Chivalry (7 page)

De Gatinais had risen from his dinner and stood facing the door. He,
too, was a blond man and the comeliest of his day. And at sight of him
awoke in the woman's heart all the old tenderness; handsome and brave
and witty she knew him to be, as indeed the whole world knew him to be
distinguished by every namable grace; and the innate weakness of de
Gatinais, which she alone suspected, made him now seem doubly dear.
Fiercely she wanted to shield him, less from bodily hurt than from that
self-degradation which she cloudily apprehended to be at hand; the test
was come, and Etienne would fail. Thus much she knew with a sick,
illimitable surety, and she loved de Gatinais with a passion which
dwarfed comprehension.

"O Madame the Virgin!" prayed Miguel de Rueda, "thou that wast once a
woman, even as I am now a woman! grant that the man may slay him
quickly! grant that he may slay Etienne very quickly, honored Lady, so
that my Etienne may die unshamed!"

"I must question, messire," de Gatinais was saying, "whether you have
been well inspired. Yes, quite frankly, I do await the arrival of her
who is your nominal wife; and your intervention at this late stage, I
take it, can have no outcome save to render you absurd. So, come now!
be advised by me, messire—"

Prince Edward said, "I am not here to talk."

"—For, messire, I grant you that in ordinary disputation the cutting of
one gentleman's throat by another gentleman is well enough, since the
argument is unanswerable. Yet in this case we have each of us too much
to live for; you to govern your reconquered England, and I—you perceive
that I am candid—to achieve in turn the kingship of another realm. Now
to secure this realm, possession of the Lady Ellinor is to me essential;
to you she is nothing."

"She is a woman whom I have deeply wronged," Prince Edward said, "and to
whom, God willing, I mean to make atonement. Ten years ago they wedded
us, willy-nilly, to avert the impending war between Spain and England;
to-day El Sabio intends to purchase Germany with her body as the price;
you to get Sicily as her husband. Mort de Dieu! is a woman thus to be
bought and sold like hog's flesh! We have other and cleaner customs, we
of England."

"Eh, and who purchased the woman first?" de Gatinais spat at him,
viciously, for the Frenchman now saw his air-castle shaken to the
corner-stone.

"They wedded me to the child in order that a great war might be averted.
I acquiesced, since it appeared preferable that two people suffer
inconvenience rather than many thousands be slain. And still this is my
view of the matter. Yet afterward I failed her. Love had no clause in
our agreement; but I owed her more protection than I have afforded.
England has long been no place for women. I thought she would comprehend
that much. But I know very little of women. Battle and death are more
wholesome companions, I now perceive, than such folk as you and
Alphonso. Woman is the weaker vessel—the negligence was mine—I may not
blame her." The big and simple man was in an agony of repentance.

On a sudden he strode forward, his sword now shifted to his left hand
and his right hand outstretched. "One and all, we are weaklings in the
net of circumstance. Shall one herring, then, blame his fellow if his
fellow jostle him? We walk as in a mist of error, and Belial is fertile
in allurements; yet always it is granted us to behold that sin is sin. I
have perhaps sinned through anger, Messire de Gatinais, more deeply than
you have planned to sin through luxury and through ambition. Let us then
cry quits, Messire de Gatinais, and afterward part in peace, and in
common repentance."

"And yield you Ellinor?" de Gatinais said. "Oh no, messire, I reply to
you with Arnaud de Marveil, that marvellous singer of eld, 'They may
bear her from my presence, but they can never untie the knot which
unites my heart to her; for that heart, so tender and so constant, God
alone divides with my lady, and the portion which God possesses He holds
but as a part of her domain, and as her vassal.'" "This is blasphemy,"
Prince Edward now retorted, "and for such observations alone you merit
death. Will you always talk and talk and talk? I perceive that the devil
is far more subtle than you, messire, and leads you, like a pig with a
ring in his nose, toward gross iniquity. Messire, I tell you that for
your soul's health I doubly mean to kill you now. So let us make an end
of this."

De Gatinais turned and took up his sword. "Since you will have it," he
rather regretfully said; "yet I reiterate that you play an absurd part.
Your wife has deserted you, has fled in abhorrence of you. For three
weeks she has been tramping God knows whither or in what company—"

He was here interrupted. "What the Lady Ellinor has done," Prince Edward
crisply said, "was at my request. We were wedded at Burgos; it was
natural that we should desire our reunion to take place at Burgos; and
she came to Burgos with an escort which I provided."

De Gatinais sneered. "So that is the tale you will deliver to the
world?"

"After I have slain you," the Prince said, "yes."

"The reservation is wise. For if I were dead, Messire Edward, there
would be none to know that you risk all for a drained goblet, for an
orange already squeezed—quite dry, messire."

"Face of God!" the Prince said.

But de Gatinais flung back both arms in a great gesture, so that he
knocked a flask of claret from the table at his rear. "I am candid, my
Prince. I would not see any brave gentleman slain in a cause so foolish.
In consequence I kiss and tell. In effect, I was eloquent, I was
magnificent, so that in the end her reserve was shattered like the
wooden flask yonder at our feet. Is it worth while, think you, that our
blood flow like this flagon's contents?"

"Liar!" Prince Edward said, very softly. "O hideous liar! Already your
eyes shift!" He drew near and struck the Frenchman. "Talk and talk and
talk! and lying talk! I am ashamed while I share the world with a thing
as base as you."

De Gatinais hurled upon him, cursing, sobbing in an abandoned fury. In
an instant the place resounded like a smithy, for there were no better
swordsmen living than these two. The eavesdropper could see nothing
clearly. Round and round they veered in a whirl of turmoil. Presently
Prince Edward trod upon the broken flask, smashing it. His foot slipped
in the spilth of wine, and the huge body went down like an oak, his head
striking one leg of the table.

"A candle!" de Gatinais cried, and he panted now—"a hundred candles to
the Virgin of Beaujolais!" He shortened his sword to stab the Prince of
England.

The eavesdropper came through the doorway, and flung herself between
Prince Edward and the descending sword. The sword dug deep into her
shoulder, so that she shrieked once with the cold pain of this wound.
Then she rose, ashen. "Liar!" she said. "Oh, I am shamed while I share
the world with a thing as base as you!"

In silence de Gatinais regarded her. There was a long interval before he
said, "Ellinor!" and then again, "Ellinor!" like a man bewildered.

"
I was eloquent, I was magnificent
" she said, "
so that in the end her
reserve was shattered!
Certainly, messire, it is not your death which I
desire, since a man dies so very, very quickly. I desire for you—I know
not what I desire for you!" the girl wailed.

"You desire that I should endure this present moment," de Gatinais
replied; "for as God reigns, I love you, of whom I have spoken infamy,
and my shame is very bitter."

She said: "And I, too, loved you. It is strange to think of that."

"I was afraid. Never in my life have I been afraid before to-day. But I
was afraid of this terrible and fair and righteous man. I saw all hope
of you vanish, all hope of Sicily—in effect, I lied as a cornered beast
spits out his venom."

"I know," she answered. "Give me water, Etienne." She washed and bound
the Prince's head with a vinegar-soaked napkin. Ellinor sat upon the
floor, the big man's head upon her knee. "He will not die of this, for
he is of strong person. Look you, Messire de Gatinais, you and I are not
strong. We are so fashioned that we can enjoy only the pleasant things
of life. But this man can enjoy—enjoy, mark you—the commission of any
act, however distasteful, if he think it to be his duty. There is the
difference. I cannot fathom him. But it is now necessary that I become
all which he loves—since he loves it,—and that I be in thought and
deed all which he desires. For I have heard the Tenson through."

"You love him!" said de Gatinais.

She glanced upward with a pitiable smile. "No, it is you whom I love, my
Etienne. You cannot understand how at this very moment every fibre of
me—heart, soul, and body—may be longing just to comfort you, and to
give you all which you desire, my Etienne, and to make you happy, my
handsome Etienne, at however dear a cost. No; you will never understand
that. And since you may not understand, I merely bid you go and leave me
with my husband."

And then there fell between these two an infinite silence.

"Listen," de Gatinais said; "grant me some little credit for what I do.
You are alone; the man is powerless. My fellows are within call. A word
secures the Prince's death; a word gets me you and Sicily. And I do not
speak that word, for you are my lady as well as his, and your will is my
one law."

But there was no mercy in the girl, no more for him than for herself.
The big head lay upon her breast; she caressed the gross hair of it ever
so lightly. "These are tinsel oaths," she crooned, as if rapt with
incurious content; "these are the old empty protestations of all you
strutting poets. A word gets you what you desire! Then why do you not
speak that word? Why do you not speak many words, and become again as
eloquent and as magnificent as you were when you contrived that adultery
about which you were just now telling my husband?"

De Gatinais raised clenched hands. "I am shamed," he said; and then he
said, "It is just."

He left the room and presently rode away with his men. I say that, here
at last, he had done a knightly deed, but she thought little of it,
never raised her head as the troop clattered from Mauleon, with a
lessening beat which lapsed now into the blunders of an aging fly who
doddered about the window yonder.

She stayed thus, motionless, her meditations adrift in the future; and
that which she foreread left her not all sorry nor profoundly glad, for
living seemed by this, though scarcely the merry and colorful business
which she had esteemed it, yet immeasurably the more worth while.

"Leixant a part le stil dels trobados,
Dos grans dezigs ban combatut ma pensa,
Mas lo voler vers un seguir dispensa:
Yo l'vos publich, amar dretament vos."

THE THIRD NOVEL.—MEREGRETT OF FRANCE, THINKING TO PRESERVE A HOODWINKED
GENTLEMAN, ANNOYS A SPIDER; AND BY THE GRACE OF DESTINY THE WEB OF THAT
CUNNING INSECT ENTRAPS A BUTTERFLY, A WASP, AND THEN A GOD; WHO SHATTERS
IT.

In the year of grace 1298, a little before Candlemas (thus Nicolas
begins), came letters to the first King Edward of England from his
kinsman and ambassador to France, Earl Edmund of Lancaster. It was
perfectly apparent, the Earl wrote, that the French King meant to
surrender to the Earl's lord and brother neither the duchy of Guienne
nor the Lady Blanch. This lady, I must tell you, was now affianced to
King Edward, whose first wife, Dame Ellinor, had died eight years before
this time.

The courier found Sire Edward at Ipswich, midway in celebration of his
daughter's marriage to the Count of Holland. The King read the letters
through and began to laugh; and presently broke into a rage such as was
possible (men whispered) only to the demon-tainted blood of Oriander's
descendants. Next day the keeper of the privy purse entered upon the
house-hold-books a considerable sum "to make good a large ruby and an
emerald lost out of his coronet when the King's Grace was pleased to
throw it into the fire"; and upon the same day the King recalled
Lancaster. The King then despatched yet another embassy into France to
treat about Sire Edward's marriage. This last embassy was headed by the
Earl of Aquitaine: his lieutenant was Lord Pevensey, the King's natural
son by Hawise Bulmer.

The Earl got audience of the French King at Mezelais. Walking alone came
this Earl of Aquitaine, with a large retinue, into the hall where the
barons of France stood according to their rank; in unadorned russet were
the big Earl and his attendants, but upon the scarlets and purples of
the French lords many jewels shone: it was as though through a corridor
of gayly painted sunlit glass that the grave Earl came to the dais where
sat King Philippe.

The King had risen at close sight of the new envoy, and had gulped once
or twice, and without speaking, had hurriedly waved his lords out of
ear-shot. The King's perturbation was very extraordinary.

"Fair cousin," the Earl now said, without any prelude, "four years ago I
was affianced to your sister, Dame Blanch. You stipulated that Gascony
be given up to you in guaranty, as a settlement on any children I might
have by that incomparable lady. I assented, and yielded you the
province, upon the understanding, sworn to according to the faith of
loyal kings, that within forty days you assign to me its seignory as
your vassal. And I have had of you since then neither my province nor
my betrothed wife, but only excuses, Sire Philippe."

With eloquence the Frenchman touched upon the emergencies to which the
public weal so often drives men of high station, and upon his private
grief over the necessity—unavoidable, alas!—of returning a hard answer
before the council; and became so voluble that Sire Edward merely
laughed in that big-lunged and disconcerting way of his, and afterward
lodged for a week at Mezelais, nominally passing by his minor title of
Earl of Aquitaine, and as his own ambassador.