Chivalry

"Destiny brought me hither," Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his eyes. "Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she continue so." But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be, Alain shook his tawny head. "Presently you shall know, Highness, but not now. I return to Châteauneuf on certain necessary businesses; to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti's livery. Farewell!" He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus Tristran de Léonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. She went to her apartments, singing,

"El tems amoreus plein de joie,
El tems où tote riens s'esgaie,—"

and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were hosts of women-children born every day, she reflected, who were not princesses and therefore compelled to marry ogres; and some of them were beautiful. And minstrels made such an ado over beauty.

Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant trees. In the slaty twilight the garden's verdure was lustreless, grass and foliage uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere a vista unblurred; but in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers swaddled by their ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest as much; and presently came a singing, less meritorious than that of many a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely.

Sang Alain:

"O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,
Be not too obdurate the while we pray
That this the fleet, sweet time of youth be spent
In laughter as befits a holiday,
From which the evening summons us away,
From which to-morrow wakens us to strife
And toil and grief and wisdom—and to-day
Grudge us not life!

"O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,
Why need our elders trouble us at play?
We know that very soon we shall repent
The idle follies of our holiday,
And being old, shall be as wise as they,
But now we are not wise, and lute and fife
Seem sweeter far than wisdom—so to-day
Grudge us not life!

"O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,
You have given us youth—and must we cast away
The cup undrained and our one coin unspent
Because our elders' beards and hearts are gray?
They have forgotten that if we delay
Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife
Or cord or fever mocks the prayer we pray—
'Grudge us not life!'

"Madam, recall that in the sun we play
But for an hour, then have the worm for wife,
The tomb for habitation—and to-day
Grudge us not life!"

Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the crotch of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but the Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort.

"You came!" this harper said, transfigured; and then again, "You came!"

She breathed, "Yes."

So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man's mind not a grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to leer at his unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man and woman, meeting, knew no sweeter terror.

It was by the minstrel a familiar earth and the grating speech of earth were earlier regained. "The affair is of the suddenest," Alain observed, and he now swung the lute behind him. He indicated no intention of touching her, though he might easily have done so as he sat there exalted by the height of his horse. "A meteor arrives with more prelude. But Love is an arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has seized it, and accordingly I would now brave hell to come to you, and finding you there, esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already made my prayer to Destiny that she concede me love, and now of God, our Father and Master, I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For, God willing, I shall come to you again, though in doing so it were necessary that I split the world like a rotten orange."

"Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!" Katharine said. "I am a king's daughter, and you a minstrel."

"Is it madness? Why, then, I think all sensible men are to be commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this some design. Across half the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Heh, God's face!" Alain swore; "the foxes Samson, that old sinewy captain, loosed among the corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as this fox has set afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and olives spoilt, a bushel or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin. There will be martial argument shortly if you bid me come again."

"I bid you come," said Katharine; and after they had stared at each other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It was through a dank, tear-flawed world that she stumbled conventward, while out of the east the sun came bathed in mists, a watery sun no brighter than a silver coin.

And for a month the world seemed no less dreary, but about Michaelmas the Queen-Regent sent for her. At the Hôtel de Saint-Pol matters were much the same. Her mother Katharine found in foul-mouthed rage over the failure of a third attempt to poison the Dauphin of Vienne, as Isabeau had previously poisoned her two elder sons; I might here trace out a curious similitude between the Valois and that dragon-spawned race which Jason very anciently slew at Colchis, since the world was never at peace so long as any two of them existed: but King Charles greeted his daughter with ampler deference, esteeming her Presbyter John's wife, the tyrant of Ethiopia. However, ingenuity had just suggested card-playing for his amusement, and he paid little attention nowadays to any one save his opponent.

So the French King chirped his senile jests over the card-table, while the King of England was besieging the French city of Rouen sedulously and without mercy. In late autumn an armament from Ireland joined Henry's forces. The Irish fought naked, it was said, with long knives. Katharine heard discreditable tales of these Irish, and reflected how gross are the exaggerations of rumor.

In the year of grace 1419, in January, the burgesses of Rouen, having consumed their horses, and finding frogs and rats unpalatable, yielded the town. It was the Queen-Regent who brought the news to Katharine.

"God is asleep," the Queen said; "and while He nods, the Butcher of Agincourt has stolen our good city of Rouen." She sat down and breathed heavily. "Never was poor woman so pestered as I! The puddings to-day were quite uneatable, and on Sunday the Englishman entered Rouen in great splendor, attended by his chief nobles; but the Butcher rode alone, and before him went a page carrying a fox-brush on the point of his lance. I put it to you, is that the contrivance of a sane man? Euh! euh!" Dame Isabeau squealed on a sudden; "you are bruising me."