Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (410 page)

“Well, it is Gertrude here and Gertrude there,” the large knight said sagaciously. “You had much better see to it that your wife gives her a kennel in the yard and stay at home.”

“See to it that
your
wife gives Griselda a dovecote!” the young knight gibed back. “If my wife proves to be like the Lady Blanche, she shall go packing back to Wales.”

“That shall be as the cat jumps,” the Knight of Coucy answered.

“Mercy of God!” the young knight said suddenly. “You have been afforded no wine. What a household is mine!”

“I was thinking as much,” the Knight of Coucy answered.

Gertrude, whilst she pulled tight the laces of her dress behind her hips, was moving towards the door.

“Ho, leman! Wench! Worst of loiterers!” the young knight said. “Hasten! Run! Fall down the stairs and bring wine for the gentle Knight of Coucy! What a household is mine!”

Gertrude, who had a friendly feeling for the Knight of Coucy because he was gross, jovial, and tickled her as often as he saw her, had been already intent on fetching him wine. For that, indeed, she had put on her dress to go below the stairs, since it would have troubled her little if he had seen her stark naked....” But now she turned her head disdainfully over her shoulder and looked at the young knight.

“It is for servers, not ladies, to bring wine,” she said. “I will bid the servers bring it and, when they have brought it, I will pour it out!”

The young knight exclaimed: “Mercy of God!”

The Knight of Coucy grinned broadly.

“I must get me to a witch doctor,” the young knight exclaimed. “It is certain that I am bewitched, or I should take your sword, and with a turn of the wrist take off that thatch-sparrow’s head. But, before God, I will be unbewitched with fumigations, and prayers, and sorceries, and then I will have that weeping mouse dropped into a fire on the city wall as a warning to all witches.”

“That would be a very good thing to do,” the Knight of Coucy said ironically. The infatuation of the famous young Knight of Egerton was a byword of the host in Newcastle, and many said that it was a black shame to the order of knighthood that a knight’s neck should be so beneath a peasant girl’s heel. These said that one day they would beat her with rods, naked, round the market-place of Newcastle and home again, to teach her manners. But many knights who made poetry held that it was very touching, and worthy of virelais or a romaunt that a knight should so love his leman, for they talked of King Cophetua and his beggar maid. As for the Knight of Coucy, he thought that it benefited his boon companion to be plagued, since it ridded him of the fits of mad temper he was used to have. Besides, Gertrude was small and like a child, and it pleased him to tickle her.

“But alas!” the young knight said, “if I have her burned I should have her no more.”

The Knight of Coucy smiled sardonically.

“What can be done for a prisoner,” he said, “who loves the chains that kill him?”

The Knight of Coucy was now all brown leather, immense and slightly corpulent. He looked down at the page who was gathering up the black strands of the harness from the wet floor.

“Thou, Henry,” he said. “Can’st thou write? I forget. But write it down, or have it written, these words of mine before I forget them.” And he repeated his last speech, counting the rhythm with his fingers on his leather chest.

“I will compose a canzone with these words for a burden and have them sung to Griselda,” he said.

CHAPTER II.

A PLEASANT peace reigned in their room. Gertrude had returned, bringing herself the wine, because she liked the Knight of Coucy, and had sufficiently asserted her dignity by the speech of refusal. The Knight of Coucy drank a huge draft from the leathern flagon, tilting his head back. Except upon occasions of ceremony, he disdained to drink from a goblet or a jack, for he said that with such inferior vessels a man could not drink himself out of breath. Then, panting and in a deep satisfaction, he held the leather vessel before his chest and slowly stroked his stomach. His cousin sat on the edge of the bath and swung his naked legs.

These two knights loved each other well, and were less resolute when they were parted, for the Knight of Egerton could be counted on for a rash, sudden, and desperate resolution when a pinch of affairs needed it, whilst the Knight of Coucy had a heavy peasant cunning that had served them well when there had been time to think. So in armies and courts they were bynamed Castor and Pollux, and they were accounted the two strongest knights in the world. The Knight of Coucy had pulled against a plough-ox at the end of a rope and had stopped it dead, the Knight of Egerton had killed the same ox with one blow of his fist; and it was these two knights together who had held the lists at Bucesvalles against fourteen picked knights and fourteen knights of Spain and High Germany, running their courses through three hot days until there were no more spears left to tilt with. This was a very famous deed of theirs, and is recorded by four chroniclers.

The Knight of Coucy drank once more from the flagon, and once more panted comfortably for breath; then he said slowly:

“When I went to my chamber to find Griselda, who is gadding it about the town, I saw there a hind from Wiltshire. Says I, ‘You are none of my men, but I know your face,’ and the fellow falls on his knees and holds me out a letter which he says is from the Abbess of St. Radigund.”

“May she drown!” the young knight said. “She is the most thorny woman that ever I met.”

“What shall be in this letter?” the Knight of Coucy said.

“Please God,” the young knight answered, “it be to say that my wife Dionissia has gone with another man.”

“Then you would lose her,” the Knight of Coucy said. “But her dowry would fall to me as forfeit. But I am a very unfortunate man. It will be to say that your wife, Blanche, or my wife, Dionissia, or both together, have done some sacrilege for which we must pay a fine. It is a plaguey world where a man may be fined for the sacrilege of a wife he has never seen!”

“No, it is about miracles,” the Knight of Coucy said. “I have asked this hind, and he said it was about miracles.”

“Miracles!” the young knight wondered. “Shall one write letters about miracles! Miracles will keep, and letters are nasty things to have to do with.”

“So much I gathered — that it was about a miracle worker,” the heavy knight continued. “It is a very stupid hind, and has not read the inside of the letter. And when I kicked him to have more news he could only blubber and curl about my knees.”

“I do not like letters,” the young knight said. “Let us not read this letter, Letters bring always evil tidings. I have observed that. If a woman would kiss you she does not write it in a letter; she waves her handkerchief from the top of her tower as you ride by. But if she will have money of you, or her wrongs righted, or tell you that your wife has cuckolded you, or that your house is burnt down — then she will put it in a letter.” —

“Well, we must read this letter.” the Knight of Coucy said impassively. He waded in his leather suit to the door and called down the stairs:

“Ho, Henry! Ho, page! Ho, server! A hind waits in my chamber with a letter. Ho! A hind with a letter, convey him here.”

He returned to the fire.

“Why must we be plagued?” the Knight of Egerton grumbled. “Mark me, no good will come of this!”

“If there is ill news,” the Knight of Coucy said, “the sooner we have it the sooner we may plan to avert the disaster. If there is good, then it is well to know it soon.”

And again he shouted to the door and called:

“Ho! a hind with a letter from Wiltshire. Ho, Henry, Ho! Hostess! someone to convey hind and letter here.”

He called the words very loudly, for fear the first time no one should have heard him. But his words, which at first had reverberated down the staircase, became as it were corked up and dull in their flight. Several persons were mounting.

And first there came, in a cloak of parrot-green velvet, with an undervest of leaf-green and fleshings of that colour, a round cap of green with three ostrich feathers, painted green and set in a brooch of gold — there came in Roger Lord Mortimer. He had a reddish, square, and curly beard, golden hair depended from his little cap; his eyes were very narrow, and he swung himself from left to right as he walked, having upon his left wrist a leathern glove painted green and with many tassels, pieces of glass, and beads of gold. Upon this glove sat the Queen’s hawk, with its cap and plume of green velvet with stitchings of gold.

Roger Mortimer was not yet come to the extreme height of his ascendancy over the Queen-Mother, though it was known to be very dangerous to stand up against him, and the young king was entirely his toy. He entered the room with a little inclination of his back, saying:

“God save you, gentle knights and leman! The Queen is upon the stair.”

“The Queen is welcome,” the Knight of Coucy said. He held the flagon to his lips and once more drank to get it done before the Queen should be in the room. Sitting upon the side of the bath, the Young Knight continued to swing his bare legs whilst he uttered a “God save you!” beneath his breath. There was much rustling from the stairs; then, all in purple and gold, the Queen-Mother came in with the little King, as if he were in the folds of a curtain, half hidden in her immense sleeve. The Queen was a fat matron, with a cunning, determined face. Her eyes were small, brown, and keen. Her dress was of purple velvet, all of one piece, and sewn with thick gold thread that glinted in the seams. About her waist she had a rope of amber beads that was twisted before her and fell in two ropes to her feet. The King was all in scarlet, a boy of fourteen. Upon his yellow hair was a small circlet of gold; round his knees were two garters of solid gold links; the ends, passing through the buckles, fell down to the tops of his shoes that were very long and gilded. He gave his hand to Gertrude the leman to kiss, and the Queen-Mother kissed her courteously upon the cheek. But these were the only salutations. All the persons in that room gazed into each other’s eyes warily and in silence, the Lord Roger in his green, swaying upon his feet in a nervous nonchalance.

“Ah, gentle knights,” the Queen-Mother said, “I have a great grief against you twain.”

“I have a great grief against you, gentle Queen,” the Knight of Coucy said.

“A grief too, I have,” the Young Knight said.

“Then have we three griefs in one room,” Roger Mortimer minced. “And that is good, for Holy Writ tells us that all good things are three.”

The Queen erected her head more haughtily.

“Speak your griefs,” she said.

“Nay, by God, speak you yours first,” the Knight of Coucy answered. He had turned round and stood back upon his heels, his considerable protuberance, all of yellow leather, stained with black grease, bowing out towards the Queen-Mother.

The Young Knight stood up suddenly beside the bath, on whose edge he sat.

“If there is to be long speaking,” he said, “I will get me into the closet and put on my clothes!”

“No, do not do it,” the Queen-Mother said. “I will have you hear me. You shall not escape into the cupboard. I will see your face, so I may know when this knight lies. For I know that though there are two of you; you will leave the talking to the Knight of Coucy.”

“Well, I am too cold without my clothes,” the Young Knight answered. “Gentle Queen, if you would see me you may, and that is all there is to it.” And, going to the door of the whitewashed closet, he fetched out a pair of full hose, of which the one leg was white and the other blue, a shirt of fine lawn, another shirt of steel mail which he hung ostentatiously on the side of the bath after he had rubbed it almost under Roger Mortimer’s nose, and a doublet of blue with white fur.

Roger Mortimer bent down and fingered the shirt of mail.

“Well, gentle knight,” he said, with a sort of sneering jest, “we shall not put a knife through that.”

“Neither you, nor Sir John of Hainault could,” the young man sneered cheerfully back. “I doubt I am strong enough myself. It is mail of the Saracens that will turn the edge of a scimitar; yet, as you feel, it is so light you would say it would float like the Virgin’s web, and I wear it for my comfort.”

“Sir John of Hainault is an honourable knight,” Roger Mortimer said darkly. “He will do no stabbing in the back.”

The Young Knight whistled between his teeth.

“Ah, gentle Earl, I was not miscalling the Knight of Hainault,” he uttered dryly. He held before him his blue and white hose, being about to step into them. For only answer, the Lord Mortimer delicately ran the point of his white forefinger round his throat.

“Ah, if it comes to beheading,” the Young Knight said, “Roger Mortimer, thy throat is as thin as mine. And remember that the wise woman of Torrington has prophesied thou shouldst be short by a head when the day came.”

Roger Mortimer swallowed with rage. The Young Knight had on his hose, and coolly he stripped off his long mantle. His bare body was all marked with scars and blisters. He put his finger in a livid weal above his left breast.

“That scar, gentle Queen,” he said, “I had at Bannockburn. You remember Bannockburn?”

At Bannockburn the Young Knight had been the last but one off the field, the Knight of Coucy having been the last.

“We fought into the light of the morn, gentle Queen,” he said, “when King had fled, and Queen had fled, and little people like Mortimer and such were fled. So we fought on, and when our horses were dead we fought afoot. A year we lay in a Scots prison.”

“Take care ye lie not ten in an English one,” the Queen said highly.

The Young Knight had his head in his shirt of lawn. When it came forth, and he was clothed:

“Gentle Queen,” he said, “ere we lay there ten days Roger Mortimer would have our heads!”

“That is true,” Roger Mortimer answered.

“Ah, gentle Queen,” the Knight of Coucy said, “what is this talk of beheading, and why should we to prison?” His voice was heavy, and he bent his brows deeply upon the Queen.

“For that you are traitors and cowards, knight,” the Queen said, “and have put disorder in our army, and shamed the King and us before all our people.”

The Knight of Coucy drew himself up with a minatory gravity.

“Gentle Queen,” he said heavily, “you are the first that has called me coward in my life. No other would have lived after that word.”

“Knight,” the Queen answered, “in this you are a coward, that you will never meet with the Scots, and so there is murmuring in the country that I and the Lord Mortimer are sold to the Scots King. But I think it is you that are sold to David le Bruce.”

“Gentle Queen, you lie,” the Heavy Knight said.

“It is what is told to me,” the Queen answered. “And who can doubt that you have spread disorder in our forces? Two months ago your Wiltshire archers set about the knights of Sir John of Hainault. At night they fell upon them in the streets. Many they slew. Others they pursued to their houses. And there has been no peace between your men and the Flemings since that day.”

“I have hamstrung twenty of my archers,” the Knight of Coucy said heavily. “‘It is the Flemings that have laid on first every day since then. And it is all the English army now that fights your Flemish friends.”

“But it was you who set your archers to this fray,” the Queen said.

“Not so, Queen, and well you know it,” the Knight answered. “It was the Flemings set them to it. I saw with my own eyes — and you saw from your balcony — how the Flemings carried horns, and they set spear heads into the horns and cried out, ‘Berkeley!’ And well you know what a horn and a spear head did at Berkeley Castle. Who knoweth better, save Lord Mortimer?”