Negotiations became more swift of foot, since a man serves himself with
zeal. In addition, the French lords could make nothing of a politician
so thick-witted that he replied to every consideration of expediency
with a parrot-like reiteration of the circumstance that already the
bargain was signed and sworn to: in consequence, while daily they fumed
over his stupidity, daily he gained his point. During this period he
was, upon one pretext or another, very often in the company of his
affianced wife, Dame Blanch.
This lady, I must tell you, was the handsomest of her day; there could
nowhere be found a creature more agreeable to every sense; and she
compelled the adoring regard of men, it is recorded, not gently but in
an imperious fashion. Sire Edward, who, till this, had loved her merely
by report, and, in accordance with the high custom of old, through many
perusals of her portrait, now appeared besotted. He was an aging man,
near sixty, huge and fair, with a crisp beard, and the bright unequal
eyes of Manuel of Poictesme. The better-read at Mezelais began to liken
this so candidly enamored monarch and his Princess to Sieur Hercules at
the feet of Queen Omphale.
The court hunted and slew a stag of ten in the woods of Ermenoueil,
which stand thick about the chateau; and at the hunt's end, these two
had dined at Rigon the forester's hut, in company with Dame Meregrett,
the French King's younger sister. She sat a little apart from the
betrothed, and stared through the hut's one window. We know, nowadays,
it was not merely the trees she was considering.
Dame Blanch seemed undisposed to mirth. "We have slain the stag, beau
sire," she said, "and have made of his death a brave diversion. To-day
we have had our sport of death,—and presently the gay years wind past
us, as our cavalcade came toward the stag, and God's incurious angel
slays us, much as we slew the stag. And we shall not understand, and we
shall wonder, as the stag did, in helpless wonder. And Death will have
his sport of us, as if in atonement." Her big eyes shone, as when the
sun glints upon a sand-bottomed pool. "Ohe, I have known such happiness
of late, beau sire, that I am hideously afraid to die."
The King answered, "I too have been very happy of late."
"But it is profitless to talk about death thus drearily. Let us flout
him, instead, with some gay song." And thereupon she handed Sire Edward
a lute.
The King accepted it. "Death is not reasonably mocked by any person,"
Sire Edward said, "since in the end he conquers, and of the lips that
gibed at him remains but a little dust. Rather should I, who already
stand beneath a lifted sword, make for my destined and inescapable
conqueror a Sirvente, which is the Song of Service."
Sang Sire Edward:
[3]
"I sing of Death, that comes unto the king,
And lightly plucks him from the cushioned throne;
And drowns his glory and his warfaring
In unrecorded dim oblivion;
And girds another with the sword thereof;
And sets another in his stead to reign;
And ousts the remnant, nakedly to gain
Styx' formless shore and nakedly complain
Midst twittering ghosts lamenting life and love.
"For Death is merciless: a crack-brained king
He raises in the place of Prester John,
Smites Priam, and mid-course in conquering
Bids Caesar pause; the wit of Salomon,
The wealth of Nero and the pride thereof,
And battle-prowess—or of Tamburlaine
Darius, Jeshua, or Charlemaigne,—
Wheedle and bribe and surfeit Death in vain,
And get no grace of him nor any love.
"Incuriously he smites the armored king
And tricks his counsellors—"
"True, O God!" murmured the tiny woman, who sat beside the window
yonder. With that, Dame Meregrett rose, and passed from the room.
The two lovers started, and laughed, and afterward paid little heed to
her outgoing. Sire Edward had put aside the lute and sat now regarding
the Princess. His big left hand propped the bearded chin; his grave
countenance was flushed, and his intent eyes shone under their shaggy
brows, very steadily, although the left eye was now so nearly shut as to
reveal the merest spark.
Irresolutely, Dame Blanch plucked at her gown; then rearranged a fold of
it, and with composure awaited the ensuing action, afraid at bottom, but
not at all ill-pleased; and she looked downward.
The King said: "Never before were we two alone, madame. Fate is very
gracious to me this morning."
"Fate," the lady considered, "has never denied much to the Hammer of the
Scots."
"She has denied me nothing," he sadly said, "save the one thing that
makes this business of living seem a rational proceeding. Fame and power
and wealth fate has accorded me, no doubt, but never the common joys of
life. And, look you, my Princess, I am of aging person now. During some
thirty years I have ruled England according to my interpretation of
God's will as it was anciently made manifest by the holy Evangelists;
and during that period I have ruled England not without odd by-ends of
commendation: yet behold, to-day I forget the world-applauded, excellent
King Edward, and remember only Edward Plantagenet—hot-blooded and
desirous man!—of whom that much-commended king has made a prisoner all
these years."
"It is the duty of exalted persons," Blanch unsteadily said, "to put
aside such private inclinations as their breasts may harbor—"
He said, "I have done what I might for the happiness of every Englishman
within my realm saving only Edward Plantagenet; and now I think his turn
to be at hand." Then the man kept silence; and his hot appraisal daunted
her.
"Lord," she presently faltered, "lord, you know that we are already
betrothed, and, in sober verity, Love cannot extend his laws between
husband and wife, since the gifts of love are voluntary, and husband and
wife are but the slaves of duty—"
"Troubadourish nonsense!" Sire Edward said; "yet it is true that the
gifts of love are voluntary. And therefore—Ha, most beautiful, what
have you and I to do with all this chaffering over Guienne?" The two
stood very close to each other now. Blanch said, "It is a high
matter—" Then on a sudden the full-veined girl was aglow. "It is a
trivial matter." He took her in his arms, since already her cheeks
flared in scarlet anticipation of the event.
Thus holding her, he wooed the girl tempestuously. Here, indeed, was
Sieur Hercules enslaved, burned by a fiercer fire than that of Nessus,
and the huge bulk of the unconquerable visibly shaken by his adoration.
In a disordered tapestry of verbiage, aflap in winds of passion, she
presently beheld herself prefigured by Balkis, the Judean's lure, and by
that Princess of Cyprus who reigned in Aristotle's time, and by
Nicolete, the King's daughter of Carthage,—since the first flush of
morning was as a rush-light before her resplendency, the man swore; and
in conclusion, he likened her to a modern Countess of Tripolis, for love
of whom he, like Rudel, had cleft the seas, and losing whom he must
inevitably die as did Rudel. Sire Edward snapped his fingers now over
any consideration of Guienne. He would conquer for her all Muscovy and
all Cataia, too, if she desired mere acreage. Meanwhile he wanted her,
and his hard and savage passion beat down opposition as if with a
bludgeon.
"Heart's emperor," the trembling girl replied, "I think that you were
cast in some larger mould than we of France. Oh, none of us may dare
resist you! and I know that nothing matters, nothing in all the world,
save that you love me. Then take me, since you will it,—and take me
not as King, since you will otherwise, but as Edward Plantagenet. For
listen! by good luck you have this afternoon despatched Rigon for
Chevrieul, where to-morrow we were to hunt the great boar. So to-night
this hut will be unoccupied."
The man was silent. He had a gift that way when occasion served.
"Here, then, beau sire! here, then, at nine, you are to meet me with my
chaplain. Behold, he marries us, as glibly as though we two were
peasants. Poor king and princess!" cried Dame Blanch, and in a voice
which thrilled him, "shall ye not, then, dare to be but man and woman?"
"Ha!" the King said. "So the chaplain makes a third! Well, the King is
pleased to loose his prisoner, that long-imprisoned Edward Plantagenet:
and I will do it."
So he came that night, without any retinue, and habited as a forester,
with a horn swung about his neck, into the unlighted hut of Rigon the
forester, and he found a woman there, though not the woman whom he had
expected.
"Treachery, beau sire! Horrible treachery!" she wailed.
"I have encountered it before this," the big man said.
"Presently will come to you not Blanch but Philippe, with many men to
back him. And presently they will slay you. You have been trapped, beau
sire. Ah, for the love of God, go! Go, while there is yet time!" Sire
Edward reflected. Undoubtedly, to light on Edward Longshanks alone in a
forest would appear to King Philippe, if properly attended, a tempting
chance to settle divers difficulties, once for all; and Sire Edward knew
the conscience of his old opponent to be invulnerable. The act would
violate the core of hospitality and knighthood, no doubt, but its
outcome would be a very definite gain to France, and for the rest,
merely a dead body in a ditch. Not a monarch in Christendom, Sire Edward
reflected, but feared and in consequence hated the Hammer of the Scots,
and in further consequence would not lift a finger to avenge him; and
not a being in the universe would rejoice more heartily at the success
of Philippe's treachery than would Sire Edward's son and immediate
successor, the young Prince Edward of Caernarvon. Taking matters by and
large, Philippe had all the powers of common-sense to back him in
contriving an assassination.
What Sire Edward said was, "Dame Blanch, then, knew of this?" But
Meregrett's pitiful eyes had already answered him, and he laughed a
little.
"In that event, I have to-night enregistered my name among the goodly
company of Love's Lunatics,—as yokefellow with Dan Merlin in his
thornbush, and with wise Salomon when he capered upon the high places of
Chemosh, and with Duke Ares sheepishly agrin in the net of Mulciber.
Rogues all, madame! fools all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and
allures the soul to such sensual delights as bar its passage toward the
eternal life wherein alone lies the empire and the heritage of the soul.
And why does this carnal prison so impede the soul? Because Satan once
ranked among the sons of God, and the Eternal Father, as I take it, has
not yet forgotten the antique relationship,—and hence it is permitted
even in our late time that always the flesh rebel against the spirit,
and that always these so tiny and so thin-voiced tricksters, these
highly tinted miracles of iniquity, so gracious in demeanor and so
starry-eyed—"
Then he turned and pointed, no longer the orotund zealot but the
expectant captain now. "Look, my Princess!" In the pathway from which he
had recently emerged stood a man in full armor like a sentinel. "Mort de
Dieu, we can but try to get out of this," Sire Edward said.
"You should have tried without talking so much," replied Meregrett. She
followed him. And presently, in a big splash of moonlight, the armed
man's falchion glittered across their way. "Back," he bade them, "for by
the King's orders, I can let no man pass."
"It would be very easy now to strangle this herring," Sire Edward
reflected.
"But it is not easy to strangle a whole school of herring," the fellow
retorted. "Hoh, Messire d'Aquitaine, the bushes of Ermenoueil are alive
with my associates. The hut yonder, in effect, is girdled by them,—and
we have our orders to let no man pass."
"Have you any orders concerning women?" the King said.
The man deliberated. Sire Edward handed him three gold pieces. "There
was assuredly no specific mention of petticoats," the soldier now
recollected, "and in consequence I dare to pass the Princess, against
whom certainly nothing can be planned."
"Why, in that event," Sire Edward said, "we two had as well bid each
other adieu."
But Meregrett only said, "You bid me go?"
He waved his hand. "Since there is no choice. For that which you have
done—however tardily—I thank you. Meantime I return to Rigon's hut to
rearrange my toga as King Caesar did when the assassins fell upon him,
and to encounter with due decorum whatever Dame Luck may prefer."
She said, "You go to your death."
He shrugged his broad shoulders. "In the end we necessarily die."
Dame Meregrett turned, and without faltering passed back into the hut.
When he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, Sire
Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation. "Presently come your
brother and his tattling lords. To be discovered here with me at night,
alone, means trouble for you. If Philippe chances to fall into one of
his Capetian rages it means death."
She answered, as though she were thinking about other matters, "Yes."
Now, for the first time, Sire Edward regarded her with profound
consideration. To the finger-tips this so-little lady showed a
descendant of the holy Lewis whom he had known and loved in old years.
Small and thinnish she was, with soft and profuse hair that, for all its
blackness, gleamed in the lamplight with stray ripples of brilliancy, as
you may see sparks shudder to extinction over burning charcoal. She had
the Valois nose, long and delicate in form, and overhanging a short
upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious in tint, and the whiteness of her
skin would have matched the Hyperborean snows tidily enough. As for her
eyes, the customary similes of the court poets were gigantic onyxes or
ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. These eyes were too big for
her little face: they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which
nervously endured each incident of life, like a foreigner uneasily
acquiescent to the custom of the country.