Chivalry Part 19

"I design my own preservation," King Henry answered, "for while you live my rule is insecure."

"I am sorry," Richard said, "that in part my blood is yours."

Twice he sounded his horn, and everywhere from rustling underwoods arose the half-naked Welshmen. Said Richard: "You should read history more carefully, Cousin Henry. You might have profited, as I have done, by considering the trick which our grandfather, old Edward Longshanks, played on the French King at Mezelais. As matters stand, your men are one to ten. You are impotent. Now, now we balance our accounts! These persons here will first deal with your followers. Then they will conduct you to Glyndwyr, who has long desired to deal with you himself, in privacy, since that Whit-Monday when you murdered his son."

The King began, "In mercy, sire--!" and Richard laughed a little, saying:

"That virtue is not overabundant among us of Oriander's blood, as we both know. No, cousin, Fate and Time are merry jesters. See, now, their latest mockery! You the King of England ride to Sycharth to your death, and I the tender of sheep depart into London, without any hindrance, to reign henceforward over these islands. To-morrow you are worm's-meat, Cousin Henry: to-morrow, as yesterday, I am King of England."

Then Branwen gave one sharp, brief cry, and Richard forgot all things saving this girl, and strode to her. He had caught up her hard, lithe hands; against his lips he strained them close and very close.

"Branwen--!" he said. His eyes devoured her.

"Yes, King," she answered. "O King of England! O fool that I have been to think you less!"

In a while Richard said: "Well, I at least am not fool enough to think of making you a king's wh.o.r.e. So I must choose between a peasant wench and England. Now I choose, and how gladly! Branwen, help me to be more than King of England!"

Low and very low he spoke, and long and very long he gazed at her, and neither seemed to breathe. Of what she thought I cannot tell you; but in Richard there was no power of thought, only a great wonderment.

Why, between this woman's love and aught else there was no choice for him, he knew upon a sudden. Perhaps he would thus worship her always, he reflected: and then again, perhaps he would be tired of her before long, just as all other persons seemed to abate in these infatuations: meanwhile it was certain that he was very happy. No, he could not go back to the throne and to the little French girl who was in law his wife.

And, as if from an immense distance, came to Richard the dogged voice of Henry of Lancaster. "It is of common report in these islands that I have a better right to the throne than you. As much was told our grandfather, King Edward of happy memory, when he educated you and had you acknowledged heir to the crown, but his love was so strong for his son the Prince of Wales that nothing could alter his purpose. And indeed if you had followed even the example of the Black Prince you might still have been our King; but you have always acted so contrarily to his admirable precedents as to occasion the rumor to be generally believed throughout England that you were not, after all, his son--"

Richard had turned impatiently. "For the love of Heaven, truncate your abominable periods. Be off with you. Yonder across that river is the throne of England, which you appear, through some lunacy, to consider a desirable possession. Take it, then; for, praise G.o.d! the sword has found its sheath."

The King answered: "I do not ask you to reconsider your dismissal, a.s.suredly--Richard," he cried, a little shaken, "I perceive that until your death you will win contempt and love from every person."

"Yes, yes, for many years I have been the playmate of the world," said Richard; "but to-day I wash my hands, and set about another and more laudable business. I had dreamed certain dreams, indeed--but what had I to do with all this strife between the devil and the tiger? No, Glyndwyr will set up Mortimer against you now, and you two must fight it out. I am no more his tool, and no more your enemy, my cousin--Henry," he said with quickening voice, "there was a time when we were boys and played together, and there was no hatred between us, and I regret that time!"

"As G.o.d lives, I too regret that time!" the bluff, squinting King replied. He stared at Richard for a while wherein each understood.

"Dear fool," Sire Henry said, "there is no man in all the world but hates me saving only you." Then the proud King clapped spurs to his proud horse and rode away.

More lately Richard dismissed his wondering marauders. Now he and Branwen were alone and a little troubled, since each was afraid of that oncoming moment when their eyes must meet.

So Richard laughed. "Praise G.o.d!" he wildly cried, "I am the greatest fool unhanged!"

She answered: "I am the happier for your folly. I am the happiest of G.o.d's creatures."

And Richard meditated. "Faith of a gentleman!" he declared; "but you are nothing of the sort, and of this fact I happen to be quite certain." Their lips met then and afterward their eyes; and each of these ragged peasants was too glad for laughter.

THE END OF THE EIGHTH NOVEL

IX

THE STORY OF THE NAVARRESE

"J'ay en mon cueur joyeus.e.m.e.nt Escript, afin que ne l'oublie, Ce refrain qu'ayme chierement, C'estes vous de qui suis amye."

THE NINTH NOVEL.--JEHANE OF NAVARRE, AFTER A WITHSTANDING OF ALL OTHER a.s.sAULTS, IS IN A LONG DUEL, WHEREIN TIME AND COMMON-SENSE ARE FLOUTED, AND KINGDOMS ARE SHAKEN, DETHRONED AND RECOMPENSED BY AN ENDURING LUNACY.

_The Story of the Navarrese_

In the year of grace 1386, upon the feast of Saint Bartholomew (thus Nicolas begins), came to the Spanish coast Messire Peyre de Lesnerac, in a war-ship sumptuously furnished and manned by many persons of dignity and wealth, in order suitably to escort the Princess Jehane into Brittany, where she was to marry the Duke of that province. There were now rejoicings throughout Navarre, in which the Princess took but a nominal part and young Antoine Riczi none at all.

This Antoine Riczi came to Jehane that August twilight in the hedged garden. "King's daughter!" he sadly greeted her. "d.u.c.h.ess of Brittany!

Countess of Rougemont! Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of Toufon and Guerche!"

She answered, "No, my dearest,--I am that Jehane, whose only t.i.tle is the Constant Lover." And in the green twilight, lit as yet by one low-hanging star alone, their lips and desperate young bodies clung, now, it might be, for the last time.

Presently the girl spoke. Her soft mouth was lax and tremulous, and her gray eyes were more brilliant than the star yonder. The boy's arms were about her, so that neither could be quite unhappy, yet.

"Friend," said Jehane, "I have no choice. I must wed with this de Montfort. I think I shall die presently. I have prayed G.o.d that I may die before they bring me to the dotard's bed."

Young Riczi held her now in an embrace more brutal. "Mine! mine!" he snarled toward the obscuring heavens.

"Yet it may be I must live. Friend, the man is very old. Is it wicked to think of that? For I cannot but think of his great age."

Then Riczi answered: "My desires--may G.o.d forgive me!--have clutched like starving persons at that sorry sustenance. Friend! ah, fair, sweet friend! the man is human and must die, but love, we read, is immortal. I am wishful to kill myself, Jehane. But, oh, Jehane! dare you to bid me live?"

"Friend, as you love me, I entreat you to live. Friend, I crave of the Eternal Father that if I falter in my love for you I may be denied even the one bleak night of ease which Judas knows." The girl did not weep; dry-eyed she winged a perfectly sincere prayer toward incorruptible saints. Riczi was to remember the fact, and through long years of severance.

For even now, as Riczi went away from Jehane, a shrill singing-girl was rehearsing, yonder behind the yew-hedge, the song which she was to sing at Jehane's bridal feast.

Sang this joculatrix:

"When the Morning broke before us Came the wayward Three astraying, Chattering in babbling chorus, (Obloquies of Aether saying),-- Hoidens that, at pegtop playing, Flung their Top where yet it whirls Through the coil of clouds unstaying, For the Fates are captious girls!"

And upon the next day de Lesnerac bore young Jehane from Pampeluna and presently to Saille, where old Jehan the Brave took her to wife. She lived as a queen, but she was a woman of infrequent laughter.

She had Duke Jehan's adoration, and his barons' obeisancy, and his villagers applauded her pa.s.sage with stentorian shouts. She pa.s.sed interminable days amid bright curious arra.s.ses and trod listlessly over pavements strewn with flowers. She had fiery-hearted jewels, and shimmering purple cloths, and much furniture adroitly carven, and many tapestries of Samarcand and Baldach upon which were embroidered, by brown fingers that time had turned long ago to Asian dust, innumerable asps and deer and phoenixes and dragons and all the motley inhabitants of air and of the thicket; but her memories, too, she had, and for a dreary while she got no comfort because of them. Then ambition quickened.

Young Antoine Riczi likewise nursed his wound as best he might; but at the end of the second year after Jehane's wedding his uncle, the Vicomte de Montbrison--a gaunt man, with preoccupied and troubled eyes--had summoned Antoine into Lyonnois and, after appropriate salutation, had informed the lad that, as the Vicomte's heir, he was to marry the Demoiselle Gerberge de Nerac upon the ensuing Michaelmas.

"That I may not do," said Riczi; and since a chronicler that would tempt fortune should never stretch the fabric of his wares too thin (unlike Sir Hengist), I merely tell you these two dwelt together at Montbrison for a decade: and the Vicomte swore at his nephew and predicted this or that disastrous destination as often as Antoine declined to marry the latest of his uncle's candidates,--in whom the Vicomte was of an astonishing fertility.

In the year of grace 1401 came the belated news that Duke Jehan had closed his final day. "You will be leaving me!" the Vicomte growled; "now, in my decrepitude, you will be leaving me! It is abominable, and I shall in all likelihood disinherit you this very night."

"Yet it is necessary," Riczi answered; and, filled with no unhallowed joy, he rode for Vannes, in Brittany, where the d.u.c.h.ess-Regent held her court. Dame Jehane had within that fortnight put aside her mourning. She sat beneath a green canopy, gold-fringed and powdered with many golden stars, when Riczi came again to her, and the rising saps of spring were exercising their august and formidable influence.

She sat alone, by prearrangement, to one end of the high-ceiled and radiant apartment; midway in the hall her lords and divers ladies were gathered about a saltatrice and a jongleur, who were diverting the courtiers, to the mincing accompaniment of a lute; but Jehane sat apart from these, frail, and splendid with many jewels, and a little sad.

And Antoine Riczi found no power of speech within him at the first.