Chivalry

Within the half hour after de Giars’ death (here one overtakes Nicolas mid-course in narrative) Dame Alianora thus stood alone in the corridor of a strange house. Beyond the arras the steward and his lord were at irritable converse.

First, “If the woman be hungry,” spoke a high and peevish voice, “feed her. If she need money, give it to her. But do not annoy me.”

“This woman demands to see the master of the house,” the steward then retorted.

“O incredible Boeotian, inform her that the master of the house has no time to waste upon vagabonds who select the middle of the night as an eligible time to pop out of nowhere. Why did you not do so in the beginning, you dolt?” The speaker got for answer only a deferential cough, and very shortly continued: “This is remarkably vexatious. Vox et praeterea nihil⁠—which signifies, Yeck, that to converse with women is always delightful. Admit her.” This was done, and Dame Alianora came into an apartment littered with papers, where a neat and shriveled gentleman of fifty-odd sat at a desk and scowled.

He presently said, “You may go, Yeck.” He had risen, the magisterial attitude with which he had awaited her entrance cast aside. “Oh, God!” he said; “you, madame!” His thin hands, scholarly hands, were plucking at the air.

Dame Alianora had paused, greatly astonished, and there was an interval before she said, “I do not recognize you, messire.”

“And yet, madame, I recall very clearly that some thirty years ago the King-Count Raymond Bérenger, then reigning in Provence, had about his court four daughters, each one of whom was afterward wedded to a king.

In a wood near the castle he approached a company of Spaniards, four in number, their horses tethered while these men (Oviedans, as they told him) drank about a great stone which served them for a table. Being thirsty, he asked and was readily accorded hospitality, and these five fell into amicable discourse. One fellow asked his name and business in those parts, and the Prince gave each without hesitancy as he reached for the bottle, and afterward dropped it just in time to catch, cannily, with his naked left hand, the knife-blade with which the rascal had dug at the unguarded ribs. The Prince was astounded, but he was never a subtle man: here were four knaves who, for reasons unexplained⁠—but to them of undoubted cogency⁠—desired his death: manifestly there was here an actionable difference of opinion; so he had his sword out and killed the four of them.

Presently came to him an apple-cheeked boy, habited as a page, who, riding jauntily through the forest, lighted upon the Prince, now in bottomless vexation. The lad drew rein, and his lips outlined a whistle. At his feet were several dead men in various conditions of dismemberment. And seated among them, as if throned upon this boulder, was a gigantic and florid person, so tall that the heads of few men reached to his shoulder; a person of handsome exterior, high-featured and blond, having a narrow,

But at last the Queen got resistless aid from Count William of Hainault (in a way to be told about hereafter), and the King was captured by her forces, and was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle. There they held the second Edward to reign in England, who was the unworthy son of Dame Ellinor and of that first squinting King Edward about whom I have told you in the two tales preceding this tale. It was in the September of this year, a little before Michaelmas, that they brought Sir Gregory Darrell to be judged by the Queen; notoriously the knight had been her husband’s adherent. “Death!” croaked Adam Orleton, who sat to the right hand, and, “Young de Spencer’s death!” amended the Earl of March, with wild laughter; but Ysabeau leaned back in her great chair⁠—a handsome woman, stoutening now from gluttony and from too much wine⁠—and regarded her prisoner with lazy amiability.

“And what was your errand in Figgis Wood?” she demanded⁠—“or are you mad, then, Gregory Darrell, that you dare ride past my gates alone?”

He curtly said, “I rode for Ordish.”

Followed silence. “Roger,” the Queen ordered, “give me the paper which I would not sign.”

The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of London somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, like a person in shrewd and epicurean amusement, while the Queen subscribed the parchment, with a great scrawling flourish.

It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of other matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the year of grace 1346, Master John Copeland⁠—as men now called Jehan Kuypelant, now secretary to the Queen of England⁠—brought his mistress the unhandsome tidings that David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty thousand Scots to back him. The Brabanter found plump Queen Philippa with the kingdom’s arbitress⁠—Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom King Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring in France, very notoriously adored and obeyed.

This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they narrate, to release the Countess’ husband, William de Montacute, from the French prison of the Châtelet. You may appraise her dominion by this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had denied all to King Edward, and in consequence he could deny her nothing; so she sent him to fetch back her husband, whom she almost loved. That armament had sailed from Southampton on Saint George’s day.

These two women, then, shared the Brabanter’s execrable news. Already Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the broken meats of King David.

The Countess presently exclaimed: “Let them weep for this that must! My place is not here.”

Philippa said, half hopefully, “Do you forsake Sire Edward, Catherine?”

“Madame and Queen,” the Countess answered, “in this world every man must scratch his own back. My lord has entrusted to me his castle of Wark, his fiefs in Northumberland. These, I hear, are being laid waste.

This Antoine Riczi came to Jehane that August twilight in the hedged garden. “King’s daughter!” he sadly greeted her. “Duchess of Brittany! Countess of Rougemont! Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of Toufon and Guerche!”

She answered, “No, my dearest⁠—I am that Jehane, whose only title is the Constant Lover.” And in the green twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging star alone, their lips and desperate young bodies clung, now, it might be, for the last time.

Presently the girl spoke. Her soft mouth was lax and tremulous, and her gray eyes were more brilliant than the star yonder. The boy’s arms were about her, so that neither could be quite unhappy, yet.

“Friend,” said Jehane, “I have no choice. I must wed with this de Montfort. I think I shall die presently. I have prayed God that I may die before they bring me to the dotard’s bed.”

Young Riczi held her now in an embrace more brutal. “Mine! mine!” he snarled toward the obscuring heavens.

“Yet it may be I must live. Friend, the man is very old. Is it wicked to think of that? For I cannot but think of his great age.”

Then Riczi answered: “My desires⁠—may God forgive me!⁠—have clutched like starving persons at that sorry sustenance. Friend! ah, fair, sweet friend! the man is human and must die, but love, we read, is immortal. I am wishful to kill myself, Jehane. But, oh, Jehane! dare you to bid me live?”