Chapter 7
The Queen laughed bitterly. "Do I not know men? He told you nothing. And to-night he hesitated, and to-morrow, at the lifting of my finger, he will supplicate. Since boyhood Gregory Darrell has loved me, O white, palsied innocence! and he is mine at a whistle. And in that time to come he will desert you, Rosamund--bidding farewell with a pleasing Canzon,--and they will give you to the gross Earl of Sarum, as they gave me to the painted man who was of late our King! and in that time to come you will know your body to be your husband's makeshift when he lacks leisure to seek out other recreation! and in that time to come you will long for death, and presently your heart will be a flame within you, my Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your God because He made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you, and hate all men because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whims! and chiefly you will hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and devastation only will you love in that strange time which is to come. It is adjacent, my Rosamund."
The girl kept silence. She sat erect in the tumbled bed, her hands clasping her knees, and she appeared to deliberate what Dame Ysabeau had said. Plentiful brown hair fell about this Rosamund's face, which was white and shrewd. "A part of what you say, madame, I understand. I know that Gregory Darrell loves me, yet I have long ago acknowledged he loves me as one pets a child, or, let us say, a spaniel which reveres and amuses one. I lack his wit, you comprehend, and so he never speaks to me all that he thinks. Yet a part of it he tells me, and he loves me, and with this I am content. Assuredly, if they give me to Sarum I shall hate Sarum even more than I detest him now. And then, I think, Heaven help me! that I would not greatly grieve--Oh, you are all evil!" Rosamund said; "and you thrust into my mind thoughts which I may not understand!"
"You will comprehend them," the Queen said, "when you know yourself a chattel, bought and paid for."
The Queen laughed. She rose, and her hands strained toward heaven. "You are omnipotent, yet have You let me become that into which I am transmuted," she said, very low.
She began to speak as though a statue spoke through lips that seemed motionless. "Men have long urged me, Rosamund, to a deed which by one stroke would make me mistress of these islands. To-day I looked on Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in love--and I had but to crush a lewd soft worm to come to him. Eh, and I was tempted--!"
The girl said: "Let us grant that Gregory loves you very greatly, and me just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a cushioned infamy, a colorful and brief delirium, and afterward demolishment of soul and body; I offer him contentment and a level life, made up of small events, it may be, and lacking both in abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love a flame wherein the lover's soul must be purified; it is a flame which assays high queens just as it does their servants: and thus, madame, to judge between us I dare summon you." "Child, child!" the Queen said, tenderly, and with a smile, "you are brave; and in your fashion you are wise; yet you will never comprehend. But once I was in heart and soul and body all that you are to-day; and now I am Queen Ysabeau--Did you in truth hear nothing, Rosamund?"
"Why, nothing save the wind."
"Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and imprecations! But I, too, grow cowardly, it may be--Nay, I know," she said, and in a resonant voice, "that by this I am mistress of broad England, until my son--my own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund--knows me for what I am. For I have heard--Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!" the Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I was but your plaything!"
"Madame Ysabeau--!" the girl answered vaguely, for she was puzzled and was almost frightened by the other's strange talk.
"To bed!" said Ysabeau; "and put out the lights lest he come presently. Or perhaps he fears me now too much to come to-night. Yet the night approaches, none the less, when I must lift some arras and find him there, chalk-white, with painted cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very terribly, or look into some mirror and behold there not myself but him,--and in that instant I shall die. Meantime I rule, until my son attains his manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and so helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly, and save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more fair--But I must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, God orders matters very shrewdly, my Rosamund."
Timidly the girl touched Ysabeau's shoulder. "In part, I understand, madame and Queen."
"You understand nothing," said Ysabeau; "how should you understand whose breasts are yet so tiny? So let us put out the light! though I dread darkness, Rosamund--For they say that hell is poorly lighted--and they say--" Then Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Pensively she blew out each lamp.
"We know this Gregory Darrell," the Queen said in the darkness, "ah, to the marrow we know him, however steadfastly we blink, and we know the present turmoil of his soul; and in common-sense what chance have you of victory?"
"None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. For man is a being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy orders, and his life here is one unending warfare between that which is divine in him and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of the tourney. Always a man's judgment misleads him and his faculties allure him to a truce, however brief, with iniquity. His senses raise a mist about his goings, and there is not an endowment of the man but in the end plays traitor to his interest, as of God's wisdom God intends; so that when the man is overthrown, the Eternal Father may, in reason, be neither vexed nor grieved if only the man takes heart to rise again. And when, betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight out the allotted battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors which God Himself accorded, I think that the Saints hold festival in heaven."
"A very pretty sermon," said the Queen. "Yet I do not think that our Gregory could very long endure a wife given over to such high-minded talking. He prefers to hear himself do the fine talking."
Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but I believe that neither of these two slept with profundity.
About dawn one of the Queen's attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, where Ysabeau walked in tranquil converse with Lord Berners. The old man was in high good-humor.
"My lad," said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the shoulder, "you have, I do protest, the very phoenix of sisters. I was never happier." And he went away chuckling.
The Queen said in a toneless voice, "We ride for Blackfriars now."
Darrell responded, "I am content, and ask but leave to speak, briefly, with Dame Rosamund before I die."
Then the woman came more near to him. "I am not used to beg, but within this hour you encounter death, and I have loved no man in all my life saving only you, Sir Gregory Darrell. Nor have you loved any person as you loved me once in France. Oh, to-day, I may speak freely, for with you the doings of that boy and girl are matters overpast. Yet were it otherwise--eh, weigh the matter carefully! for I am mistress of England now, and England would I give you, and such love as that slim, white innocence has never dreamed of would I give you, Gregory Darrell--No, no! ah, Mother of God, not you!" The Queen clapped one hand upon his lips.
"Listen," she quickly said; "I spoke to tempt you. But you saw, and you saw clearly, that it was the sickly whim of a wanton, and you never dreamed of yielding, for you love this Rosamund Eastney, and you know me to be vile. Then have a care of me! The strange woman am I, of whom we read that her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death. Hoh, many strong men have been slain by me, and in the gray time to come will many others be slain by me, it may be; but never you among them, my Gregory, who are more wary, and more merciful, and who know that I have need to lay aside at least one comfortable thought against eternity."
"I concede you to have been unwise--" he hoarsely began.
About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air of this new day seemed raw and chill.
Then Rosamund came through the opening in the hedge. "Now, choose," she said; "the woman offers life and high place and wealth, and it may be, a greater love than I am capable of giving you. I offer a dishonorable death within the moment."
And again, with that peculiar and imperious gesture, the man flung back his head, and he laughed. Said Gregory Darrell:
"I am I! and I will so to live that I may face without shame not only God, but also my own scrutiny." He wheeled upon the Queen and spoke henceforward very leisurely. "I love you; all my life long I have loved you, Ysabeau, and even now I love you: and you, too, dear Rosamund, I love, though with a difference. And every fibre of my being lusts for the power that you would give me, Ysabeau, and for the good which I would do with it in the England which I or blustering Roger Mortimer must rule; as every fibre of my being lusts for the man that I would be could I choose death without debate. And I think also of the man that you would make of me, my Rosamund.
"The man! And what is this man, this Gregory Darrell, that his welfare should be considered?--an ape who chatters to himself of kinship with the archangels while filthily he digs for groundnuts! This much I know, at bottom.
"Yet more clearly do I perceive that this same man, like all his fellows, is a maimed god who walks the world dependent upon many wise and evil counsellors. He must measure, to a hair's-breadth, every content of the world by means of a bloodied sponge, tucked somewhere in his skull, a sponge which is ungeared by the first cup of wine and ruined by the touch of his own finger. He must appraise all that he judges with no better instruments than two bits of colored jelly, with a bungling makeshift so maladroit that the nearest horologer's apprentice could have devised a more accurate device. In fine, each man is under penalty condemned to compute eternity with false weights, to estimate infinity with a yard-stick: and he very often does it, and chooses his own death without debate. For though, 'If then I do that which I would not I consent unto the law,' saith even an Apostle; yet a braver Pagan answers him, 'Perceive at last that thou hast in thee something better and more divine than the things which cause the various effects and, as it were, pull thee by the strings.'
"There lies the choice which every man must face,--whether rationally, as his reason goes, to accept his own limitations and make the best of his allotted prison-yard? or stupendously to play the fool and swear even to himself (while his own judgment shrieks and proves a flat denial), that he is at will omnipotent? You have chosen long ago, my poor proud Ysabeau; and I choose now, and differently: for poltroon that I am! being now in a cold drench of terror, I steadfastly protest I am not very much afraid, and I choose death without any more debate."
It was toward Rosamund that the Queen looked, and smiled a little pitifully. "Should Queen Ysabeau be angry or vexed or very cruel now, my Rosamund? for at bottom she is glad."
And the Queen said also: "I give you back your plighted word. I ride homeward to my husks, but you remain. Or rather, the Countess of Farrington departs for the convent of Ambresbury, disconsolate in her widowhood and desirous to have done with worldly affairs. It is most natural she should relinquish to her beloved and only brother all her dower-lands--or so at least Messire de Berners acknowledges. Here, then, is the grant, my Gregory, that conveys to you those lands of Ralph de Belomys which last year I confiscated. And this tedious Messire de Berners is willing now--he is eager to have you for a son-in-law."
About them fell the dying leaves, of many glorious colors, but the air of this new day seemed raw and chill, while, very calmly, Dame Ysabeau took Sir Gregory's hand and laid it upon the hand of Rosamund Eastney. "Our paladin is, in the outcome, a mortal man, and therefore I do not altogether envy you. Yet he has his moments, and you are capable. Serve, then, not only his desires but mine also, dear Rosamund."
There was a silence. The girl spoke as though it was a sacrament. "I will, madame and Queen."
Thus did the Queen end her holiday.
A little later the Countess of Farrington rode from Ordish with all her train save one; and riding from that place, where love was, she sang very softly.
Sang Ysabeau:
"As with her dupes dealt Circe Life deals with hers, for she Reshapes them without mercy, And shapes them swinishly, To wallow swinishly, And for eternity;
"Though, harder than the witch was, Life, changing not the whole, Transmutes the body, which was Proud garment of the soul, And briefly drugs the soul, Whose ruin is her goal;
"And means by this thereafter A subtler mirth to get, And mock with bitterer laughter Her helpless dupes' regret, Their swinish dull regret For what they half forget."
And within the hour came Hubert Frayne to Ordish, on a foam-specked horse, as he rode to announce to the King's men the King's barbaric murder overnight, at Berkeley Castle, by Queen Ysabeau's order.
"Ride southward," said Lord Berners, and panted as they buckled on his disused armor; "but harkee, Frayne! if you pass the Countess of Farrington's company, speak no syllable of your news, since it is not convenient that a lady so thoroughly and so praise-worthily--Lord, Lord, how I have fattened!--so intent on holy things, in fine, should have her meditations disturbed by any such unsettling tidings. Hey, son-in-law?"
Sir Gregory Darrell laughed, very bitterly. "He that is without blemish among you--" he said. Then they armed completely, and went forth to battle against the murderous harlot.
THE END OF THE FOURTH NOVEL
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: For this perplexing matter the curious may consult Paul Verville's _Notice sur la vie de Nicolas de Caen, p. 93 et seq_. The indebtedness to Antoine Riczi is, of course, conceded by Nicolas in his "EPILOGUE."]
[Footnote 2: She was the daughter of King Ferdinand of Leon and Castile, whose conversion to sainthood the inquisitive may find recorded elsewhere.]
[Footnote 3: Not without indulgence in anachronism. But Nicolas, be it repeated, was no Gradgrindian.]
[Footnote 4: Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, for obvious reasons, his translator would prefer to do otherwise.]
V
THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE
"Selh que m blasma vostr' amor ni m defen Non podon far en re mon cor mellor, Ni'l dous dezir qu'ieu ai de vos major, Ni l'enveya' ni'l dezir, ni'l talen."
THE FIFTH NOVEL.--PHILIPPA OF HAINAULT DARES TO LOVE UNTHRIFTILY, AND WITH THE PRODIGALITY OF HER AFFECTION SHAMES TREACHERY, AND COMMON-SENSE, AND HIGH ROMANCE, QUITE STOLIDLY; BUT, AS LOVING GOES, IS OVERTOPPED BY HER MORE STOLID SQUIRE.
_The Story of the Housewife_
In the year of grace 1326, upon Walburga's Eve, some three hours after sunset (thus Nicolas begins), had you visited a certain garden on the outskirts of Valenciennes, you might there have stumbled upon a big, handsome boy, prone on the turf, where by turns he groaned and vented himself in sullen curses. His profanity had its palliation. Heir to England though he was, you must know that this boy's father in the flesh had hounded him from England, as more recently had the lad's uncle Charles the Handsome driven him from France. Now had this boy and his mother (the same Queen Ysabeau about whom I have told you in the preceding tale) come as suppliants to the court of that stalwart nobleman Sire William (Count of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand, and Lord of Friesland), where their arrival had evoked the suggestion that they depart at their earliest convenience. To-morrow, then, these footsore royalties, the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales, would be thrust out-of-doors to resume the weary beggarship, to knock again upon the obdurate gates of this unsympathizing king or that deaf emperor.
Accordingly the boy aspersed his destiny. At hand a nightingale carolled as though an exiled prince were the blithest spectacle the moon knew.
There came through the garden a tall girl, running, stumbling in her haste. "Hail, King of England!" she said.
"Do not mock me, Philippa!" the boy half-sobbed. Sulkily he rose to his feet.
"No mockery here, my fair sweet friend. No, I have told my father all which happened yesterday. I pleaded for you. He questioned me very closely. And when I had ended, he stroked his beard, and presently struck one hand upon the table. 'Out of the mouth of babes!' he said. Then he said: 'My dear, I believe for certain that this lady and her son have been driven from their kingdom wrongfully. If it be for the good of God to comfort the afflicted, how much more is it commendable to help and succor one who is the daughter of a king, descended from royal lineage, and to whose blood we ourselves are related!' And accordingly he and your mother have their heads together yonder, planning an invasion of England, no less, and the dethronement of your wicked father, my Edward. And accordingly--hail, King of England!" The girl clapped her hands gleefully. The nightingale sang.
But the boy kept momentary silence. Not even in youth were the men of his race handicapped by excessively tender hearts; yesterday in the shrubbery the boy had kissed this daughter of Count William, in part because she was a healthy and handsome person, and partly because great benefit might come of an alliance with her father. Well! the Prince had found chance-taking not unfortunate. With the episode as foundation, Count William had already builded up the future queenship of England. The strong Count could do--and, as it seemed, was now in train to do--indomitable deeds to serve his son-in-law; and now the beggar of five minutes since foresaw himself, with this girl's love as ladder, mounting to the high habitations of the King of England, the Lord of Ireland, and the Duke of Aquitaine. Thus they would herald him.
So he embraced the girl. "Hail, Queen of England!" said the Prince; and then, "If I forget--" His voice broke awkwardly. "My dear, if ever I forget--!" Their lips met now. The nightingale discoursed as if on a wager.
Presently was mingled with the bird's descant another kind of singing. Beyond the yew-hedge as these two stood silent, breast to breast, passed young Jehan Kuypelant, one of the pages, fitting to the accompaniment of a lute his paraphrase of the song which Archilochus of Sicyon very anciently made in honor of Venus Melaenis, the tender Venus of the Dark.
At a gap in the hedge the young Brabanter paused. His singing ended, gulped. These two, who stood heart hammering against heart, saw for an instant Jehan Kuypelant's lean face silvered by the moonlight, his mouth a tiny abyss. Followed the beat of lessening footfalls, while the nightingale improvised an envoi.
But earlier Jehan Kuypelant also had sung, as though in rivalry with the bird.
Sang Jehan Kuypelant:
"Hearken and heed, Melaenis! For all that the litany ceased When Time had pilfered the victim, And flouted thy pale-lipped priest, And set astir in the temple Where burned the fires of thy shrine The owls and wolves of the desert-- Yet hearken, (the issue is thine!) And let the heart of Atys, At last, at last, be mine!
"For I have followed, nor faltered-- Adrift in a land of dreams Where laughter and pity and terror Commingle as confluent streams, I have seen and adored the Sidonian, Implacable, fair and divine-- And bending low, have implored thee To hearken, (the issue is thine!) And let the heart of Atys, At last, at last, be mine!"
It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of other matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the year of grace 1346, Master John Copeland--as men now called Jehan Kuypelant, now secretary to the Queen of England,--brought his mistress the unhandsome tidings that David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty thousand Scots to back him. The Brabanter found plump Queen Philippa with the kingdom's arbitress--Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom King Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring in France, very notoriously adored and obeyed.
This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they narrate, to release the Countess' husband, William de Montacute, from the French prison of the Châtelet. You may appraise her dominion by this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had denied all to King Edward, and in consequence he could deny her nothing; so she sent him to fetch back her husband, whom she almost loved. That armament had sailed from Southampton on Saint George's day.
These two women, then, shared the Brabanter's execrable news. Already Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the broken meats of King David.
The Countess presently exclaimed: "Let them weep for this that must! My place is not here."
Philippa said, half hopefully, "Do you forsake Sire Edward, Catherine?"
"Madame and Queen," the Countess answered, "in this world every man must scratch his own back. My lord has entrusted to me his castle of Wark, his fiefs in Northumberland. These, I hear, are being laid waste. Were there a thousand men-at-arms left in England I would say fight. As it is, our men are yonder in France and the island is defenceless. Accordingly I ride for the north to make what terms I may with the King of Scots."
Now you might have seen the Queen's eye brighten. "Undoubtedly," said she, "in her lord's absence it is the wife's part to defend his belongings. And my lord's fief is England. I bid you God-speed, Catherine." And when the Countess was gone, Philippa turned, her round face somewhat dazed and flushed. "She betrays him! she compounds with the Scot! Mother of Christ, let me not fail!"
"A ship must be despatched to bid Sire Edward return," said the secretary. "Otherwise all England is lost."
"Not so, John Copeland! We must let Sire Edward complete his overrunning of France, if such be the Trinity's will. You know perfectly well that he has always had a fancy to conquer France; and if I bade him return now he would be vexed."
"The disappointment of the King," John Copeland considered, "is a smaller evil than allowing all of us to be butchered."
"Not to me, John Copeland," the Queen said.
Now came many lords into the chamber, seeking Madame Philippa. "We must make peace with the Scottish rascal!--England is lost!--A ship must be sent entreating succor of Sire Edward!" So they shouted.
"Messieurs," said Queen Philippa, "who commands here? Am I, then, some woman of the town?"
Ensued a sudden silence. John Copeland, standing by the seaward window, had picked up a lute and was fingering the instrument half-idly. Now the Marquess of Hastings stepped from the throng. "Pardon, Highness. But the occasion is urgent."
"The occasion is very urgent, my lord," the Queen assented, deep in meditation.
John Copeland flung back his head and without prelude began to carol lustily.
Sang John Copeland: