Chivalry (25 page)

I have pieced together these tales about the women who intermarried,
not very enviably, with the demon-tainted blood of Edward Longshanks,
because it seems to me that these tales, when they are rightly
considered, compose the initial portion of a troubling history.
Whether (as some declare) the taint came from Manuel of Poictesme, or
whether (as yet others say) this poison was inherited from the demon
wife whom Foulques Plantagenet fetched out of hell, the blood in these
men was not all human. These men might not tread equally with human
beings: their wives suffered therefor, just as they that had inherited
this blood suffered therefor, and all England suffered therefor. And
the upshot of it I have narrated elsewhere, in the book called and
entitled
The Red Cuckold
, which composes the final portion of this
history, and tells of the last spilling and of the extinction of this
blood.

Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people who
will jeer at you, and will say that you and I have cheated them of
your purchase-money. To these you will reply, with Plutarch,
Non mi
aurum posco, nec mi pretium
. Secondly you will say that, of
necessity, the tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; and that
he cannot undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering Orion suitably
when the resources of his shop amount to only a few yards of cambric.
Indeed had I the power to make you better, my little book, I would
have exercised that power to the utmost. A good conscience is a
continual feast, and I summon high Heaven to be my witness that had I
been Homer you had awed the world, another Iliad. I lament your
inability to do this, as heartily as any person living; yet Heaven
willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven these aforementioned
cavillers should rightfully complain.

So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless indeed
you should elect to answer them by repetition of this song which I now
make for you, my little book, at your departure from me. And the song
runs in this fashion:

Depart, depart, my book! and live and die
Dependent on the idle fantasy
Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I.

For I am fond, and willingly mistake
My book to be the book I meant to make,
And cannot judge you, for that phantom's sake.

Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill
In making you, that never spared the will
To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill.

Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I
Had wrought in you some wizardry so high
That no man but had listened ...

They pass by,
And shrug—as we, who know that unto us
It has been granted never to fare thus,
And never to be strong and glorious.

Is it denied me to perpetuate
What so much loving labor did create?—
I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate,
And acquiesce, not all disconsolate.

For I have got such recompense
Of that high-hearted excellence
Which the contented craftsman knows,
Alone, that to loved labor goes,
And daily does the work he chose,
And counts all else impertinence!

EXPLICIT DECAS REGINARUM

[1]
For this perplexing matter the curious may consult Paul
Verville's
Notice sur la vie de Nicolas de Caen, p. 93 et seq
. The
indebtedness to Antoine Riczi is, of course, conceded by Nicolas in his
"EPILOGUE."

[2]
She was the daughter of King Ferdinand of Leon and Castile,
whose conversion to sainthood the inquisitive may find recorded
elsewhere.

[3]
Not without indulgence in anachronism. But Nicolas, be it
repeated, was no Gradgrindian.

[4]
Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, for obvious
reasons, his translator would prefer to do otherwise.

[5]
Nicolas unaccountably omits to mention that during the French
wars she had ruled England as Regent with signal capacity,—although
this fact, as you will see more lately, is the pivot of his
chronicle.