Chivalry (24 page)

"But I do not wish to look at pictures," Charles said, peevishly; "I
wish to play cards. You are an ungrateful daughter, Katharine. You are
never willing to amuse me." He sat down with a whimper and began to
pluck at his dribbling lips.

Katharine had moved a little toward the door. Her face was white. "Now
welcome, sire!" she said. "Welcome, O great conqueror, who in your
hour of triumph can find no nobler recreation than to shame a maid
with her past folly! It was valorously done, sire. See, Father; here
is the King of England come to observe how low we sit that yesterday
were lords of France."

"The King of England!" echoed Charles, and he rose now to his feet. "I
thought we were at war with him. But my memory is treacherous. You
perceive, brother of England, I am planning a new mouse-trap, and my
mind is somewhat preempted. I recall now that you are in treaty for my
daughter's hand. Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but
I suppose—" He paused, as if to regard and hear some invisible
counsellor, and then briskly resumed: "Yes, I suppose policy demands
that she should marry you. We trammelled kings can never go free of
policy—ey, my compere of England? No; it was through policy I wedded
her mother; and we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in
your ear, son-in-law: Madame Isabeau's soul formerly inhabited a sow,
as Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the
influence of the moon drew it hither."

Henry did not say anything. Steadily his calm blue eyes appraised Dame
Katharine. And King Charles went on, very knowingly:

"Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, though by
ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy again,
son-in-law: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the great
hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten flies—
very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of parricides,—and
afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the Mediterranean hath its
sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at cards. Cheats, sir!—and
I her father!" The incessant peering, the stealthy cunning with which
Charles whispered this, the confidence with which he clung to his
destroyer's hand, was that of a conspiring child.

"Come, Father," Katharine said. "Come away to bed, dear."

"Hideous basilisk!" he spat at her; "dare you rebel against me? Am I
not King of France, and is it not blasphemy for a King of France to be
mocked? Frail moths that flutter about my splendor," he shrieked, in
an unheralded frenzy, "beware of me, beware! for I am omnipotent! I am
King of France, Heaven's regent. At my command the winds go about the
earth, and nightly the stars are kindled for my recreation. Perhaps I
am mightier than God, but I do not remember now. The reason is written
down and lies somewhere under a bench. Now I sail for England. Eia!
eia! I go to ravage England, terrible and merciless. But I must have
my mouse-traps, Goodman Devil, for in England the cats of the
middle-sea wait unfed." He went out of the room, giggling, and in the
corridor began to sing:

"A hundred thousand times good-bye!
I go to seek the Evangelist,
For here all persons cheat and lie ..."

All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon
Katharine. Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the
boulder, and they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But
she turned and met his gaze squarely. She noted now for the first time
how oddly his left eyebrow drooped. Katharine said: "And that is the
king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable conquest to overcome
so wise a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? There are cut-throats
in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would scorn the action. Now shall
I fetch my mother, sire? the commander of that great army which you
overcame? As the hour is late, she is by this time tipsy, but she will
come. Or perhaps she is with some paid lover, but if this conqueror,
this second Alexander, wills it she will come. O God!" the girl
wailed, on a sudden; "O just and all-seeing God! are not we of Valois
so contemptible that in conquering us it is the victor who is shamed?"

"Flower of the marsh!" he said, and his voice pulsed with tender
cadences—"flower of the marsh! it is not the King of England who now
comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry Plantagenet God has led
hither by the hand to punish the sins of this realm, and to reign in
it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet will cast out the Valois from
the throne they have defiled, as Darius cast out Belshazzar, for such
is the desire and the intent of God. But to you comes Alain the
harper, not as a conqueror but as a suppliant,—Alain who has loved
you whole-heartedly these two years past, and who now kneels before
you entreating grace."

Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he had
fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood that he
believed France to be his by Divine favor and Heaven's peculiar
intervention. He thought himself God's factor, not His rebel. He was
rather stupid, this huge, handsome, squinting boy; and as she
comprehended this, her hand went to his shoulder, half maternally.

"It is nobly done, sire. But I understand. You must marry me in order
to uphold your claim to France. You sell, and I with my body purchase,
peace for France. There is no need of a lover's posture when hucksters
meet."

"So changed!" he said, and he was silent for an interval, still
kneeling. Then he began: "You force me to point out that I do not need
any pretext for holding France. France lies before me prostrate. By
God's singular grace I reign in this fair kingdom, mine by right of
conquest, and an alliance with the house of Valois will neither make
nor mar me." She was unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact.
"But I love you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you
not understand that there can be between us no question of expediency?
Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know of;
now in Troyes they meet again,—not as princess and king, but as man
and maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your heart, I think.
And now in all the world there is one thing I covet—to gain for the
poor king some portion of that love you would have squandered on the
harper." His hand closed upon her hand.

At his touch the girl's composure vanished. "My lord, you woo too
timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced advocates. I am
daughter to the King of France, and next to my soul's salvation I
esteem the welfare of France. Can I, then, fail to love the King of
England, who chooses the blood of my countrymen as a judicious garb to
come a-wooing in? How else, since you have ravaged my native land,
since you have besmirched the name I bear, since yonder afield every
wound in my dead and yet unburied Frenchmen is to me a mouth which
shrieks your infamy?"

He rose. "And yet, for all that, you love me."

She could not at the first effort find words with which to answer him,
but presently she said, quite simply, "To see you lying in your coffin
I would willingly give up my hope of heaven, for heaven can afford no
sight more desirable."

"You loved Alain."

"I loved the husk of a man. You can never comprehend how utterly I
loved him."

"You are stubborn. I shall have trouble with you. But this notion of
yours is plainly a mistaken notion. That you love me is indisputable,
and this I propose to demonstrate. You will observe that I am quite
unarmed except for this dagger, which I now throw out of the
window—" with the word it jangled in the courtyard below. "I am in
Troyes alone among some thousand Frenchmen, any one of whom would
willingly give his life for the privilege of taking mine. You have but
to sound the gong beside you, and in a few moments I shall be a dead
man. Strike, then! For with me dies the English power in France.
Strike, Katharine! If you see in me but the King of England."

She was rigid; and his heart leapt when he saw it was because of
terror.

"You came alone! You dared!"

He answered, with a wonderful smile, "Proud spirit! How else might I
conquer you?"

"You have not conquered!" Katharine lifted the baton beside the gong,
poising it. God had granted her prayer—to save France. Now the past
and the ignominy of the past might be merged in Judith's nobler guilt.
But I must tell you that in the supreme hour, Destiny at her beck, her
main desire was to slap the man for his childishness. Oh, he had no
right thus to besot himself with adoration! This dejection at her feet
of his high destiny awed her, and pricked her, too, with her inability
to understand him. Angrily she flung away the baton. "Go! Ah, go!" she
cried, like one strangling. "There has been enough of bloodshed, and I
must spare you, loathing you as I do, for I cannot with my own hand
murder you."

But the King was a kindly tyrant, crushing independence from his
associates as lesser folk squeeze water from a sponge. "I cannot go
thus. Acknowledge me to be Alain, the man you love, or else strike
upon the gong."

"You are cruel!" she wailed, in her torture.

"Yes, I am cruel."

Katharine raised straining arms above her head in a hard gesture of
despair. "You have conquered. You know that I love you. Oh, if I could
find words to voice my shame, to shriek it in your face, I could
better endure it! For I love you. With all my body and heart and soul
I love you. Mine is the agony, for I love you! and presently I shall
stand quite still and see little Frenchmen scramble about you as
hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill you. And after that I
shall live! I preserve France, but after I have slain you, Henry, I
must live. Mine is the agony, the enduring agony." She stayed
motionless for an interval. "God, God! Let me not fail!" Katharine
breathed; and then: "O fair sweet friend, I am about to commit a vile
action, but it is for the sake of the France that I love next to God.
As Judith gave her body to Holofernes, I crucify my heart for the
preservation of France." Very calmly she struck upon the gong.

If she could have found any reproach in his eyes during the ensuing
silence, she could have borne it; but there was only love. And with
all that, he smiled like one who knew the upshot of this matter.

A man-at-arms came into the room. "Germain—" said Katharine, and then
again, "Germain—" She gave a swallowing motion and was silent. When
she spoke it was with crisp distinctness. "Germain, fetch a harp.
Messire Alain here is about to play for me."

At the man's departure she said: "I am very pitiably weak. Need you
have dragged my soul, too, in the dust? God heard my prayer, and you
have forced me to deny His favor, as Peter denied Christ. My dear, be
very kind to me, for I come to you naked of honor." She fell at the
King's feet, embracing his knees. "My master, be very kind to me, for
there remains only your love."

He raised her to his breast. "Love is enough," he said.

She was conscious, as he held her thus, of the chain mail under his
jerkin. He had come armed; he had his soldiers no doubt in the
corridor; he had tricked her, it might be from the first. But that did
not matter now.

"Love is enough," she told her master docilely.

Next day the English entered Troyes and in the cathedral church these
two were betrothed. Henry was there magnificent in a curious suit of
burnished armor; in place of his helmet-plume he wore a fox-brush
ornamented with jewels, which unusual ornament afforded great matter
of remark among the busybodies of both armies.

"Et je fais scavoir a tous lecteurs de ce Livret que les choses que
je dis avoir vues et sues sont enregistres icy, afin que vous pouviez
les regarder selon vostre bon sens, s'il vous plaist."

HERE IS APPENDED THE EPILOGUE THAT MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN AFFIXED TO
THE BOOK WHICH HE HAD MADE ACCORDING TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY; AND
WHICH (IN CONSEQUENCE) HE DARED NOT APPRAISE.

A Son Livret

Intrepidly depart, my little book, into the presence of that most
illustrious lady who bade me compile you. Bow down before her
judgment. And if her sentence be that of a fiery death, I counsel you
not to grieve at what cannot be avoided.

But, if by any miracle that glorious, strong fortress of the weak
consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pass thence, my little
book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live out your
little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your appointed
season perish and be forgotten. Thus may you share your betters' fate,
and be at one with those famed comedies of Greek Menander and all the
poignant songs of Sappho.
Et quid Pandoniae
—thus, little book, I
charge you to poultice your more-merited oblivion—
quid Pandoniae
restat nisi nomen Athenae?

Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with those who
will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and protest
assertions which are only fables. To these you will reply that I, your
maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of the most high and
noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at and about her house of
Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person with Dame Katharine, then
happily remarried to a private gentleman of Wales; and so obtained the
matter of the ninth story and of the tenth authentically. You will say
also that Messire de Montbrison afforded me the main matter of the
sixth and seventh stories, and many of the songs which this book
contains; and that, moreover, I once journeyed to Caer Idion and
talked for some two hours with Richard Holland (whom I found a very
old and garrulous and cheery person), and got of him the matter of the
eighth tale in this dizain, together with much information as concerns
the sixth and the seventh. And you will add that the matter of the
fourth and fifth tales was in every detail related to me by my most
illustrious mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this
information from her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady,
and one that was in youth Dame Philippa's most dear associate. For the
rest you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book
to be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say)
even in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd
times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always
endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me.