Chivalry: Dizain des Reines, James Branch Cabell [the best books of all time .TXT] 📗

“We must avoid England, then, my noble patron,” the priest considered.

Angrily the Duke struck a clenched fist upon the table. “By the Cross! we remain in England, you and I and all of us. Others avoid. The Pope and the Emperor will have none of me. They plead for the Black Prince’s heir, for the legitimate heir. Dompnedex! they shall have him!”

Maudelain recoiled, for he thought this twitching man insane.

“Besides, the King intends to take from me my fief at Sudbury,” said the Duke of York, “in order to give it to de Vere. That is both absurd and monstrous and abominable.”

Openly Gloucester sneered. “Listen!” he rapped out toward Maudelain; “when they were drawing up the Great Peace at Brétigny, it happened, as is notorious, that the Black Prince, my brother, wooed in this town the Demoiselle Alixe Riczi, whom in the outcome he abducted. It is not so generally known, however, that, finding this sister of the Vicomte de Montbrison a girl of obdurate virtue, my brother had prefaced the action by marriage.”

“And what have I to do with all this?” said Edward Maudelain.

Gloucester retorted: “More than you think. For this Alixe was conveyed to Chertsey, here in England, where at the year’s end she died in childbirth. A little before this time had Sir Thomas Holland seen his last day,—the husband of that Joane of Kent whom throughout life my brother loved most marvellously. The disposition of the late Queen-Mother is tolerably well known. I make no comment save that to her moulding my brother was as so much wax. In fine, the two lovers were presently married, and their son reigns to-day in England. The abandoned son of Alixe Riczi was reared by the Cistercians at Chertsey, where some years ago I found you.”

He spoke with a stifled voice, wrenching forth each sentence; and now with a stiff forefinger flipped a paper across the table. “In extremis my brother did more than confess. He signed,—your Majesty,” said Gloucester. The Duke on a sudden flung out his hands, like a wizard whose necromancy fails, and the palms were bloodied where his nails had cut the flesh.

“Moreover, my daughter was born at Sudbury,” said the Duke of York.

And of Maudelain’s face I cannot tell you. He made pretence to read the paper carefully, but his eyes roved, and he knew that he stood among wolves. The room was oddly shaped, with eight equal sides: the ceiling was of a light and brilliant blue, powdered with many golden stars, and the walls were hung with smart tapestries which commemorated the exploits of Theseus. “Then I am King,” this Maudelain said aloud, “of France and England, and Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine! I perceive that Heaven loves a jest.” He wheeled upon Gloucester and spoke with singular irrelevance, “And what is to be done with the present Queen?”

Again the Duke shrugged. “I had not thought of the dumb wench. We have many convents.”

Now Maudelain twisted the paper between his long, wet fingers and appeared to meditate.

“It would be advisable, your Grace,” observed the Earl of Derby, suavely, and breaking his silence for the first time, “that you yourself should wed Dame Anne, once the Apostolic See has granted the necessary dispensation. Treading too close upon the fighting requisite to bring about the dethronement and death of our nominal lord the so-called King, a war with Bohemia, which would be only too apt to follow this noble lady’s assassination, would be highly inconvenient, and, lacking that, we would have to pay back her dowry.”

Then these three princes rose and knelt before the priest; they were clad in long bright garments, and they glittered with gold and many jewels. He standing among them shuddered in his sombre robe. “Hail, King of England!” cried these three.

“Hail, ye that are my kinsmen!” he answered; “hail, ye that spring of an accursed race, as I! And woe to England for that hour wherein Manuel of Poictesme held traffic with the Sorceress of Provence, and the devil’s son begot an heir for England! Of ice and of lust and of hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and fickle and cold and ravenous and without shame are all our race until the end. Of your brother’s dishonor ye make merchandise to-day, and to-day fratricide whispers me, and leers, and, Heaven help me! I attend. O God of Gods! wilt Thou dare bid a man live stainless, having aforetime filled his veins with such a venom? Then haro, will I cry from Thy deepest hell.... Oh, now let the adulterous Redeemer of Poictesme rejoice in his tall fires, to note that his descendants know of what wood to make a crutch! You are very wise, my kinsmen. Take your measures, messieurs who are my kinsmen! Though were I of any other race, with what expedition would I now kill you, I that recognize within me the strength to do it! Then would I slay you! without any animosity, would I slay you then, just as I would kill as many splendid snakes!”

He went away, laughing horribly. Gloucester drummed upon the table, his brows contracted. But the lean Duke said nothing; big York seemed to drowse; and Henry of Derby smiled as he sounded a gong for that scribe who would draw up the necessary letters. The Earl’s time was not yet come, but it was nearing.

In the antechamber the priest encountered two men-at-arms dragging a dead body from the castle. The Duke of Kent, Maudelain was informed, had taken a fancy to a peasant girl, and in remonstrance her misguided father had actually tugged at his Grace’s sleeve.

Maudelain went into the park of Windsor, where he walked for a long while alone. It was a fine day in the middle spring; and now he seemed to understand for the first time how fair was his England. For all England was his fief, held in vassalage to God and to no man alive, his heart now sang; allwhither his empire spread, opulent in grain and metal and every revenue of the earth, and in stalwart men (his chattels), and in strong orderly cities, where the windows would be adorned with scarlet hangings, and women (with golden hair and red lax lips) would presently admire as King Edward rode slowly by at the head of a resplendent retinue. And always the King would bow, graciously and without haste, to his shouting people.... He laughed to find himself already at rehearsal of the gesture.

It was strange, though, that in this glorious fief of his so many persons should, as yet, live day by day as cattle live, suspicious of all other moving things (with reason), and roused from their incurious and filthy apathy only when some glittering baron, like a resistless eagle, swept uncomfortably near as he passed on some by-errand of the more bright and windy upper-world. East and north they had gone yearly, for so many centuries, these dumb peasants, to fight out their master’s uncomprehended quarrel, and to manure with their carcasses the soil of France and of Scotland. Give these serfs a king, now, who (being absolute), might dare to deal in perfect equity with rich and poor, who with his advent would bring Peace into England as his bride, as Trygaeus did very anciently in Athens—“And then,” the priest paraphrased, “may England recover all the blessings she has lost, and everywhere the glitter of active steel will cease.” For everywhere men would crack a rustic jest or two, unhurriedly. Virid fields would heave brownly under their ploughs; they would find that with practice it was almost as easy to chuckle as it was to cringe.

Meanwhile on every side the nobles tyrannized in their degree, well clothed and nourished, but at bottom equally comfortless in condition. As illuminate by lightning Maudelain saw the many factions of his barons squabbling for gross pleasures, like wolves over a corpse, and blindly dealing death to one another to secure at least one more delicious gulp before that inevitable mangling by the teeth of some burlier colleague. The complete misery of England showed before Maudelain like a winter landscape. The thing was questionless. He must tread henceforward without fear among frenzied beasts, and to their ultimate welfare. On a sudden Maudelain knew himself to be invincible and fine, and hesitancy ebbed.

True, Richard, poor fool, must die. Squarely the priest faced that stark and hideous circumstance; to spare Richard was beyond his power, and the boy was his brother; yes, this oncoming King Edward would be a fratricide, and after death would be irrevocably damned. To burn, and eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the torment was eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of Richard’s ignoble life and of Edward’s inconsiderable soul, to win so many men to manhood was not a bargain to be refused.

The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden which adjoined Dame Anne’s apartments. He found the Queen there, alone, as nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused to wonder at her bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd was this beauty, he reflected, too; how alien in its effect to that of any other woman in sturdy England, and how associable it was, somehow, with every wild and gracious denizen of the woods which blossomed yonder.

In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but undiluted. They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short to ripple, which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and left, birds sang as if in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint and radiant blue throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the zenith, so that the Queen’s brows cast honey-colored shadows upon either cheek. The priest was greatly troubled by the proud and heatless brilliancies, the shrill joys, of every object within the radius of his senses.

She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, tinted like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and wore over all a gown of white, cut open on each side as far as the hips. This garment was embroidered with golden leopards and was trimmed with ermine. About her yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein emeralds glowed. Her blue eyes were as large and shining and changeable (he thought) as two oceans in midsummer; and Maudelain stood motionless and seemed to himself but to revere, as the Earl Ixion did, some bright unstable wisp of cloud, while somehow all elation departed from him as water does from a wetted sponge compressed. He laughed discordantly.

“Wait—! O my only friend—!” said Maudelain. Then in a level voice he told her all, unhurriedly and without any apparent emotion.

She had breathed once, with a deep inhalation. She had screened her countenance from his gaze the while you might have counted fifty. Presently she said: “This means more war, for de Vere and Tressilian and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons know that the King’s fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands die to-morrow.”

He answered, “It means a war which will make me King of England, and will make you my wife.”

“In that war the nobles will ride abroad with banners and gay surcoats, and will kill and ravish in the pauses of their songs; while daily in that war the naked peasants will kill the one the other, without knowing why.”

His thought had forerun hers. “Yes, some must die, so that in the end I may be King, and the general happiness may rest at my disposal. The adventure of this world is wonderful, and it goes otherwise than under the strict tutelage of reason.”

“It would not be yours, but Gloucester’s and his barons’. Friend, they would set you on the throne to be their puppet and to move only as they pulled the strings. Thwart them in their maraudings and they will fling you aside, as the barons have pulled down every king that dared oppose them. No, they desire to live pleasantly, to have fish on Fridays, and white bread and the finest wine the whole year through, and there is not enough for all, say they. Can you alone contend against them? and conquer them? for not unless you can do this may I dare bid you reign.”

The sun had grown too bright, too merciless, but as always she drew the truth from him. “I could not venture to oppose in anything the barons who supported my cause: for if I did, I would not endure a fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor