The other stood up, her sewing finished. She drew the cloak over her
shoulders, and her right arm and side showed the saffron cross. Her
dark eyes met Garin’s. “Now you are my brother. We are twin, and Saint
Peter himself would not have you utterly forsake me! Let us go.”
They came out from the crack in the earth and proceeded to cross the
burned strip. All in all, they had now penetrated some distance in the
dragon’s field. When they looked over their shoulder, Roche-de-Frêne
yet showed with grandeur in the morning light, against the south-east
quarter of a fleckless sky. But it showed as somewhat distant.... Garin
understood now that they were to cross the dragon’s field, to leave
it behind them, to escape as quickly as might be from its poisonous
breath, from the reach of its talons. He saw also that, danger-grown
as was their path of travel, it was the least so that should have been
taken from the beleaguered place. The dragon lay here, too, but not,
perhaps, the brain nor eyes of him.
The day shone bright and cool. Directly ahead a large campfire yet
smoked and smouldered, and right and left of it and beyond grew the
somewhat tattered tents of Cap-du-Loup’s force. In the assault, on the
way to the assault, Cap-du-Loup drove his men like a storm. At other
times he let them live as they would.
There were Free Companions, a score or so, around the fire. These
caught sight of the two upon the burned and blackened strip between
them and the followers’ camp. There was passage to and fro, as the gods
of license knew! Many figures of the world strayed almost at will,
found lanes enough through the loose warp of the time’s armies. A woman
and a jongleur might find a groove, so easy, so worn—There were,
however, toll-gates.
Men who had been lying on the ground sat up. “Come across! Come
across!” called one. Another rose to his feet and went to touch first,
so claim first. A third sprang up, ran after, but a young giant,
starting fourth, outstripped him, gained on the first. The men had been
idle after a night’s sleep. Breakfast of goat’s flesh and bread was
digested, the slight enough camp tasks disposed of, after which came
idleness and yawning. Cap-du-Loup meant to join Aimeric the Bastard in
a night attack upon Roche-de-Frêne’s western gate, and until then the
storm slept. The Free Companions were ready for movement, enterprise,
deviltry. They rose from the ashy fire, and finding pleasure in
stretching of the limbs, raced after their fellows. The distance was
a pygmy one; immediately they were at their goal—the giant just the
first.
He put his hands upon the woman. “Come, my _mie_—come, my jewel!” The
one who had started first began to clamour that he was first; there
arose a noise as from any brute pack. The giant, dragged at by his
fellows, half turned, turning with him her he grasped. The saffron
cross came into view.
The Free Companion’s hands dropped. He, and every man as he saw it,
gave back. The recoil left black earth between them and Jael and
Elias. Quarrelling and laughter alike sank. Here was neither wooing
nor taking, but a hand stole down, picked up a stone and threw it. It
struck her, then she spoke. “Leave to the cross them who wear it, brave
soldiers!”
The giant came from a hamlet that tilled Abbey fields, and he was wise
beyond his fellows in what the Church said. Moreover he was by nature
unresistant to Authority. It was not he who had thrown the stone, and
now he struck down the arm of one who gathered a second missile. “Abbot
Arnaut told us we mustn’t ever do that! If you do, God the Father’ll
lengthen your score—burn you a year longer in Purgatory!”
“It’s the serpent of sin.—Naught’s doing but stoning!”
“You can’t strike man or woman when they’ve touched sanctuary! Yellow
cross’s a kind of sanctuary—”
The giant found some upon his side. “That’s true! Father Andrew
preached a sermon about it, Saint John Baptist’s day!—You don’t break
into a house marked for plague. Holy Church says, ‘This cross’s my
seal. I punish, and don’t you be trying to better it!’”
“That’s true! Holy Church says, ‘Have no communion, for good or for
ill! Here is something fearful and not like it was mortal!’”
The black earth widened about Jael and Elias. “What is the man doing
with her?” cried the first runner.
Another yet more reckless lifted voice. “Is a jongleur to be a heathen
and we can’t? Is he to give the dare to a Free Companion?”
Despite the giant and those backing him, the pack came nearer,
narrowing the black mark. Garin spoke. He was accustomed to lead and
command men, fusing their will with his. Use gave him power here
also, though they that he faced knew not what it was. And he had
other powers over men and himself. He spoke. “Good soldiers! I am her
brother, twin with her, and I had a vision that I was not utterly
to forsake her. The priest said that I was to mind it.” He brought
his lute forward, and as he spoke he drew from the strings notes of
wistfulness and beauty. “So we started many months ago, on a pilgrimage
from Pont-de-Lys in Limousin (for we are of Limousin) to Our Lady of
Roche-de-Frêne. And after that we fared on a long way to the north,
to the famous shrine of Saint Thomas in Burgundy.” He was playing
very sweetly, notes of unearthly tenderness and melancholy. “There
the vision came again and told me to return the way we had come to
Limousin, and then, without rest, to go on pilgrimage to Saint James,
the brother of the Lord, at Compostella.”
He changed and deepened the strain until it had solemnity, became music
played in churches. “She speaks not often to me, nor I to her. She
touches me not, and I touch not her. But the vision said, ‘Go with her
to Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne, and then to the shrine of Saint Thomas’;
and then it said, ‘Turn and go with her to Compostella.’ The priest
said, ‘Obey that which spoke to you, and It will see that you are not
hindered.’” His lips shut. He had spoken in a voice that he knew how to
use so as to bring the heart into acquiescence, and his fingers still
spoke on, upon the strings of the lute.
The half-ring parted. It felt horror of the saffron cross, but,
strange to itself, it also now felt pity and an impulse to help. Its
ill passion fell cold and dead. Sufficiently swift and deep and for
sufficiently long time came the change. Whether there was responsible
some saint, or suggestion, or these beings’ proper motion, here was
what answered for miracle. The giant was the spokesman.
“The way is clear so far as we are named! Go on, poor soul, and brother
jongleur, and maybe there’s a star somewhere to shine for you!—Nay,
I’ll go before and see that no man of Cap-du-Loup breaks sanctuary—no,
nor harms you, jongleur!”
CHAPTER XXIII
CAP-DU-LOUP
THE giant was a Saint Christopher to Jael and Elias. He was great of
height and bulk, feared for his strength and liked because of a broad
simplicity and good-nature, apparent when he was not angry or hot in
the midst of allowed slaughter and rapine. For the saffron cross and
the jongleur he proved, this day, the right convoy.
Cap-du-Loup had two hundred knights and a thousand fighting men.
The knights’ encampment they did not approach; it lay to the west,
neighbouring the Lord of Chalus’s quarter. But they went by, they went
between, the tents and booths of the thousand men.
These shouted to them, these stopped them, these ran from farther
tents. “Game! Game!” Cap-du-Loup’s men cried. “Leveret! leveret!
leveret!”—then saw the cross that the woman wore. It was a weapon
to halt snatching hands, a spell to wither the lust in men’s eyes.
And when the heat turned to cold, and where, as twice again happened,
another zeal sprang up and there threatened stoning, came in the
giant’s voice and arm, making room for the jongleur’s voice and hand
upon the strings.... Thrice-guarded, the two from Roche-de-Frêne
threaded the camp of Cap-du-Loup. It was noon now, and autumn sunshine
thick about them. In broad day they passed the folds of the dragon,
and then by a ruined house, cold and vacant as clay, they met with
suddenness Cap-du-Loup.
The giant was afraid. “Little Mother of God, take care of us!” he said
and caught his breath.
Cap-du-Loup was neither tall nor stout of build; he was rusty-red and
small, but he could fright the giant, hold him knock-kneed. “What are
you doing, Jean le Géant, wandering with hellfroth such as these?”
Jean le Géant answered like a child, telling all the why and wherefore.
“Begone where you kennel!” said Cap-du-Loup, when he had made an end.
“You two, who came from Burgundy, what talk is made there of this war?”
He sat on a stone in the noon light, behind him a black and broken
wall, and questioned the jongleur. He had looked once at the figure
wrapped in frieze whereon was sewed a saffron cross. The woman
seemed young, but the mantle was hooded, and that and the black hair
astream about her face—She appeared dark as a Saracen and without
beauty, and the cross did put a ring about her and a pale, cold light
... Cap-du-Loup, who came from Burgundy,—though that had never
interfered with the sale of his services to any high-bidding foe of
Burgundy,—turned to the jongleur. “What talk is there?”
“Lord, as you know, the barons there have wars of their own! But I
played upon a time in a hall where afterwards I listened to the talk of
knights. It seemed to me that they inclined to Roche-de-Frêne. But what
do I know?”
“Did any speak of me?”
“Lord, one was talking with a great merchant of Italy who was present.
He said, ‘There is a bold captain of Burgundy, Gaultier Cap-du-Loup,
with Montmaure. He had been wiser, methinks, to have taken his sword to
Roche-de-Frêne! If Aquitaine drops off—’”
“Wait there!” cried Cap-du-Loup. “What colour did they give for
Aquitaine ceasing from us?”
“None, lord, that I heard. I heard no more,” said Elias, “for I went
out in the night to give my sister bread.”
“Jean the foolish giant has said that you went first from Limousin to
Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne. When were you in Roche-de-Frêne?”
“Lord, at Pentecost, before the siege began.”
“What did you think, jongleur, of that town and castle?”
Cap-du-Loup looked at what he spoke of, lifted before them, shimmering
in the light. Montmaure was attacking at the eastern gate. A noise as
of dull thunder rolled over the plain.
“Lord,” said the jongleur, “there are fellows of my art, who, to
please, would say ‘a poor town and a trembling castle!’ But I think
that you are not such an one, but a man who greets with valiancy bare
truth! To my apprehension, lord, it seemed a great town and a strong
castle.”
“It is God’s truth!” said Cap-du-Loup, who for two months had received
no pay for himself nor for his men. “At Pentecost the old prince yet
lived. Saw you Audiart?”
“Lord, it was said that she was at mass one day when we stood without
the church. When ladies and knights came forth some one cried,
‘Audiart!’ and I saw her, as it were among clouds.”
“They say that she pays well and steadily.—Holy Virgin!” said
Cap-du-Loup, “I would that Count Jaufre, who is to be her lord and
husband, would take ensample!”
He spoke in a barking tone, and grew redder and fiercer. His small eyes
without lashes looked at Elias of Montaudon as though he had suddenly
remembered to call one to break the lute of the _fainéant_ and cudgel
him deep into the camp to wait on men who fought! But perhaps the
jongleur’s remembering the words “bold captain of Burgundy,” or his
knowing character and that Cap-du-Loup was not afraid of false or true,
saved lute and shoulders. Perhaps it was something else, wolves being
softened long ago by Orpheus. Or the giant’s stammered explanation
before, frightened, he went away, may have worked, or the pale, cold
light about the woman have touched, to Cap-du-Loup’s perception, her
brother also. Perhaps it was something of all of these. However that
may be, Cap-du-Loup stared at Roche-de-Frêne against the sky, and, not
for the first time of late, thought to himself that, all things being
equal and Montmaure less strong by certain divisions than was the case,
then a man would be a fool to come into his service rather than into
that of the banner yonder! Then he somewhat lost himself, listening to
Count Jaufre’s battering the town’s eastern gate.
Jael and Elias, standing in the shadow of the ruined house, listened,
too, and with the eye of the mind saw the attack and the defenders....
Cap-du-Loup rose from his stone, spoke to the jongleur. “If I have
passed you, all shall pass you. If they stop you, tell them to come
speak with Cap-du-Loup!” With that, and with a wolf-like suddenness,
both fierce and stealthy, he was gone.
Jael and Elias, in the shadow of the black wall, saw him one moment,
then a cairn-like heap of stones came between.... It was after the noon
hour; though it was late autumn the southern land blazed light. Into
their ears came the rhythmic dash and recoil of the distant conflict,
came, too, the nearer buzz and hum, the sharp, discrete noises of the
encampment whose edge they had gained. They saw that they were upon its
edge, and that before them lay a road less crowded. This they took. At
first men were about them, but these had seen them with Cap-du-Loup and
disturbed them not. A trumpet blew and a drum was beat, and the Free
Companions hurried to the sound. The two quickened their steps; they
took advantage; before the diversion of vision and attention was ended,
they were clear of the camp of Gaultier Cap-du-Loup.
Right and left lay the host of Montmaure, but ahead was rough, sharp,
and broken ground, where horsemen might not manage their horses and
disliked by men without steeds. Here was a bend of the brook Saint
Laurent, and ground stony and sterile or ashen and burned over. The
dragon possessed the wide plain; he drew water from the stream where
he wished it, but for the rest left unoccupied this northward-drawn
rough splinter of the world.... The two saw an outpost, a sentinel
camp, but it was intent upon the crescendo of battle-sound pouring from
Roche-de-Frêne, and upon what might be the meaning of Cap-du-Loup’s
calling trumpets. Jael and Elias slipped by, in the dry sunshine,
beneath the brow of a hill, like a brace of tinted, wind-blown leaves.
After this they came into a solitude. It had not been always so, for
here the rough ground fell away, Saint Laurent bent his stream like
a sickle, and once had been bright fields and graceful vineyards.
Here had stood many small houses of peasants who had tilled their
fields, tended their vineyards, brought the produce and sold it to
Roche-de-Frêne, trudging through life, often in the shadow and often in
the sun. Now death only lived and abode and, black-winged, visited the
fields. All things were cut down, charred, and withered. The people
were gone, and where had been houses stood ruins.
The herd-girl sighed as she walked. Once the jongleur saw her weeping.
It lasted a long way, this black swath beneath the sun. It led them out
of the dragon’s immediate field, away from his mailed and glittering
coils. The dragon lay well behind them, his eyes upon Roche-de-Frêne.
Roche-de-Frêne itself, now, was distant.
But the venom of the dragon had been spread wherever his length had
passed. Not alone here, by the brook Saint Laurent, but all around now,
as far as the eye could see, stretched blackening and desolation. All
was overcovered with the writing of war. The princess of the land had
ceased to weep. She viewed ruin with the face of a sibyl.
In the mid-afternoon they came upon knights resting by a great stone,
in a ring of trees with russet leaves. These hailed the jongleur and
the woman with him—when they saw what manner of penitent was the
latter they crossed themselves and let her stay without the ring,
seated among stones some distance from it. But they and their squires
listened to Garin’s singing.
He sang for them a many songs, for when one was done they clamoured
for another. Then they gave him largesse, and would have constrained
him to turn and go with them to the host of Montmaure, where would
be employment enough, since Count Jaufre nor no one else had many
jongleurs of such voice and skill! Though they knew it not, voice
and skill served him again when he turned them from constraining to
agreement to let him go his way, on pilgrimage with her who sat among
the stones. They made him sing again, and then, as all rested, they
asked questions as to the host through which he had come. He knew, from
this dropped word and that, that they were knights of Aquitaine, riding
to join that same Jaufre.
With their squires they numbered but twelve in all. Food and wine were
taken from the lading of a sumpter mule and placed upon the ground.
They gave the jongleur a generous portion, consented to his bearing to
the penitent of the cross, the Unfortunate his sister, portion of his
portion. Returned, he asked of one of the squires with whom he ate,
where was Duke Richard? He was at Excideuil.
“They say,” said the jongleur, “that he and Count Jaufre laugh and sigh
in the same moment.”
“It was once so,” answered the squire and drank wine.
“Is’t not so now?”
The other put down the wine cup. “Did you make poesy, jongleur, as well
as you sing it, I could give you subjects! Songs of Absence, now. Songs
of a subtile vapour called Difference, that while you turn your head
becomes thick and hard!—Perhaps they think that they yet laugh and
sigh in the same moment.”
“One must be near a man to see the colour of his soul.”
“Aye, so!—The knight I serve—him with the grey in his beard—is of
Richard’s household.”
“I have sung in this court and sung in that,” said Elias of Montaudon,
“but chances it so that never I saw Duke Richard!”
“He paints leopards on his shield—they call him Lion-Heart—he is good
at loving, good at hating—he means to do well and highly—but the
passions of men are legion.”
“I stake all,” said the jongleur, “on his being a nobler knight than is
Count Jaufre!”
“My gold with yours, brother,” answered the squire, and poured more
wine.
“And he is at Excideuil?”
“At Excideuil. He builds a great castle there, but his heart builds at
going overseas and saving again the Holy Sepulchre!”
There was a silence. “He can then,” said Elias of Montaudon, “be sought
through the imagination.”
“I know not wholly what you mean by that,” said the squire. “But when
he was made knight and watched his armour, he watched, with other
matters, some sort of generosity.”
The sun poured slanting rays, making the world ruddy. The knights,
having rested and refreshed themselves, would get to horse, press on so
as to reach the host before curfew. The ring beneath the tinted trees
broke. The squires hastened, brought the horses from the deeper wood.
All mounted, turned toward the south and Montmaure.
“Farewell, Master Jongleur, Golden-Voice!” cried the eldest knight.
“Come one day to the castles of Aquitaine!” Another flung him silver
further than had yet been given.—They were gone. Almost instantly
they must round a hill—the sight of them failed, the earth between
smothered the sound of their horses’ going, and of their own voices.
Ere the sun dipped the solitude was again solitude.
Garin joined the princess where she sat among the stones. She sat with
her chin in her hands, watching the great orb and all the scape of
clouds. “Did they tell you where Richard is to be found?”
“He is to be found at Excideuil. I spoke with a seeing man, and this is
what he said.”
He repeated what had been said.
“So!” said the princess. “Let us be going.”
They walked until the red dusk had given way to brown dusk and darkness
was close at hand. She spoke only once, and then she said, “You also
are a seeing man, Elias the Jongleur!”
A ruined wayside shrine appeared before them, topping a hill, clear
against the pale, cold, remote purples and greens of the west.
Their path mounted to it; they found all about it quiet and lonely.
They talked until the sky was filled with stars, then they wrapped
themselves in their mantles and slept, stretched upon the yet warm
earth.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE ABBEY OF THE FOUNTAIN
MORNING broke. They rose and travelled on. This day they passed
definitely from the dragon’s present reach, though yet they were
in lands of Roche-de-Frêne, done into ruin by him, poisoned by his
breath. Adventures they had, perils and escapes. These were approached,
endured, passed. At night they came to a hermit’s cell where was no
hermit, but on a stone hearth wood ready for firing. They closed the
door, struck flint and steel, had presently a flame that reddened the
low and narrow walls and gave the two, tired and cold, much comfort.
The hermit’s cupboard was found, and in it dried fruit and pease and a
pan or two for cooking. Without the cell was water, a bubbling spring
among moss and fern.
The night was dark and windy. None came to strike upon the hermit’s
door, no human voice broke in upon them. The wind shook the forest
behind the cell and scoured the valley in front. It whistled around
their narrow refuge, it brought at intervals a dash of rain against
door and wall. But the two within were warmed and fed, and they found
an ocean-music in the night. It rocked them in their dreams, it soothed
like a lullaby. The princess dreamed of her father, and that they were
reading together in a book; then that changed, and it was her old,
old nurse, who told her tales of elves and fays. Garin dreamed of the
desert and then of the sea. Dawn came. They rekindled their fire and
had spare breakfast, then fared forth through a high and stormy world.
Night came, day came, nights and days, beads of light and its doings,
beads of dimness and rest. They kept no list of the dangers they
entered and left, of the incidents and episodes of peril. They were
many, but the two went through like a singing shaft, like a shuttle
driven by the hand of Genius. Now they were forth from the invaded
princedom, now they were gone from fiefs of other suzerains. Where they
had faced north, now they walked with the westering sun.
When that happened, Jael the herd wore no longer the saffron cross. It
had served the purpose, carrying her through Montmaure’s host, that
else might not have let a woman pass.... The two had slept upon leaves
in an angle of a stone wall, on the edge of a coppice. The wall ran by
fields unharmed by war; they were out from the shadow. A dawn came up
and unfolded like a rose of glory. The coppice seemed to sleep, the air
was so still. The night had been dry, and for the season, warm. Cocks
crew in the distance, birds that stayed out the year cheeped in the
trees.
The herd-girl took her frieze mantle, and, sitting upon a stone,
broke the threads that bound to it the Church’s stigma and seal. The
jongleur watched her from where he leaned against the wall. When it was
free from the mantle, she took the shaped piece of saffron-dyed cloth
and moving from the stone kneeled beside their fire of sticks and gave
it to the flame. She watched it consume, then stood up. “It served me,”
she said. “I know not if it ever served any upon whom it was truly
chained. As I read the story, He who was nailed to the cross had a
spirit strong and merciful. It is the spirits who are strong that are
merciful.”
The rose in the east grew in glory. Colour came into the land, into
the coppice, and to the small vines and ferns in their niches and
shrines between the stones. Garin of the Golden Island stood in green
and brown, beside him the red-ribboned lute. “As the first day from
Roche-de-Frêne, so now again,” said Audiart, “you are the jongleur,
Elias of Montaudon. I am your _mie_, Jael the herd.”
“Your will is mine, Jael the herd,” said Garin.
He bent and extinguished the fire of sticks. The two went on together,
the sun behind them.... Once Vulcan had had a stithy in this country.
Masses of dark rock were everywhere, old, cooled lava, dark hills,
mountains and peaks. Chestnut and oak ran up the mountain-sides, the
valleys lay sunken, there was a silver net of streams. Hamlets hid
beneath hills, village and middling town climbed their sides, castles
crowned the heights, in vales by the rivers sat the monasteries. The
region was divided between smiling and frowning. Its allegiance was
owed to a lord of storms, who, in his nature, showed now and then a
broad golden beam. At present no wild beast from without entered the
region to ravage; there it smiled secure. But Duke Richard drained
it of money and men; its own kept it poor. He drained all his vast
duchy and fiefs of his duchy, as his brothers drained their lands and
his father drained England. They were driving storms and waters that
whirled and drew; one only was the stagnant kind that sat and brewed
poison. This region was a corner of the great duke’s wide lands, but
the duke helped himself from its purse, and the larger number of its
men were gone to his wars.
But for all that, the jongleur and the herd-girl met a many people and
saw towns that to them from Roche-de-Frêne seemed at ease, relaxed, and
light of heart. Baron and knight and squire and man were gone to the
wars, but baron and knight and squire and man, for this reason, for
that reason, remained. Castle drawbridges rested down, portcullises
rusted unlowered. The roads, bad though they were, had peaceful
traffic; the fields had been harvested, and the harvest had not gone to
feed another world. The folk that remained were not the fiercer sort,
and they longed for amusement. It rested not cold, and folk were out of
doors. The country-side, mountain and hill and valley, hung softened,
stilled, wrapped in a haze of purple-grey.
Jongleur’s art, human voice at its richest, sweetest, most
expressive—such was wanted wherever now they went. They had jongleur’s
freedom in a singing time. Travelling on, they made pause when they
were called upon. The jongleur sang the heart out of the breast, the
water into the eyes, high thoughts and resolves into the upper rooms of
the nature. The dark-eyed, still girl, his companion and _mie_, sat on
doorstep, or amid the sere growth of the wayside, or stood in castle
hall or court, or in the market-place of towns, and listened with the
rest to the singing voice and the song that it uttered. The few about
them, or the many about them, sighed with delight, gave pay as they
were able, and always would have had the jongleur stay, sing on the
morrow, and the morrow’s morrow. But jongleurs had license to wander,
and no restlessness of theirs surprised. Day by day the two were able,
after short delays, to take the road again.
They came to Excideuil.
“Is the duke here?”
“No. He was here, but he has gone to Angoulême.”
Elias of Montaudon brought that news to Jael the herd. She listened
with a steady face. “Very well! In ways, that suits me better. There
are those at Angoulême whom I know.”
The jongleur sang in the market-place of Excideuil. “Ah, ah!” cried
many, “you should have been here when our duke was here! He had a day
when there sang six troubadours, and the prize was a cup of gold! And
yet no troubadour sang so well as you sing, jongleur!”
A week later, crown of a hill before them, they saw Angoulême. The
morning light had shown frost over the fields, but now the sun melted
that silver film and the day was a sapphire. Wall and battlement,
churches, castle, brilliant and spear-like, stood out from the blue
dome: beneath spread a clear valley and clear streams. Other heights
had lesser castles, and the valley had houses of the poor. Travel upon
the road thickened, grew more various, spiced with every class and
occupation. The day carried sound easily, and there was more sound
to carry. Contacts became frequent, and these were now with people
affected, in greater or less degree, by the sojourn in Angoulême of
Duke Richard. The air knew his presence; where he came was tension,
energy held in a circumference. From the two that entered Angoulême
spread another circle. Garin felt power and will in her whom he walked
beside, felt attention. The force within him rose to meet hers and they
made one.
The town grew larger before them, walls and towers against the sky.
“Ask some one,” said Audiart, “where is the Abbey of the Fountain?”
He asked.
“The Abbey of the Fountain?” answered the man whom he addressed. “It
lies the other side of the hill. Go through the town and out at the
west gate, and you will see it below you, among trees.”
They climbed the hill and entered Angoulême, thronged with life. To the
two who kept the picture of Roche-de-Frêne, wrapped in clouds of storm
and disaster, Angoulême might appear clad like a peacock, untroubled
as a holiday child. Yet was there here—and they divined that,
too—grumbling and soreness, just anger against Richard the proud,
coupled with half-bitter admiration. Here was wide conflict of opinion
and mood. Life pulsed strongly in Angoulême.
Jongleur and herd-girl threaded the town, where were many jongleurs,
and many women with them lacking church’s link. They regarded the
castle, and the Leopard banner above it. “Richard, Richard!” said the
herd-girl, “I hope that a manner of things are true that I have heard
of you!”
They came to the west gate and left the town by it. Immediately, when
they were without the walls, they saw in the vale beneath groves of now
leafless trees and, surrounded by these, the Abbey of the Fountain.
Jael the herd stood still, gazing upon it. “I had a friend—one whom
I liked well, and who liked me. Now she is abbess here—the Abbess
Madeleine! Let us go down to the Abbey of the Fountain, and see what we
shall see.”
They went down to the vale. Great trees stretched their arms above
them. A stream ran diamonds and made music as it went. Now there came
to Garin the deep sense of having done this thing before—of having
gone with the Princess Audiart to a great house of nuns—though surely
she was not then the Princess Audiart.... He ceased to struggle;
earthly impossibilities seemed to dissolve in a deeper knowledge. He
laid down bewilderment and the beating to and fro of thought; in a
larger world thus and so must be true.
Passing through a gate in a wall, they were on Abbey land, nor was it
long before they were at the Abbey portal. Beggars and piteous folk
were there before them, and a nun giving bread to these through the
square in the door. Garin and Audiart stood aside, waiting their turn.
She gazed upon him, he upon her.
“Came you ever to a place like this,” she breathed, “in green and brown
before?”
“I think that it is so, Jael the herd.”
“A squire in brown and green?”
He nodded, “Yes.”
Jael the herd put her hand over her eyes. “Truth my light! but our life
is deep!”
The mendicants left the portal. The slide closed, making the door solid.
“Wait here,” said the herd-girl. “I will go knock. Wait here until you
are called.”
She knocked, and the panel slid back. He heard her speaking to the
sister and the latter answering. Then she spoke again, and, after a
moment of hesitation, the door was opened. She entered; it closed
after her. He sat down on a stone bench beside the portal and watched
the lacework of branches, great and small, over the blue. A cripple
with a basket of fruit sat beside him and began to talk of jongleurs
he had heard, and then of the times, which he said were hard. With
his lameness, something in him brought Foulque to Garin’s mind. “Oh,
ay!” said the cripple, “kings and dukes make work, but dull work that
you die by and not live by! The court will buy my grapes, but—” He
shrugged, then whistled and stretched in the sun.
“How stands Duke Richard in your eye?”
The cripple offered him a bunch of grapes. “Know you aught that could
not be better, or that could not be worse?”
“Well answered!” said Garin. “I have interest in knowing how high at
times can leap the better.”
“Higher than the court fool thinks,” said the cripple. He sat a little
longer, then took his crutch and his basket of fruit and hobbled away
toward the town.
Garin waited, musing. An hour passed, two hours, then the panel in the
door slid back. A voice spoke, “Jongleur, you are to enter.”
The door opened. He passed through, when it closed behind him. The
sister slipped before, grey and soundless as a moth, and led him over
stone flooring and between stone walls, out of the widened space by
the Abbey door, through a corridor that echoed to his footfall, subdue
his footfall as he might. This ended before a door set in an arch.
The grey figure knocked; a woman’s voice within answered in Latin. The
sister pushed the door open, stood aside, and he entered.
This, he knew at once, was the abbess’s room, then saw the Abbess
Madeleine herself, and, sitting beside her, that one whose companion he
had been for days and weeks. The herd-girl’s worn dress was still upon
her, but she sat there, he saw, as the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne, as
the friend, long-missed, of the pale Abbess. He made his reverence to
the two.
The Abbess Madeleine spoke in a voice of a silvery tone, mellowing here
and there into gold and kindness. “Sir Knight, you are welcome! I have
heard a wondrous story, and God gave you a noble part to play.—Now
will speak your liege, the princess.”
“Sir Garin de Castel-Noir,” said Audiart, “in Angoulême lodges a great
lord and valiant knight, Count of Beauvoisin, a kinsman of the most
Reverend Mother. She has written to him, to my great aiding. Take the
letter, find him out, and give it to him, your hand into his. He will
place you in his train, clothe you as knight again. Only rest still of
Limousin, and, for all but this lord, choose a name not your own.” She
mused a little, her eyes upon the letter, folded and sealed, that she
held. “But I must know it—the name. Call yourself, then, the Knight of
the Wood.” She held out the letter. He touched his knee to the stone
floor and took it. “Go now,” she said, “and the Saints have a true man
in their keeping!”
The Abbess Madeleine, slender, pure-faced, of an age with the princess,
extended her hand, gave the blessing of Mother Church. He rose, put
the letter in the breast of his tunic, stepped backward from the two,
and so left the room. Without was the grey sister who again went,
moth-like, before him, leading him through the corridor to the Abbey
door. She opened this—he passed out into the sunshine.
Back in Angoulême, the first man appealed to sent him to the court
quarter of the town, the second gave him precise directions whereby
he might know when he came to it the house that lodged the Count
of Beauvoisin, here in Angoulême with Duke Richard. By a tangle of
narrow streets Garin came to houses tall enough to darken these ways,
in the shadow themselves of the huge castle. He found the greatest
house, where was a porter at the door, and lounging about it a medley
of the appendage sort. Jongleur’s art and his own suasive power got
him entrance to a small court where gathered gayer, more important
retainers. He sang for these, and heads looked out of windows. A page
appeared with a summons to the hall. Following the youngster, Garin
found himself among knights, well-nigh a score, awaiting in hall
the count’s pleasure. Here, moreover, was a troubadour of fame not
inconsiderable, knight as well, but not singer of his own verses. He
had with him two jongleurs for that, and these now looked somewhat
greenly at Garin.
A knight spoke. “Jongleur, sing here as well as you sang below, and
gain will come to you!” Garin sang. “Ha!” cried the knights, “they sing
that way in Paradise!”
The troubadour advanced to the front of the group and bade him sing
again. He obeyed. “Gold hair of Our Lady!” swore the troubadour. “How
comes it that you are not jongleur to a poet?”
“I had a master,” answered Garin, “but he foreswore song and, chaining
himself to a rock, became an eremite. Good sirs, if the Count might
hear me—”
“He will be here anon from the castle. He shall hear you, jongleur,
and so shall our Lord, Duke Richard! Springtime in Heaven!” quoth the
troubadour. “I would take you into my employ, but though I can pay
linnets, I cannot pay nightingales!—Do you know any song of Robert de
Mercœur?”
He asked for his own. Garin, seeing that he did so, smiled and swept
the strings of the lute. “Aye, I know more than one!” He sang, and did
sweet words justice. The knights, each after his own fashion, gave
applause, and Robert de Mercœur sighed with pleasure. The song was
short. Garin lifted his voice in another, made by the same troubadour.
“Ah!” sighed Robert, “I would buy you and feed you from my hand!”
He sat for a moment with closed eyes, tasting the bliss of right
interpretation. Then, “Know you Garin of the Golden Isle’s, _If e’er,
Fair Goal, I turn my eyes from thee_?”
Garin sang it. “Rose tree of the Soul!” said Robert de Mercœur; “there
is the poet I would have fellowship with!”
The leaves of the great door opened, and there came into hall the Count
of Beauvoisin, with him two or three famed knights. All who had been
seated, or lounging half reclined, stood up; the silence of deference
fell at once. Garin saw that the count was not old and that he had a
look of the Abbess Madeleine. He said that he was weary from riding,
and coming to his accustomed great chair, sat down and stretched
himself with a sigh. His eyes fell upon the troubadour with whom he had
acquaintance. “Ha, Robert! rest us with music.”
“Lord count,” said Robert, “we have here a jongleur with the angel of
sound in his throat and the angel of intelligence in his head! Set him
to singing.—Sing, jongleur, again, that which you have just sung.”
Garin touched his lute. As he did so he came near to the count. He
stood and sang the song of Garin of the Golden Island. “Ah, ah!”
said the Count of Beauvoisin. “The Saints fed you with honey in your
cradle!” A coin gleamed between his outstretched fingers. Garin came
very near to receive it. “Lord,” he whispered as he bent, “much hangs
upon my speaking to you alone.”
A jongleur upon an embassy was never an unheard-of phenomenon. The
Count moved so as to let the light fall upon this present jongleur’s
face. The eyes of the two men met, the one in an enquiring, the other
in a beseeching and compelling gaze. The count leaned back in his
chair, the jongleur, when he had bowed low, moved to his original
station. “He sings well indeed!” said the Count. “Give him place among
his fellows, and when there is listening-space I will hear him again.”
Ere long he rose and was attended from the hall. The knights, too, left
the place, each bent upon his own concerns. Only the troubadour Robert
de Mercœur remained, and he came and, seating himself on the same bench
with Garin, asked if he would be taught a just-composed _alba_ or
morning song, and upon the other’s word of assent forthwith repeated
the first stanza. Garin said it over after him. “Ha, jongleur!” quoth
Robert, “you are worthy to be a troubadour! Not all can give values
value! The second goes thus—”
But before the _alba_ was wholly learned came a page, summoning the
jongleur. Garin, following the boy, came into the count’s chamber. Here
was that lord, none with him but a chamberlain whom he sent away. “Now,
jongleur,” said the count, “what errand and by whom despatched?”
Garin drew the letter from his tunic and gave it, his hand into the
other’s hand. The count looked at the writing. “What is here?” he
said. “Does the Abbess Madeleine choose a jongleur for a messenger?”
He broke the seal, read the first few lines, glanced at the body of
the letter, then with a startled look, followed by a knit brow, laid
it upon the table beside him but kept his hand over it. He stood in
a brown study. Garin, watching him, divined that mind and heart and
memory were busied elsewhere than in just this house in Angoulême.
At last he moved, turned his head and spoke to the page. “Ammonet!”
Ammonet came from the door. “Take this jongleur to some chamber where
he may rest. Have food and wine sent to him there.” He spoke to Garin,
“Go! but I shall send for you here again!”
The day descended to evening, the evening to night. Darkness had
prevailed for a length of time when Ammonet returned to the small, bare
room where Garin rested, stretched upon a bench. “Come, jongleur!” said
the page. “My lord is ready for bed and would, methinks, be sung to
sleep.”
Rising, he followed, and came again to the Count’s chamber, where
now was firelight and candle-light, and the Count of Beauvoisin in a
furred robe, pacing the room from side to side. “Wait without,” he
said to Ammonet, and the two men were alone together. The count paced
the floor, Garin stood by the hooded fireplace. He had seen in the
afternoon that he and this lord might understand each other.
The count spoke. “No marvel that we liked your singing! What if there
had been in hall knight and crusader who had heard you beyond the sea?”
“Chance, risk, and brambles grow in every land.”
“_Garin of the Golden Island._—I know not who, in Angoulême, may know
that you fight with Roche-de-Frêne. Duke Richard, who knows somewhat of
all troubadours, knows it.”
“I do not mean to cry it aloud.—Few in this country know my face, and
my name stays hidden.—May we speak, my lord count, of another presence
in Angoulême?”
The other ceased his pacing, flung himself down on a seat before the
fire, and leaned forward with clasped hands and bent head. He sat thus
for an appreciable time, then with a deep breath straightened himself.
“When she was the Lady Madeleine the Abbess Madeleine ruled a great
realm in my life. God knoweth, in much she is still my helm!... Sit you
down and let us talk.”
CHAPTER XXV
RICHARD LION-HEART
THE sun came up and lighted Angoulême, town and castle, hill and
valley. Light and warmth increased. The town began to murmur like a
hive, clack like a mill, clang and sound as though armourers were
working. Angoulême had breakfast and turned with vigour the wheel of
the day. The Count of Beauvoisin rode with a small following to the
Abbey of the Fountain, to see his kinswoman the Abbess Madeleine. Duke
Richard Lion-Heart did what he did, and felt what he felt, and believed
what he believed, with intensity. He was as religious as an acquiescent
thunderbolt in Jehovah’s hand. Where-ever he came, a kind of jewelled
sunshine played about the branches, in that place, of the Vine the
Church. It might shine with fitfulness, but the fitfulness was less
than the shining. His vassals knew his quality; when they were with him
or where his eye oversaw their conduct, the ritual of a religious life
received sharpened attention.
The Abbey of the Fountain was a noble House of Nuns, known afar for its
piety, scholarship, and good works. Richard, coming to Angoulême, had
sent a gift and asked for the prayers of the Abbess Madeleine, whom
the region held for nigh a saint. Offering and request had been borne
by the Count of Beauvoisin, who was the Abbess’s kinsman. It was not
strange in the eyes of any that he should ride again to the Abbey of
the Fountain, this time, perhaps, with his own soul’s good in mind.
With him rode the knight who had come to the count’s house in Angoulême
in the guise of a jongleur. That was not strange, either—if the knight
were acquaintance or friend, and if some wolfish danger had forced
him to become a fugitive from his own proper setting, or if romance
and whim were responsible, or if he had taken a vow. Yesterday he had
been a jongleur with a very golden voice. To-day he appeared a belted
knight, dressed by the count, given a horse and a place in his train.
He was called the “Knight of the Wood.” Probably it was not his true
name. Chivalry knew these transformations, and upheld them as an
integer in its own sum of rights. The knight would have a reason, be
it as solid as the ground, or be it formed of rose-hued mist, solid
only to his own imagination! For the rest, he seemed a noble knight.
The count showed him favour, but not enough to awaken criticism, making
others fear displacement.
All rode through the streets of Angoulême, in the bright keen day.
Robert of Mercœur was neighbour of the Knight of the Wood, and looked
aslant at him with an intuitive eye. They passed out by the west gate
and wound down to the valley floor. It was no distance from the town
to the Abbey of the Fountain; the latter’s great leafless trees were
presently about them. The count with a word drew Garin to ride at his
bridle-hand. The two or three following fell a little back. Beauvoisin
spoke. “Richard says that he will be a week in Angoulême. But he knows
not when his mood may change, and in all save three or four things he
follows his mood.”
The Knight of the Wood looked east and south. “I will answer for there
being a vision of many in extremity, and a wild heartbeat to win and
begone!”
“‘Win.’—I know not, nor can you know as to that.”
“The schools would say ‘True, lord count!’ But there is learning beyond
learning.”
They rode in silence, each pursuing his own thought. Beauvoisin rode
with lifted head, gazing before him down the vista of trees, to where
the grey wall closed it. Presently he spoke, but spoke as though he did
not know that he was speaking. “We were within the prohibited degrees
of kin.”
The great trees stood widely apart, gave way to the grassy space before
the Abbey.
The Count of Beauvoisin, his cap in his hand, was granted admittance
at the Abbey portal; might, in the abbess’s room, grey nuns attending
her, speak with the veiled abbess. But they who were with him waited
without, quietly, as the place demanded, in the grassy space. The
Knight of the Wood waited.
The minutes passed. When an hour had gone by, Beauvoisin came from the
grey building. He mounted his horse, looked steadfastly at the place,
then, with the air of a man in a dream, turned toward Angoulême. The
knights followed him, riding between huge boles of trees that towered.
Robert of Mercœur was again at Garin’s side.
“Do you mark that look of exaltation? One man has one heaven and
another, another—or that is the case while they are men. Count Rainier
has seen his heaven—felt the waving of its hands over his head!”
In Angoulême, in its widest street, they saw approaching a cavalcade
from the castle, a brilliant troop, glittering steel, shimmering
fine apparel, pushing with gaiety through the town upon some short
journey, half errand of state, half of pleasure. At its head rode
one who had the noblest steed, the richest dress. He was a man very
fair, long-armed, sinewy, of medium height. There was great vigour of
bearing, warmth from within out, an apparent quality that drew, save
when from another quarter of the nature came, scudding, wrath and
tempest. The mien of command was not lacking, nor, to a given point,
of self-command. He drew rein to speak to the Count of Beauvoisin;
who with his following had given room, backing their horses into the
opening of a narrower street.
“Ha, Beauvoisin, we sent for you but found you not!—Come to supper,
man, with me to-night!” His roving blue eye found out Robert of
Mercœur. “Do you come with him, Robert—and we will talk of how the
world will seem when all are poets!”
“Beausire,” said the count, “at your will! Now I turn beggar and beg
for you for guest in my house to-morrow.”
“I will come—I will come!” said Richard.
He nodded to Beauvoisin, put his horse into motion, clattered down the
ill-paved street. His train followed, lords and knights speaking to the
count as they passed. When all were gone in noise and colour, those who
had ridden to the Abbey of the Fountain reëntered the wider street and
so came to the house whence they had started. Dismounting in the court
where Garin had sung, they went, one to this business or pleasure,
one to that. But the count, entering, mounted a great echoing flight
of stairs to his chamber, and here, obeying his signal, came also the
Knight of the Wood. Beauvoisin dismissed all attendants, and the two
were alone.
“I have seen your princess,” said Beauvoisin. “She is a gallant lady,
though not fair.”
“Ah, what is ‘fair’? The time tells the eyes that such and such is
beauty. Then comes another time with its reversal! But all the time, if
the soul is ‘fair’? The princess is ‘fair’ to me.”
Beauvoisin looked at him steadily. “I see,” he said “that we have a
like fate—God He knoweth all, and what the great cup of life holds,
holds, holds!... Well, that princess has courage and is wise! I had
heard as much of her, and I see that it is so. In her first womanhood
the Abbess Madeleine was a long while at the court of Roche-de-Frêne.
Your princess is her friend.” He paced the room, then, coming to the
fire, bent over the flame.
“I see, my lord count,” said Garin, “devotion and generousness!”
Beauvoisin was silent, warming himself at the flame. Garin of the
Golden Island, standing at the window, looked toward Roche-de-Frêne.
His mind’s eye saw assault and repulse and again assault, the push
against walls and gates, the men upon the walls, at the gates, the
engines of war, the reeking fury of fight. The keener ear heard the
war-cries, the clangour and the shouting, and underneath, the groan. He
saw the banner that attacked, and above the castle, above Red Tower and
Lion Tower, the banner that defended. He turned toward the room again.
The count spoke, “_Jaufre de Montmaure!_ I have no love for Count
Jaufre, nor friendship with him. I was of those who, an they could,
would have kept Richard from this huge support he has given. My party
would still see it withdrawn.—But Richard treads a road of his own....
Were Jaufre Richard, your princess, being here, would be in the lion’s
den! But just her coming—the first outbursting of his anger over—will
put her person safe with Richard.”
“That has been felt—knowing by old rumour certain qualities in him.”
“It was truly felt. But as to the gain for which all was
risked!—Jaufre has been to him an evil companion, but a companion.
But,” said the Count of Beauvoisin, “even at my proper danger, I will
get for her who, by Saint Michael! with courage has come here, the
meeting she asks!”
* * * * *
The castle of Angoulême was not so huge and strong a place as the
castle of Roche-de-Frêne, but still was it great and strong enough. The
high of rank among its usual population remained within its walls, but
the lesser sort were crowded out and flowed into the town, so making
room for Duke Richard’s great train. Martialness was the tone where he
went, with traceable threads of song, threads of religiousness. Colours
had violence, and yet with suddenness and for short whiles might
soften to tenderness. There was brazen clangour, rattle as of armour,
dominance of trumpets, yet flute notes might come in the interstices,
and lute and harp had their recognized times. And all and whatever was
in presence showed with him intense and glowing. Idea clothed itself
promptly in emotion, emotion ran hotfoot into action, but none of the
three were film-like, momentary. Impetuous, they owned a solidity. He
could do, he had done, many an evil thing, but there was room for a
sense of realms that were not evil.
It was afternoon, and the red sun reddened the castle hall. There
had been planned some manner of indoor festivity, pageantry. The
world of chivalry, men and women, gathered in Angoulême about Richard
Lion-Heart, was there to see and be seen. But after the first half-hour
Richard rose and went away. His immediate court was used to that, too.
His mood had countered the agreed-upon mood for the hour: naught was to
do but to watch him depart. Music that was playing played more loudly;
a miracle-story in pantomime was urged to more passionate action; as
best might be, the chasm was covered. “It is the Duke’s way—applaud
the entertainers or the thing will drag!”
The duke went away to a great room in another part of the castle. With
him he drew two or three of his intimates; in the room itself attended
the Count of Beauvoisin and several knights of fame and worthiness.
Among these stood that newcomer to Angoulême, the Knight of the
Wood. The room was richly furnished, lit by the red light of the sun
streaming through three deep windows. A door in the opposite wall gave
into a smaller room.
Richard, entering, flung himself into the chair set for him in the
middle of a great square of cloth worked with gold. His brow was dark;
when he spoke, his voice had the ominous, lion note.
“My lord of Beauvoisin!”
Beauvoisin came near. “Lord, all is arranged—”
The duke made a violent movement of impatience, of anger beginning to
work.
“This is a madness that leads to naught! Does this princess think I am
so fickle—?”
His blue eye, roving the room, came to the group of knights at the far
end. “Yonder knight—is he Garin of the Golden Island?”
“Yes, lord.”
Duke Richard gazed at Garin of the Golden Island. “By the rood, he
looks a man!” He turned to his anger again. “But now this woman—this
Princess of Roche-de-Frêne—” His impatient foot wrinkled the silken
carpet. “She may count it for happiness if I do not hold her here
while I send messengers to Count Jaufre, ‘Lo, I have caged your bride
for you!’” He nursed his anger. Beauvoisin saw with apprehension how
he fanned it. “What woman comprehends man’s loyalty to man? I said to
Montmaure I would aid him—”
“My lord, the princess is here—within yonder room.”
“Ha!” cried Richard; and that in his nature that gave back, touch
for touch, Jaufre de Montmaure, came through the doors his anger had
opened. “Let her then come to me here as would the smallest petitioner!
God’s blood! Montmaure has her land. I hold her not as reigning
princess and my peer!”
Beauvoisin stepped to the door of the lesser room, opened it, and
having spoken to one within, stood aside. Duke Richard turned in his
seat, looked at the red sun out of window. He showed a tension: the
movement of his foot upon the floor-cloth might have stood for the
lion’s pacing to and fro, lashing himself to fury. At a sign from
Beauvoisin the knights had drawn farther into the shadow at the end of
the room. Garin watched from this dusk.
The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne came with simplicity and quietness
from the lesser room. She was not dressed now as a herd-girl, but as
a princess. There followed her two grey nuns who, taking their stand
by the door, remained there with lowered eyes and fingers upon their
rosaries. The princess came to the edge of the gold-wrought square. “My
lord duke,” she said; and when Garin heard her voice he knew that power
was in her.
When Richard turned from the window she kneeled and that without
outward or inner cavilling.
“Ha, madame!” said Richard. “Blood of God! did you think to gain aught
by coming here?”
She answered him; then, after a moment’s silence which he did not
break, began again to speak. The tones of her voice, now sustained, now
changing, came to those afar in the room, but not all the words she
said. Without words, they gave to those by the wall a tingling of the
nerves, a feeling of wave on wave of force—not hostile, uniting with
something in themselves, giving to that something volume and momentum,
wealth.... There were slight movements, then stillness answering the
still, intense burning, the burning white, of her passion, will, and
power.
She rested from speech. Richard left his chair, came to her and giving
her his hand, aided her to rise. He sent his voice down the room to
Beauvoisin. “My lord count, bring yonder chair for the princess.” He
had moved and spoken as one not in a dream, but among visions. When the
chair was brought and placed upon the golden cloth and she had seated
herself in it, he retook his own. “Jaufre de Montmaure,” he said, “was
my friend, and he wanted you for bride—”
She began again to speak, and the immortal power and desire of her
nature, burning deep and high and rapidly, coloured and shook the room.
“Lord, lord,” she said. “The right of it—” Sentence by sentence, wave
on wave, the right of it made way, seeing that deep within Duke Richard
there was one of its own household who must answer.
That meeting lasted an hour. The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne, rising
from her chair, stretched out her hands to Richard Lion-Heart. “I would
rest all now, my lord duke. The sun is sinking, but for all that we yet
will live by its light. In the morning it comes again.”
“I will ride to-morrow to the Abbey of the Fountain. We will speak
further together. I have promised naught.”
“No. But give room and maintenance to-night, my Lord Richard, to all
that I have said that is verity. Let all that is not verity go by
you—go by you!”
Beauvoisin and his men gave her and the nuns with her escort back
to the Abbey of the Fountain. Going, she put upon her head and drew
forward so that it shadowed her face, a long veil of eastern make,
threaded with gold and silver. Her robe was blue, a strange, soft, deep
colour.
The next morning, Duke Richard rode to the Abbey. He went again the day
after, and this day the sheaf was made. The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne
and Jaufre de Montmaure appealed each to a man in Duke Richard, a
higher man and a lower man. In these winter days, but sun-lighted, the
higher man won.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE FAIR GOAL
MESSENGERS, heralds, bearing decisive and peremptory speech, went
from Richard, Count of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine, to the Counts
of Montmaure. Others were despatched to the leaders of the host of
Aquitaine before Roche-de-Frêne. Duke Richard was at peace with
Roche-de-Frêne; let that host therefore direct no blow against its
lord’s ally! Instead, let it forthwith detach itself from Montmaure,
withdraw at once from the princedom of Roche-de-Frêne, and, returned
within its own boundaries, go each man to his own home. _On your faith
and obedience._ So the heralds to the leaders of the aid from Aquitaine.
To the Counts of Montmaure the heralds, declaring themselves true
heart, mouth, and speech of Duke Richard, delivered peremptory summons
to desist from this war. An they did not, it would be held to them for
revolt from Richard their suzerain.... The heralds with their train
rode fast and rode far.
The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne awaited in Angoulême the earliest fruit
of this faring. She waited at first at the Abbey of the Fountain, but
presently in the town as Duke Richard’s guest. A great house was given
her, with all comfort and service. Ladies came to wait upon her; she
had seneschal, chamberlain and page. If she would go abroad she had
palfreys with their grooms; in her hall waited knights to attend her.
Angoulême and its castle and the court about Duke Richard buzzed of
her presence in this place, of what adventure had been hers to reach
it, and of the attitude now of Richard Lion-Heart. They did not know
detail of her adventure, but they knew that it had taken courage. They
knew that Richard had in him power to turn squarely. They did not know
all the whys and wherefores, depths and reasons of the right angle
that made in Angoulême a whirling cloud of speculation, but as a fact
they accepted it and proceeded with their own adaptation. The party
that, for reasons personal to itself, had backed Montmaure, wagering
in effect upon the permanency of his influence with Richard, took
its discomforture as enforced surgery and found it wisdom’s part to
profess healing. The party that had been hostile to Montmaure found
a clearing day and walked with satisfaction in the sun. Those—not
many—who had stood between the two, found usual cautious pleasure in
changing scenery and event. The most in Angoulême could give nine days
to wonder. The Princess Audiart stayed with them no greatly longer time.
Duke Richard came to her house in state. In state she returned the
visit, was met by him at the castle gate. He would give a joust in her
honour, and afterward a contest of troubadours. She sat beside him on
the dais, and watched all with a gentle face, a still and inscrutable
look. Beauvoisin was of those who tourneyed, and among the knights whom
he brought into the lists rode Garin of the Black Castle, who did most
well and was given great observance. The next day, when there was song,
Richard called for Garin of the Golden Island, naming him famed knight,
famed poet, famed bird of song, bird that sang from itself. Garin came
before the dais, took from a jongleur his lute.
“Sir Garin of the Golden Island,” said Richard, “sing _Within its heart
the nightingale_—”
He sang—a golden song sung greatly.
“Ah!” sighed Richard Lion-Heart, and bade him sing _When in my dreams
thou risest like a star_. “Ah God!” said Richard. “Some are kings one
way, and some another! Sing now and lastly to-day, _Fair Goal_.”
Garin sang. All Angoulême that might gather in the great hall, in the
galleries, in the court and passages without, listened with parted
lips. Richard listened, and in some sort he may have felt what the
singer felt of goals beyond goals, of glories beyond the loveliness
and glories of symbols, of immortal union behind, beneath, above the
sweetness of an earthly fact.
One was present who did feel what the singer felt, and that was the
princess who sat as still as if she were carven there.... Garin of the
Golden Island won the golden falcon that was the duke’s prize.
A week went by. A second began to drift into the past, winter day by
winter day. Messengers now rode into Angoulême and through the castle
gates, and were brought to Duke Richard. They came from the lords of
Aquitaine encamped before Roche-de-Frêne, and they bore tidings of
obedience. The host helped no longer in this war. When the messengers
departed it was in act of lifting from all its encampments; even now
it would be withdrawing from the lands of Roche-de-Frêne. Richard sent
this word in state to the princess in Angoulême.
A day later there spurred at dusk into Angoulême a cloaked and hooded
lord, behind him three or four, knights or squires. The following
morn the first won through to Richard’s presence. The two were alone
together a considerable time. Those who waited without the room heard
rise and fall of voices.... At last came the lion’s note in Richard’s
voice, but it changed and fell away. He was speaking now with an icy
reasonableness. That passed to a very still, pointed utterance with
silences between.... The other made passionate answer. Richard’s speech
took a sternness and energy which in him marked the lion sublimated.
Then a bell was struck; the attendants, when they opened the door, had
a glimpse of a red-gold head and a working face, hook-nosed, with a
scar upon its cheek.
Montmaure left Angoulême; he rode in savagery and bitterness, his spur
reddening the side of his horse, the men with him labouring after.
He rode, whether by day or by eve, in a hot night of his own. Red
sparks flashed through it, and each showed something he did not wish
to see. Now it was Richard whom he doubted if ever he could regain,
and now it was Richard’s aid withdrawing—withdrawn—from the plain
by Roche-de-Frêne. Cap-du-Loup—Cap-du-Loup would follow Aquitaine,
might even now gustily have whirled away! Jaufre’s spirit whispered
of other allies who might follow. The glare showed him the force of
Montmaure that was left, spread thinly before Roche-de-Frêne. It showed
Roche-de-Frêne, as last he had seen it, over his shoulder, when he rode
with fury and passion to work in Angoulême a counter-miracle,—as he
would see it now again,—Roche-de-Frêne grim and dauntless, huge giant
seated on a giant rock. Jaufre, whelmed in his night-time, shook with
its immensity of tempest. The storm brought forth lights of its own.
They showed him Montmaure—Montmaure also in motion—cowering forth,
unwinning, from this war. They showed him Audiart the princess. When he
came to Angoulême he had learned there who had wrought the miracle....
An inner light that was not red or born of storm trembled suddenly, far
above the great fens and marshes and hot, wild currents. _That quality
in her that had wrought the miracle_—It was but a point, a gleam, but
Jaufre had seen white light. The storm closed in upon him, but he had
looked into a higher order, knew now that it was there. His huge, lower
being writhed, felt the space above it.
Hours passed, days passed. He came through country which he had
charred, back to Montmaure’s tents. The dragon lay shrunken; it could
no longer wholly enfold Roche-de-Frêne. Jaufre found his father’s red
pavilion, entered.
Count Savaric started up. “Ha! you rode fast! Speak out! Is it good or
bad?”
“Bad,” said Jaufre, and faintly, faintly knew that it was good.
The days went by in Angoulême and there came again the heralds who had
been sent to Montmaure. They brought Count Savaric’s and Count Jaufre’s
submission to the will of their suzerain—since no other could be done
and sunshine be kept to grow in! They brought news of the lifting of
the siege of Roche-de-Frêne. On the morrow came one who had been in
Roche-de-Frêne. He had to tell of joy that overflowed.
The Princess Audiart left the court of Richard Lion-Heart for her own
land and capital town. She went with a great escort which Richard
would give her. The danger now from the dragon that had ravaged
her country lay only in the scattered drops of venom that might be
encountered,—wild bands, Free Companies, wandering about, ripe for
mischief, not yet sunk back into their first lairs. She and Duke
Richard made pact of amity between his house and hers, and she went
from Angoulême on a grey day, beneath a cloud-roof that promised snow.
At the Abbey of the Fountain she dismounted, entered to say farewell to
the Abbess Madeleine and to kneel for Church’s blessing. She had ladies
now in her train. These entered with her, and two knights, the Count of
Beauvoisin and Sir Garin of the Black Castle. Forth and upon the road,
Beauvoisin rode at her right. He had the duke’s signet, lord’s power to
bear her safely through every territory that owed allegiance to Richard.
The snow fell, but the air was not cold. They rode through the
afternoon wrapped in a veil of large white flakes. In the twilight they
reached a fair-sized town where great and rich preparation had been
made for them. The next day also the snow fell, and they fared forward
through a white country. Then the snow ceased, the clouds faded and a
great heaven of blue vaulted the world. The sun shone and melted the
snow, there came a breath as of the early spring.
In the middle of the day they pitched the princess’s pavilion in the
lee of a hill or in some purple wood. They built a fire for her and
her ladies and, a distance away, a campfire. Dinner was cooked and
served; rest was taken, then camp was broken and they rode on again.
Time and route were spaced so that at eve they entered town or village
or castle gate. Beauvoisin had sent horsemen ahead—when the princess
and her company entered, they found room and cheer with varying pomp
of welcome. The night passed, in the morning stately adieux were made;
they travelled on.
Riding east and south, they came now into and crossed fiefs that held
from Montmaure who held from Aquitaine. Beauvoisin kept hawk-watch
and all knights rode with a warrior mien. Care was taken where the
camp should be made. Among those sent ahead to town or castle were
poursuivants who made formal proclamation of Duke Richard’s mind.—But
though they saw many who had been among the invaders of Roche-de-Frêne,
and though the country wore a scowling and forbidding aspect,—where
it did not wear an aspect relieved and complaisant,—they made transit
without open or secret hindrance. They came nearer, nearer to borders
of Roche-de-Frêne. In clear and gentle weather the princess entered
that fief which had been held by Raimbaut the Six-fingered.
This was a ravaged region indeed, and there was no town here for
sleeping in and no great castle that stood. When the sun was low in the
western sky they set the princess’s pavilion, and one for her ladies,
at the edge of a wood. A murmuring stream went by; there were two great
pine trees and the fire that was lighted made bronze pillars of their
trunks. Something in them brought into Audiart’s mind the Palestine
pillars before the shrine of Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne.
The sun was a golden ball, close to the horizon. Wrapped in her
mantle, she sat on a stone by the fire and watched it. Her ladies,
perceiving that she wished to be alone, kept within the pavilions.
Beauvoisin and his knights sat or reclined about their fire farther
down the stream. Farther yet a third great fire blazed for the squires
and men-at-arms. Upon a jutting mound a knight and a squire sat their
horses, motionless as statues, watching that naught of ill came near
the pavilions.
One upon the bank of the stream drew farther from the knights’ fire and
nearer to that of the princess, then stood where she might see him. She
turned her head as if she felt him there.
“Come to the fire, Sir Garin,” she said.
Garin came. “My Lady Audiart, may I speak? I have a favour to beg.”
She nodded her head. “What do you wish, Sir Garin?”
Garin stood before her, and the light played over and about him. “We
are on land that Raimbaut the Six-fingered held, whose squire I was.
Not many leagues from this wood is Castel-Noir, where I was born and
where my brother, if it be that he yet lives, abides. I would see him
again, and I would rest with him for a time and help him bring our fief
back to well-being and well-doing.—What I ask, my Lady Audiart, is
that in the morning I may turn aside to Castel-Noir and rest there.”
The princess sat very still upon the stone. The golden sun had slipped
to half an orb; wood and hill stretched dark, the voice of the stream
changed key. Audiart seemed to ponder that request. Her hand shaded
her face. At last, “We have word that ere we reach the Convent of Our
Lady in Egypt there will meet us a great company of our own lords
and knights. So, with them and with our friends here, we are to make
glittering entry into Roche-de-Frêne.... I do not prize the glitter,
but so is the custom, and so will it be done. Now if I have wrought
much for Roche-de-Frêne, I know not, but I am glad. But if I have done
aught, you have done it, too, for I think that I could not have reached
Duke Richard without you. That is known now by others, and will be more
fully known.... Will you not ride still to Roche-de-Frêne and take your
share of what sober triumph is preparing?”
“Do you bid me do so, my Lady Audiart?”
“I do not bid you. I will for you to do according to your own will.”
“Then I will not go now to Roche-de-Frêne, but I will go to
Castel-Noir.”
The princess sat with her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand.
She sat very still, her eyes upon the winter glow behind the winter
woods. “As you will, Garin of the Golden Island,” she said at last.
Her voice had in it light and shadow. She sat still and Garin stood as
still, by the fire. All around them was its light and the light in the
sky that made a bright dusk.
He spoke. “_The Convent of Our Lady in Egypt._ Martinmas, eight
years ago, I was in Roche-de-Frêne. I heard Bishop Ugo preach and I
knelt in the church before Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne. Then I went
to the inn for my horse. There, passers-by asked me if I was for the
feast-day jousts and revels in the castle lists. I said No, I could not
stay. Then they said that there sat to judge the contest the Princess
Alazais, and beside her, the Princess Audiart. I had no reason to think
them mistaken. Were they right, or were they wrong? Were you there in
Roche-de-Frêne?”
“Martinmas, eight years ago?—No, I was not in Roche-de-Frêne, though I
came back to the castle very soon. I was at Our Lady in Egypt.”
“Ah God!” said Garin with strong emotion. “How beautiful are Thy
circles that Thou drawest!”
She looked at him with parted lips. “Now, I will ask a question! I
wearied, that autumn, of nuns’ ways and waiting ladies’ ways and my own
ways. One day I said, ‘I will go be a shepherdess and taste the true
earth!’” A smile hovered. “Faith! the experiment was short!—Now, my
question.—Being a shepherdess, I was like to taste shepherdess’s fare
in this so knightly world. Then came by a true knight, though his dress
and estate were those of a squire.—My question:—I asked him, that
day, ‘Where is your home?’ He answered, that squire, and I thought that
he told the truth,—‘I dwell by the sea, a long way from here.’—Sir
Garin de Castel-Noir, that was squire to Raimbaut the Six-fingered,
neither dwelling nor serving by the sea but among hills, and not far
away but near at hand, tell me now and tell me truly—”
“Jael the herd, I am punished! I thought to myself, ‘I am in danger
from that false knight who will certainly seek me.’”
“Ah, I see!” said the princess; and she laughed at him in scorn.
“It is an ill thing,” said Garin, “to mistrust and to lie! I make no
plea, my Lady Audiart, save that I do not always so.”
“Certes, no! I believe you there.... Let it go by.... That shepherdess
could not, after all, be to you for trustworthiness like your Fair
Goal—”
She ceased abruptly upon the name. The colour glowed in the west, the
colour played and leaped in the faggot fire, the colour quivered in
their own faces. Light that was not outer light brightened in their
eyes. Their frames trembled, their tissues seemed to themselves and to
each other to grow fine and luminous. There had been a shock, and all
the world was different.
Garin spoke. “On a Tuesday you were Jael the herd. On a Thursday, in
the middle of the day, you came with your ladies to a lawn by the
stream that flows by Our Lady in Egypt—the lawn of the plane, the
poplar and the cedar, the stone chair beneath the cedar, and the
tall thick laurels rounding all.” He was knight and poet and singer
now—Garin of the Golden Island—knight and poet and singer and
another besides. “A nightingale had sung me into covert there. I
followed it down the stream, from grove to grove, and it sung me into
covert there. The laurels were about me. I rested so close to the
cedar—so close to the stone chair! One played a harp—you moved with
your ladies to the water’s edge—you came up the lawn again to the
three trees. You were robed in blue, my princess; your veil was long
and threaded with silver and gold, and it hid your face. I never saw
your face that day—nor for long years afterward! You sat in the stone
chair—”
“Stop!” said the Princess Audiart. She sat perfectly still in the
rich dusk. Air and countenance had a strange hush, a moment of
expressionless waiting. Then uprushed the dawn. He saw the memory
awaken, the wings of knowledge outstretch. “Ah, my God!” she whispered.
“As I sat there, the strangest breath came over me—sense of a presence
near as myself—” The rose in her face became carnation, she sprang to
her feet, turned aside. The fire came between her and Garin; she paced
up and down in the shadowy space between the tree-trunks that were like
the Saracen pillars.
Moments passed, then she returned and stood beside the stone.
Garin bent his knee. “My Lady Audiart, you, and only you, in woman
form, became to me her whom for years I have sung, naming her the _Fair
Goal_.... I left that covert soon, going away without sound. I only
saw you veiled, but all is as I have said.... But now, before I go to
Castel-Noir, there is more that I would tell to you.”
“Speak at your will,” said the princess.
“Do you remember one evening in the castle garden—first upon the
watch-tower, and then in the garden, and you were weary of war and all
its thoughts, and bade me take Pierol’s lute and sing? I sang, and you
said, ‘Sing of the Fair Goal.’ I sang—and there and then came that
sense of doubleness and yet one.... It came—it made for me confusion
and marvel, pain, delight. It plunged me into a mist, where for a time
I wandered. After that it strengthened—strengthened—strengthened!...
At first, I fought it in my mind, for I thought it disloyalty. I
fought, but before this day I had ceased to fight, or to think it
disloyalty. Before we came to Angoulême—and afterwards.... I knew
not how it might be—God knoweth I knew not how it might be—but my
lady whom I worshipped afar, and my princess and my liege were one! I
knew that, though still I thought I saw impossibilities—They did not
matter, there was something higher that dissolved impossibilities.... I
saw again the Fair Goal, and my heart sang louder, and all my heart was
hers as it had been, only more deeply so—more deeply so! And still it
is so—still it is the same—only with the power, I think, of growing
forever!” He rose, came close to her, kneeled again and put the edge of
her mantle to his lips. “And now, Princess of Roche-de-Frêne, I take
my leave and go to Castel-Noir. I am knight of yours. If ever I may
serve you, do you but call my name! Adieu—adieu—adieu!”
She regarded him with a great depth and beauty of look. “Adieu, now,
Sir Garin of the Black Castle—Sir Garin of the Golden Island! Do
you know how much there is to do in Roche-de-Frêne—and how, for a
long time, perhaps, one must think only of the people and the land
that stood this war, and of all that must be builded again?... Adieu
now—adieu now! Do not go from lands of Roche-de-Frêne without my
leave.”
The dark was come, the bright stars burned above the trees. There was
a movement from the knights’ fire—Beauvoisin coming to the princess’s
pavilions to enquire if all was well before the camp lay down to sleep.
Garin felt her clasped hands against his brow, felt her cheek close,
close to his. “Go now,” she breathed. “Go now, my truest friend! What
comes after winter?—Why, spring comes after winter!”
CHAPTER XXVII
SPRING TIME
IN the winter dawn Garin rose, saddled his horse, and, mounting, rode
from that place. He travelled through burned and wasted country, and he
saw many a piteous sight. But folk that were left were building anew,
and the sky was bright and the sunshine good. He went by the ruins of
Raimbaut’s keep, and at last he came to Castel-Noir.
Foulque lived and the black tower stood. News of salvation had run like
wildfire. Garin found Foulque out-of-doors, old and meagre men and
young lads with him. The dozen huts that sheltered by the black castle,
sheltered still. The fields that it claimed had gone undevastated.
“Garin’s luck!” said Foulque; whereupon old Jean crossed himself
for fear that Sir Foulque had crossed the luck.—But the young and
middle-aged men who had gone to war for Roche-de-Frêne had not yet
returned. Some would not return. The women of the huts looked haunted,
and though the children played, they did not do so freely. But the war
had ended, and some would come back, and Christmas-tide was at hand and
the sun shone on the brown fields.
Foulque saw Garin coming. He put his hand above his eyes. “_Peste!_” he
said. “I always had good sight—what’s the matter now? Look, boy, for
my eyes blur!”
They all looked, then they cried, “Sir Garin!” and the younger rushed
down to the road.
That day and night passed. The folk of Castel-Noir had liking for Sir
Foulque, and that despite some shrewdness of dealing and a bitter wit.
But they were becoming aware that they loved Sir Garin. He stood and
told them of how this man had done and how that, of two brave deeds
of Sicart’s, and how Jean the Talkative talked but did well. He told
them who, to his knowledge, had quitted this life; and he spoke not
like a lord but like a friend to those who upon that telling broke into
mourning. He could not tell them how life and death stood now among
Castel-Noir men, for he had been away from Roche-de-Frêne. Castel-Noir
came to understand that he had been upon some service for the princess,
and that that explained why there was with him neither squire nor man.
To Foulque that evening in the hall, by the fire, he told in part the
story of what the princess had wrought for Roche-de-Frêne.
Foulque drew deeper breath. The colour came into his withered cheek, he
twisted in his chair. “I heard rumours when Aquitaine lifted and went
away, and Montmaure slunk back—but my habit is to wait for something
more than rumours!... That is a brave lady—a brave adventure! By the
mass! When I was young that would have stirred me!”
Garin laughed at him. “It stirs you now, Foulque!”
Foulque would not grant that. But even while he denied, he looked less
crippled and shrivelled. “You did your _devoir_ also.... _Audiart the
Wise_—Well, she may be so!”
“She is so,” said Garin.
He slept that night, stirred in the early morning, rose, and, dressing,
called to Sicart’s son in the courtyard to bring his horse. Old Pierre
gave him wheaten bread and a bowl of milk. Foulque, wrapped in his
furred mantle, came from the hall and talked with him while he ate and
drank. The sun at the hill-tops, he rode down the narrow way from the
black tower and was lost to sight in the fir wood. He rode until he
reached a certain craggy height of earth from which might be viewed the
road by which the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne must approach Our Lady
in Egypt. The height was shaggy with tree and bush, it overhung the
way, commanding long stretches to either hand. Dismounting, he tied
his horse in a small, thick wood at the back of the hill, then climbed
afoot to the rough and broken miniature plateau atop. Even as he came
to this he saw upon the western stretch of the road two horsemen, and
presently made out that they were men of Beauvoisin’s sent ahead. They
passed beneath him, cantered on, faces set for Our Lady in Egypt.
Garin found a couch of rock, a hollow, sandstrewn cleft where, lying at
length, small bushes hid him from all observation. Here he stretched
himself, pillowed his head upon his arms, and waited to see the
princess pass. Time went by, and the morning air brought him sound from
the other hand. He parted the bushes and looking east saw approaching
a great and gallant troop—lords and knights of Roche-de-Frêne, coming
to greet their princess close within the boundaries of her own land....
They came on with banners—a goodly column and a joyful. Close at hand,
he began to single out forms and faces that he knew, and first he saw
Stephen the Marshal riding at the head, and then Raimon of Les Arbres,
and beside this lord, Aimar de Panemonde. Garin’s heart rejoiced that
Aimar lived. He looked fondly upon his brother-in-arms, riding beneath
the craggy hill. Many another that he knew he saw. Others he missed,
and feared that they did not live or that they lay hurt, for else they
would have been here.
The great troop, for all it rode with a singing heart, with exultation
and laughter and triumph, had a war-worn look. The men and the horses
were gaunt. The men’s eyes seemed yet to be looking on battle sights.
Their gestures were angular, energetic and final, their speech short,
not flowing. The colour of bronze, the hardness of iron, the edge of
steel were yet in presence. It was to be seen that they had known
hunger and weariness and desperation, and had withstood with courage.
The man stretched upon the rock-edge above the passing numbers felt his
communion with them. They were his brothers....
Not only these. As they rode by he saw in vision all the lands of
Roche-de-Frêne and those who peopled them, men and women and children.
And the town of Roche-de-Frêne and its citizens, men and women and
children, and all who had defended it. And all the hills and vales of
life.... He saw the slain and the hurt and the impoverished and the
hearts that bled with loss—the waste fields and the broken walls. He
saw work to be done—long work. And when that work was done and there
were only scars that did not throb, yet was there work—building and
building, though it could not be weighed. He saw as he knew that she
saw—and the land became deep and dear to him, and the people became
father and mother and child, brother and sister and friend.... “It is a
baptism,” said Garin, and covered his eyes with his hands.
The great company went by, lessened in apparent bulk, lessened still
upon the westward running road. Its trumpeters sounded their trumpets.
Out of the distance came to Garin’s ear an answering fanfare, delicate
and far like fairy trumpets. Rising ground and purple wood hid the
meeting between the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne and her barons and
valiant knights.
The sun climbed toward the summit. The troubadour lay in the high cleft
of the rock, felt the beams, breathed the clear, pure air, hearkened
to the sough of the breeze in sere grass and bush. All earth and air
were his, and the golden home of warmth and light, the great middle orb
whose touch he felt. He waited for sound or sight that should tell him
that the princess and her doubled train were coming. It was not long
to wait. In the night a light rain had fallen—there was no dust, and
the road was softened beneath the horses’ hoofs. The great company
appeared now, like a vision, brightened and heightened to the outer eye
by strength of the inner. Beauty and might, and sadness and joy, all
lights and all shadows, gained a firmer recognition.
Garin, concentrated, watched the company come toward him. Again there
echoed the eve of his knighthood, when through the darkness he had kept
vigil. But he kept vigil now a more awakened being, with a wider reach
and a richer knowledge.
The train came toward him, and now he heard the sound of it, the tread
of horses, metallic noises, the human voice, all subdued to a deep
murmur as of an incoming sea. This increased until single notes were
distinguishable. The form grew larger, then he could see component
forms. Music was being made, he saw the great blue banners.... And
still he knew that all was a mightier and a brighter thing than
yesterday he had known.... Now he saw the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne
riding between Beauvoisin and Stephen the Marshal.
She passed the rock whereon he lay, and he saw a great and high and
bright soul.... It passed—all passed. He felt the darkness, but then
the starlight.
He stayed yet an hour there in the cleft, with the brown grass about
him and overhead the sky like sapphire. Then, descending the crag, he
sought his horse in the wood and, mounting, turned his face toward
Castel-Noir.
That evening in the black tower Foulque would discuss family fortunes,
and how Castel-Noir might be first recovered, then enlarged. Garin
listened, spoke when the elder brother paused for him to speak. It
seemed that he wished somehow to better the condition of tenants and
serfs, to find and teach better methods of living. Foulque jerked aside
from that. “We are good masters. Ask any one without this hall!”
“Good masters?... We may be. But—”
Foulque struck at the fire with his crutch. “You are a poet—I am a
practical man. Let us leave dreaming!... Raimbaut’s castle will be
rebuilt by the next of kin.”
“Dreaming?... What is dreaming?”
Foulque left his chair, and limped to and fro before the huge
fireplace. Garin from the settle corner watched him. The light played
over both and reddened the ancient hall. “Garin,” said Foulque.
“knightly fame is good and fame of a poet is good, and emirs’ ransoms
are good—God knows they are good! But when will you wed and so build
our house?”
“Ah!” said Garin, “did you ever think, Foulque, of how long may be
time?”
Foulque waved his hand. “You should not play with it! You should think
of the future! They say that you love one whom you call the Fair Goal—”
But Garin, rising, moved to a deep window, and looking out, breathed
the night. “There is the great star in the arm of the cypress!... I
used to see that, when I lay in those hot towns of Paynimry.” Nor would
he speak again of that manner of building Castel-Noir.
The morrow came and went and the morrow and that morrow’s morrow.
December paced by and gave the torch of time to January. January, a
cold and dark month, gave the torch to February, a brief and windy one,
March had it then, and he had ideas in his head of birds and flowers.
April came and the world was green.
The ravaging of the dragon was becoming in Roche-de-Frêne an old
thought. Throughout the winter the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne and
the able people of her lands laboured to redeem well-being and the
conditions of growth. Plan and better plan, faint success and greater
success; and now when the spring was coming, good ground beneath
the feet! The land began to smile. The town of Roche-de-Frêne, the
cathedral and the castle felt the warmth. Bishop Ugo preached the
Easter sermon, and he preached a mighty and an eloquent one. You felt
lilies and roses come up through it.
Ugo had said at Christmas-tide that he had never doubted the triumph of
the right. Questioned at Candlemas, though very gently, by one of the
hyperbold, he had answered gravely that Father Eustace, in confession,
had acknowledged that he was not certain as to whether Our Blessed
Lady of Roche-de-Frêne had indeed spoken to him. Pride had been in
his heart, and the demon himself might have taken dazzling form and
spoken! Father Eustace for penance had been sent, barefoot and dumb,
to a remote monastery where in his cell he might gain true vision.
Easter-tide, Bishop Ugo flowered praise of Roche-de-Frêne’s princess.
That great lady took it with her enigmatical smile.
In the castle-garden Alazais watched the crocus bloom, the hyacinth and
the daffodil. Gilles de Valence sang to her, and sometimes Raimon de
Saint-Rémy, or, when no troubadour was there, Elias of Montaudon was
brought upon the greensward to sing other men’s verses. Knights came
and went. Her ladies made a bright half-ring about her, and she and
they and the knights and poets discussed the world under the star of
Love.
Sometimes Audiart came into the garden, but not often. There was much
that yet was to be done.... She was oftener in the town than in the
castle, often away from both, riding far and near in her domain, to
other towns and villages and towers. But as the spring increased and
the green leaves came upon the trees, order was regained. The sap
of life returned to the veins that had been drained, time and place
knew again hope and power. The princess looked upon a birthland that
had lifted from a pit, and now was sandalled and ready for further
journeying. She came oftener now to the garden, and at night, from her
chamber in the White Tower, she watched the stars.
In the town whose roofs lay below her, the craftsmen were back at
their crafts. Again they were dyeing scarlet and weaving fine webs and
working in leather and wax and metal and stone. Merchant and trader
renewed their life. Roche-de-Frêne once more hummed as a hive that
produced, not destroyed. It produced values dense and small, but so
it learned of values beyond these. Presently the old talk of liberty
would spring up, not feared by this princess. When, in late April, she
held high court and a great council, Thibaut Canteleu—Master Mayor,
clear-eyed and merry—sat, with two of the town’s magistrates, in the
council chamber.
On the eve of that council Stephen the Marshal spent an hour with the
princess. She made him sit beside her in the White Tower; she spoke to
him at length, in a low voice telling a story. Stephen listened with
his eyes held by hers, then, when she kept silence, bowed his face upon
his hands and sat so for a time. At last he raised his head. “Mine is a
plain mind, my Lady Audiart,—only a faithful one! There are many good
words, and ‘friend’ is a right good word, a high knight among them,
and ‘friendship’ is a noble fief. I take ‘friend’ and ‘friendship’ for
my wearing and my estate, my Lady Audiart—aye, and I will wear them
knightly, not cravenly, with a melancholy heart! Friend to you and
friend to him, and Saint Michael my witness! loyal servant to you both.”
“Stephen, my friend,” answered the princess, “you say true that great
liking is a great knight, and lasting friendship is a mighty realm! It
plants its own happiness in its own fields.”
She rose, and standing with him at the window, spoke of old things, old
long memories that they had in common, spoke of her father, Gaucelm the
Fortunate.
The next day she held council, sitting on the dais robed in blue, a
gold circlet upon her head, facing her barons and knights-banneret,
churchmen who held lands from her, and leaders of the townsmen. That
which she had to lay before them was the matter of her marriage....
At Castel-Noir the dark fir trees wore emeralds. The stream had its
loud spring music. Nor Foulque nor Garin had been idle through the
winter. Back to the black tower and the hamlet had come their men who
had fought at Roche-de-Frêne—Foulque’s men and the men who had come
with Garin from the land over the sea. Houses had to be built for
these—more fields ploughed and planted. Stables had to be made larger.
The road was bad that led from the black tower to the nearest highway;
it was remade. When spring came Castel-Noir was in better estate than
ever before. Garin spoke of what manner of priest they should bring
in—and of some clerk who might be given a house and who could teach.
Raimbaut the Six-fingered had for his fief been man of Montmaure, but
for it Montmaure had been man of Roche-de-Frêne. Now, again, was it
only Roche-de-Frêne’s. Montmaure might look blackly across from his
own borders, but that was all.... It seemed that, escheating to the
ruling house, the barony was not yet given, for service paid and to be
paid, to some lord who should rebuild the castle and bring up the lands
that now were waste.... Foulque had hours of speculation as to that.
In the hall, of evenings, he looked out of the corners of his eyes at
Garin, reading or dreaming by the fire. Who had done greater service,
fought better, than Garin? If the princess were truly wise—if she were
grateful—
* * * * *
Foulque spoke once on this matter to Garin, but received so absolute
a check that his tongue declined to bring it forward again. None the
less, his brain kept revolving the notion. To add to Castel-Noir the
whole containing fief, from knight alone to become baron, to keep
the black tower but to build besides a fair, strong castle—Who at
Roche-de-Frêne, or away from Roche-de-Frêne, had served more fully than
had Garin? Foulque thought with a consuming impatience of how little he
seemed to care for wealth and honours.
On the heel of such an hour as this with Foulque, came Aimar de
Panemonde. He came with the sheen and beauty of the spring. Foulque saw
him from the tower window as he left the fir wood and began to mount
the winding road. Behind him were four or five others. All rode noble
horses, all were richly clad. It came into Foulque’s head—from where
he knew not—that here was an envoy with his company. The little troop
seemed to him rich and significant, despatched with knowledge, directed
to an end. At once Foulque connected that with Garin—and why again he
knew not, save that, and despite his sluggishness in the matter of the
fief, fairy things did happen to Garin.
Garin of the Golden Island met his brother-in-arms without the castle
gate. Aimar threw himself from his horse. Foulque in the tower above
watched the two embrace, then limped down the stair to meet the
guest and order the household.... And soon it seemed that Sir Aimar
de Panemonde might indeed be considered an envoy! The Princess of
Roche-de-Frêne would have Sir Garin de Castel-Noir return to her
court—commanded his presence on the day of Saint Mark.
There were three days to spare. Aimar, having discharged his mission,
spent them happily, as did those who had ridden with him. Foulque
made talk of the court and the town until—and that was not long—he
found that, for some reason that he could not discern, Aimar did not
talk readily of these. Ever Foulque wished guests of Castel-Noir to be
happy, was courteously minded toward them. This one especially, seeing
how great a friend to Garin he had been and was. So Foulque followed
the lead of the younger men, and in the hall, after supper, had his
reward in stories of the land over the sea—a thousand adventures not
before drawn from Garin. Aimar’s followers and as many Castel-Noir men
as could crowd into hall, came, too, to listen.
Three days went by. On the morning of the fourth farewells were made.
Garin and Aimar passed out of the gate with their following and down
the winding road. With Garin was Rainier the squire, and two or
three besides. Foulque and all who might watched them go, took the
backward-turning wave of the knights’ hands, marked them until they
vanished in the fir wood. Foulque went back to hall and began to
day-dream of Garin and that fief had that been Raimbaut’s.
The two knights with their following rode through the spring weather.
Very sweet it was, earth and sky more fair than might be told.... And
so, in the early afternoon, they came in sight of Roche-de-Frêne.
It was holiday and festival. The people upon the road seemed
light-hearted. The scarred plain had been helped, and now spring flung
over it a mantle of green. When they came to the hill of Roche-de-Frêne
the people had thickened about them; when they entered by the western
gate the town seemed joyous. The folk were abroad and there was to be
made out laughter and singing. As they rode through the streets they
met again and yet again, and at last continually, recognition. It
had a nature that might please the knightliest knight! The marvel of
the cathedral rose before them, and the gold of the sunshine and the
sweetness of the air took from it a shading of awfulness but gave in
return benignancy. They mounted the high street, and now the mighty
shape of the castle increased. Sunlight wrapped it, too, and above
was the stair of the sky. Black Tower and Eagle Tower, Red Tower
and Lion Tower and White Tower—and Garin saw the tree-tops of the
garden.... They crossed the moat, entered between Red Tower and Lion
Tower. Trumpets were being sounded. Here, too, seemed festival. They
dismounted in the outer court—men of rank came about them with the
fairest welcome—they were marshalled soon to a rich lodging. Nones
were ringing, the spring afternoon slipping away.
An hour passed, another was half run. Garin of the Golden Island, alone
save for Rainier in the room that had been given him, heard the knock
at the door. “Let him in,” he said to the squire, and Pierol entered.
The page gave his message. “Sir Garin de Castel-Noir, the princess
rests in the garden. She would speak with you there.” Garin took his
mantle and followed.
In the castle garden the fruit trees were abloom. Their clear shadows
lay on the sward while the shadows of the taller trees struck against
the enclosing walls. Below the watch-tower there was a sheet of
daffodils. The many birds of the garden were singing, and the bees
yet hummed in the fruit trees. But there was no gay throng other than
these, or other winged things, or the selves of the flowers.
It was quiet in the garden, and at first view it seemed a solitude.
Then, as he came toward the heart of it, he saw the princess, seated
beneath the great tree about which the garden was built. In the droop
and sweep of its boughs had been placed a seat of marble finely
wrought. Here she sat, robed in blue, and wearing, held in place by a
circlet of gold, a veil threaded with gold and silver. But to-day it
did not hide her face.
As he came near, “Greeting, friend!” she said, and her voice was
thrilling music.
Garin would have bent his knee. But, “No!” she said, “do not do that!
That is not to be done again between you and me.” She rose from the
marble seat. She stood in flowing robes, on her head the gold circlet
of sovereignty, and she looked a mighty princess, knowing her own mind,
guiding her own action, freeing her own spirit, unlocking always new
treasures of power and love! She came close to him, stood equal with
him. Their eyes met, and if the princess sat in hers, the prince sat
in his. “Do you know why I have brought you here?” she said: “I have
brought you here, Garin of the Golden Island, to ask you if you will
marry me?”
... In midsummer, on the Eve of Saint John, they were wed in the
cathedral, with great music, pomp, and joy. Afterwards they knelt
before the shrine of Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne, and there were people
who said that it was then that the Blessed Image’s lips moved and
there issued the words “Peace and Happiness.” Going, the two passed
the pillars raised by Gaucelm of the Star, and coming to the tomb of
Gaucelm the Fortunate laid flowers there.... But when their own long
reign closed, their land held them in memory as Audiart and Garin the
Wise.
THE END
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