Chivalry (6 page)

This troubled the Princess somewhat; and often, riding by her stolid
husband's side, the girl's heart raged at memory of the decade so newly
overpast which had kept her always dependent on the charity of this or
that ungracious patron—on any one who would take charge of her while
the truant husband fought out his endless squabbles in England. Slights
enough she had borne during the period, and squalor, and physical hunger
also she had known, who was the child of a king and a saint.
[2]
But now
she rode toward the dear southland; and presently she would be rid of
this big man, when he had served her purpose; and afterward she meant to
wheedle Alphonso, just as she had always wheedled him, and later still,
she and Etienne would be very happy: in fine, to-morrow was to be a new
day.

So these two rode southward, and always Prince Edward found this new
page of his—this Miguel de Rueda,—a jolly lad, who whistled and sang
inapposite snatches of balladry, without any formal ending or beginning,
descanting always with the delicate irrelevancy of a bird-trill.

Sang Miguel de Rueda:

"Man's Love, that leads me day by day
Through many a screened and scented way,
Finds to assuage my thirst.

"No love that may the old love slay,
None sweeter than the first.

"Fond heart of mine, that beats so fast
As this or that fair maid trips past,
Once, and with lesser stir
We viewed the grace of love, at last,
And turned idolater.

"Lad's Love it was, that in the spring
When all things woke to blossoming
Was as a child that came
Laughing, and filled with wondering,
Nor knowing his own name—"

"And still I would prefer to think," the big man interrupted, heavily,
"that Sicily is not the only allure. I would prefer to think my wife so
beautiful.—And yet, as I remember her, she was nothing extraordinary."

The page a little tartly said that people might forget a deal within a
decade.

The Prince continued his unriddling of the scheme hatched in Castile.
"When Manfred is driven out of Sicily they will give the throne to de
Gatinais. He intends to get both a kingdom and a handsome wife by this
neat affair. And in reason, England must support my Uncle Richard's
claim to the German crown, against El Sabio—Why, my lad, I ride
southward to prevent a war that would devastate half Europe."

"You ride southward in the attempt to rob a miserable woman of her sole
chance of happiness," Miguel de Rueda estimated.

"That is undeniable, if she loves this thrifty Prince, as indeed I do
not question my wife does. Yet our happiness here is a trivial matter,
whereas war is a great disaster. You have not seen—as I, my little
Miguel, have often seen—a man viewing his death-wound with a face of
stupid wonder, a bewildered wretch in point to die in his lord's quarrel
and understanding never a word of it. Or a woman, say—a woman's twisted
and naked body, the breasts yet horribly heaving, in the red ashes of
some village, or the already dripping hoofs which will presently crush
this body. Well, it is to prevent many such ugly spectacles hereabout
that I ride southward."

Miguel de Rueda shuddered. But, "She has her right to happiness," the
page stubbornly said.

"She has only one right," the Prince retorted; "because it has pleased
the Emperor of Heaven to appoint us twain to lofty stations, to entrust
to us the five talents of the parable; whence is our debt to Him, being
fivefold, so much the greater than that of common persons. Therefore
the more is it our sole right, being fivefold, to serve God without
faltering, and therefore is our happiness, or our unhappiness, the more
an inconsiderable matter. For, as I have read in the Annals of the
Romans—" He launched upon the story of King Pompey and his daughter,
whom a certain duke regarded with impure and improper emotions. "My
little Miguel, that ancient king is our Heavenly Father, that only
daughter is the rational soul of us, which is here delivered for
protection to five soldiers—that is, to the five senses,—to preserve
it from the devil, the world, and the flesh. But, alas! the
too-credulous soul, desirous of gazing upon the gaudy vapors of this
world—"

"You whine like a canting friar," the page complained; "and I can assure
you that the Lady Ellinor was prompted rather than hindered by her
God-given faculties of sight and hearing and so on when she fell in love
with de Gatinais. Of you two, he is, beyond any question, the handsomer
and the more intelligent man, and it was God who bestowed on her
sufficient wit to perceive the superiority of de Gatinais. And what am I
to deduce from this?"

The Prince reflected. At last he said: "I have also read in these same
Gestes how Seneca mentions that in poisoned bodies, on account of the
malignancy and the coldness of the poison, no worm will engender; but if
the body be smitten by lightning, in a few days the carcass will abound
with vermin. My little Miguel, both men and women are at birth
empoisoned by sin, and then they produce no worm—that is, no virtue.
But once they are struck with lightning—that is, by the grace of
God,—they are astonishingly fruitful in good works."

The page began to laugh. "You are hopelessly absurd, my Prince, though
you will never know it,—and I hate you a little,—and I envy you a
great deal."

"Ah, but," Prince Edward said, in misapprehension, for the man was never
quick-witted,—"but it is not for my own happiness that I ride
southward."

The page then said, "What is her name?"

Prince Edward answered, very fondly, "Hawise."

"I hate her, too," said Miguel de Rueda; "and I think that the holy
angels alone know how profoundly I envy her."

In the afternoon of the same day they neared Ruffec, and at the ford
found three brigands ready, two of whom the Prince slew, and the other
fled.

Next night they supped at Manneville, and sat afterward in the little
square, tree-chequered, that lay before their inn. Miguel had procured a
lute from the innkeeper, and he strummed idly as these two debated
together of great matters; about them was an immeasurable twilight,
moonless, but tempered by many stars, and everywhere they could hear an
agreeable whispering of leaves.

"Listen, my Prince," the boy said: "here is one view of the affair."
And he began to chant, without rhyming, without raising his voice above
the pitch of talk, while the lute monotonously accompanied his chanting.

Sang Miguel:

"Passeth a little while, and Irus the beggar and
Menephtah the high king are at sorry unison, and
Guenevere is a skull. Multitudinously we tread
toward oblivion, as ants hasten toward sugar, and
presently Time cometh with his broom. Multitudinously
we tread a dusty road toward oblivion; but
yonder the sun shines upon a grass-plot, converting it
into an emerald; and I am aweary of the trodden path.

"Vine-crowned is the fair peril that guards the
grasses yonder, and her breasts are naked. 'Vanity
of Vanities!' saith the beloved. But she whom I love
seems very far away to-night, though I might be with
her if I would. And she may not aid me now, for not
even love is all-powerful. She is most dear of created
women, and very wise, but she may never understand
that at any time one grows aweary of the trodden path.

"At sight of my beloved, love closes over my heart
like a flood. For the sake of my beloved I have striven,
with a good endeavor, to my tiny uttermost. Pardie, I
am not Priam at the head of his army! A little while
and I will repent; to-night I cannot but remember that
there are women whose lips are of a livelier tint, that
life is short at best, that wine evokes in me some admiration
for myself, and that I am aweary of the trodden
path.

"She is very far from me to-night. Yonder in the
Hoerselberg they exult and make sweet songs, songs
which are sweeter, immeasurably sweeter, than this
song of mine, but in the trodden path I falter, for I am
tired, tired in every fibre of me, and I am aweary of
the trodden path"

Followed a silence. "Ignorance spoke there," the Prince said. "It is the
song of a woman, or else of a boy who is very young. Give me the lute,
my little Miguel." And presently the Prince, too, sang.

Sang the Prince:

"I was in a path, and I trod toward the citadel of the
land's Seigneur, and on either side were pleasant and
forbidden meadows, having various names. And one
trod with me who babbled of the brooding mountains
and of the low-lying and adjacent clouds; of the west
wind and of the budding fruit-trees. He debated the
significance of these things, and he went astray to
gather violets, while I walked in the trodden path."

"He babbled of genial wine and of the alert lips of
women, of swinging censers and of the serene countenances
of priests, and of the clear, lovely colors of
bread and butter, and his heart was troubled by a
world profuse in beauty. And he leaped a stile to share
his allotted provision with a dying dog, and afterward,
being hungry, a wall to pilfer apples, while I walked
in the trodden path.

"He babbled of Autumn's bankruptcy and of the age-long
lying promises of Spring; and of his own desire
to be at rest; and of running waters and of decaying
leaves. He babbled of the far-off stars; and he debated
whether they were the eyes of God or gases which
burned, and he demonstrated, with logic, that neither
existed. At times he stumbled as he stared about him
and munched his apples, so that he was all bemired, but
I walked in the trodden path.

"And the path led to the gateway of a citadel, and
through the gateway. 'Let us not enter,' he said, 'for
the citadel is vacant, and, moreover, I am in profound
terror, and, besides, I have not as yet eaten all my
apples.' And he wept aloud, but I was not afraid, for
I had walked in the trodden path."

Again there was a silence. "You paint a dreary world, my Prince."

"My little Miguel, I paint the world as the Eternal Father made it. The
laws of the place are written large, so that all may read them; and we
know that every road, whether it be my trodden path or some byway through
your gayer meadows, yet leads in the end to God. We have our choice,—or
to come to Him as a laborer comes at evening for the day's wages fairly
earned, or to come as a roisterer haled before the magistrate."

"I consider you to be in the right," the boy said, after a lengthy
interval, "although I decline—and decline emphatically—to believe you."

The Prince laughed. "There spoke Youth," he said, and he sighed as
though he were a patriarch. "But we have sung, we two, the Eternal
Tenson of God's will and of man's desires. And I claim the prize, my
Little Miguel."

Suddenly the page kissed one huge hand. "You have conquered, my very
dull and very glorious Prince. Concerning that Hawise—" But Miguel de
Rueda choked. "Oh, I do not understand! and yet in part I understand!"
the boy wailed in the darkness.

And the Prince laid one hand upon his page's hair, and smiled in the
darkness to note how soft was this hair, since the man was less a fool
than at first view you might have taken him to be; and he said:

"One must play the game out fairly, my lad. We are no little people,
she and I, the children of many kings, of God's regents here on earth;
and it was never reasonable, my Miguel, that gentlefolk should cheat at
their dicing."

The same night Miguel de Rueda repeated the prayer which Saint Theophilus
made long ago to the Mother of God:

"Dame, je n'ose,
Flors d'aiglentier et lis et rose,
En qui li filz Diex se repose,"

and so on. Or, in other wording: "Hearken, O gracious Lady! thou that
art more fair than any flower of the eglantine, more comely than the
blossoming of the rose or of the lily! thou to whom was confided the
very Son of God! Harken, for I am afraid! afford counsel to me that am
ensnared by Satan and know not what to do! Never will I make an end of
praying. O Virgin debonnaire! O honored Lady! Thou that wast once a
woman—!"

So he prayed, and upon the next day as these two rode southward, he sang
half as if in defiance.

Sang Miguel:

"And still,—whatever years impend
To witness Time a fickle friend,
And Youth a dwindling fire,—
I must adore till all years end
My first love, Heart's Desire.

"I may not hear men speak of her
Unmoved, and vagrant pulses stir
To greet her passing-by,
And I, in all her worshipper
Must serve her till I die.

"For I remember: this is she
That reigns in one man's memory
Immune to age and fret,
And stays the maid I may not see
Nor win to, nor forget."

It was on the following day, near Bazas, that these two encountered Adam
de Gourdon, a Provencal knight, with whom the Prince fought for a long
while, without either contestant giving way; in consequence a rendezvous
was fixed for the November of that year, and afterward the Prince and de
Gourdon parted, highly pleased with each other.

Thus the Prince and his attendant came, in late September, to Mauleon,
on the Castilian frontier, and dined there at the
Fir Cone.
Three or
four lackeys were about—some exalted person's retinue? Prince Edward
hazarded to the swart little landlord, as the Prince and Miguel lingered
over the remnants of their meal.

Yes, the fellow informed them: the Prince de Gatinais had lodged there
for a whole week, watching the north road, as circumspect of all passage
as a cat over a mouse-hole. Eh, monseigneur expected some one,
doubtless—a lady, it might be,—the gentlefolk had their escapades like
every one else. The innkeeper babbled vaguely, for on a sudden he was
very much afraid of his gigantic patron.

"You will show me to his room," Prince Edward said, with a politeness
that was ingratiating.

The host shuddered and obeyed.

Miguel de Rueda, left alone, sat quite silent, his finger-tips drumming
upon the table. He rose suddenly and flung back his shoulders, all
resolution. On the stairway he passed the black little landlord, who was
now in a sad twitter, foreseeing bloodshed. But Miguel de Rueda went on
to the room above. The door was ajar. He paused there.