Part 9

Ernault's passionate eyes clouded for an instant, for all the world knew of his passion for the lovely Duchess of Corinth and the implacable chastity of the lady. Wherefore she and her husband came not as guests to Athens. Then his eyes widened again and he smiled. "Well," he said, half sadly and half laughing, "I must make the best of the many, if I show the worst with the one. I will give you a blank shield, brother-in-arms. Tell me your device for my squire to paint."

"A golden acorn on a green field," Argathona answered, again profiting shrewdly by the lessons in heraldry that Simon had given her during the long day in the forest.

"A golden acorn on a green field," Count Ernault repeated, committing the new device to his courtly memory. He turned away from the shepherd and addressed the expectant knights.

"Come, friends," he said, "our knight-challenger has now sword, helmet, and shield; he still needs body armor and battle-axe, horse and lance. Who is for having his fortune told that will pay this price for the tale?"

A multitude of hands were lifted, and Count Ernault contemplated with assumed dismay a forest of waving fingers. Then he shook his head in depreciation.

"There is no time for all," he said. "The sun climbs high, and our guest needs no more than a single equipment, wherefore I will trust to the ordeal by chance."

He lowered his lids till his eyes seemed closed, and then struck lightly, and apparently at random, with his white staff among the knights nearest to him three times in succession. But it was characteristic of the courtly and politic marshal that the touch of his white wand fell on the shoulders of those whom, for one reason or another, it was expedient to please. Fernand Ximenes, maleficent captain of free companions; the vassal Prince of Epirus, always a thorn in the Baldwin flesh; and Andronicus Palæologus, eminent, pompous exile with an eye to a great succession, were the chosen three. Fernand Ximenes, on whom the first lot fell, advanced to the shepherd and tendered his steady, lean, brown hand. Argathona regarded it for a breathing space in silence, then she said:

"You dream strange dreams suspected of none. It is well for you that none suspect. Your dreams will come true."

No change stirred the impassive face of the Spaniard as he listened to what seemed, indeed, the speech of a seer. With untroubled voice he spoke.

"I had a suit of armor wrought in Toledo, steel and gold; it were a privilege for any prince to wear it. I have it no longer; it is yours."

He saluted the prophetic shepherd with the dignity inherent in his race, and rejoined the circle of knights. His place was promptly taken by Demetrius of Epirus, the prince with the furtive eyes and the fine, false voice. Argathona looked at his hand and whispered:

"Faith and treason quarrel in the cup of your fingers. If faith win, faith must fall soon in honor; if treason triumph, treason will flourish long in dishonor to end on a high place."

The pale lips of the Prince of Epirus twitched.

"I will give you a battle-axe," he said, thickly, for he knew what path he would choose when the chance came, and he had grace enough to feel some shame at his knowledge. He turned and pushed his way through the circle of knights into the crowd beyond, as a man might who wished to hide his face from keen eyes.

Andronicus Palæologus moved forward, ostentatious of port, gorgeous of apparel, and extended his beringed hand in arrogant condescension to the stranger. Argathona gave a quick glance at the plump, sensual palm.

"You will wear the crown of Cæsar," she promised.

Andronicus flushed the imperial red in spite of himself, then he said, urbanely, for, indeed, he was very pleased with the oracle:

"I will give you a horse as white as the moon and as fleet as the wind. I will give you a spear as sharp as desire and as tough as hope," and so he turned and joined his brother knights. Even as he did so the air was stirred by the sweet sound of a silver trumpet, and there was immediately a sign of great bustle and commotion among the ladies who thronged the gallery. The lord-marshal lifted his hand.

"Friends all," he said, "the sun of beauty shines upon us in the pride of noontime, for her grace the Duchess of Thebes is coming on the great gallery to take the air. Let those that are her slaves attend upon her."

Immediately the fixed circle of knights dissolved into its units, and the crowd around them parted to give passage as the cavaliers made eagerly for the stately stairway that led to the great gallery. Argathona caught Count Ernault by the arm as he turned away with the others.

"Pray you, tell me the laws of this day's tourney?" she said.

Count Ernault, looking with much approbation at the shepherd knight, answered:

"To-day our lord's son, Sir Rainouart of Athens, will proclaim to all and sundry that the Lady Esclaramonde of Thebes is the fairest she in Christendom. Those that challenge him set the fame of their lovers in jeopardy, for Duke Baldwin's son is an unconquerable jouster."

"What would happen," Argathona asked, "if he were to be overthrown?"

Count Ernault laughed gently.

"It could scarcely happen," he asserted.

"But if it did happen?" the shepherd persisted.

Count Ernault looked about him and saw that he and the shepherd stood alone, for the press of knights was thronging the great stairway.

"I think," he said, softly, "that the lady of Thebes would never forgive him."

"Is she so imperious a queen of beauty?" the shepherd questioned.

Count Ernault laughed compassionately, as the well-informed laugh that instruct a stranger in a strange land.

"She will suffer no man to wilt from allegiance to her will. She is the most insatiable fair, and would have all men for her lovers."

The shepherd looked at the courtly marshal with a strange smile.

"Would she condescend to a shepherd?" Argathona asked.

Count Ernault distorted his smooth face with a grimace.

"'Tis very likely," he answered, "none better being by; but when you ride radiant in coat-armor in the lists we shall see if she will pick you out. Till then, farewell, Knight of Eleusis."

He turned from the shepherd and joined the mounting crowd to pay his respects to the Lady Esclaramonde where she stood patent in beauty upon the gallery. Argathona looked about her for a place where she might see unseen. In the court-yard stood an ancient image of a god, headless and armless, which had been set up there in indifference, if not in derision, by those who had dug it up when the court-yard was a-making. Behind this image Argathona stationed herself, and Simon, who had kept apart in the crowd outside the knights, now came to her side. Argathona looked up at the gallery, where, above the bowed heads of obsequious lords, she could distinguish the dark, imperious loveliness of the Duchess Esclaramonde. Simon whispered confidentially in her ear, behind his big hand:

"There stands your fair foewoman."

Argathona still looked at the duchess with unchanged face.

"If I were a man," she said, slowly, "I would not be her lover."

Simon grunted.

"Many have loved her, and all have sorrowed in the loving. While I stood in the throng but now I heard strange tales of her from some of those Spanish rascals and some of the duke's people. They say that when the Duke of Thebes lived, whose unweeping widow she now is, she would send him to sleep at nights with a drugged draught, and then"--he coughed a little behind his hand, as if apologetically, and resumed--"and then entertain company."

Argathona's eyes were still set steadfast upon Esclaramonde where she smiled upon her flatterers.

"It is blasphemous to wear a fair face and hide a foul heart; but if she be as base as you say, she may help me well if I win in the tournament."

Simon whistled.

"Pray God you may win," he said; "but if you thrust your body where hard knocks are going you must not pule at bruises."

"I do not think I shall come to hurt," Argathona answered. "But I shall fight fair, trusting to my strength as the others trust, and using no more woodland work than this, that my spear is invincible against all false lovers."

XIV

THE TRIUMPH OF THEBES

The Lady Esclaramonde held a little court upon the gallery. Leaning against a pillar and playing with her fan, she summoned this lord and that from the throng of knights now mingled with the brilliant swarm of women, and gave each a few gracious moments of her sunshine ere she dismissed him from her side. Count Ernault had his turn, and the flash of their glances was always alive with intimate memories. Jaufre de Brabant came and Guy de Hainault, and pompous Andronicus Palæologus and the others; none was forgotten; each beamed with the conviction that the duchess preferred him above his fellows. The last that Esclaramonde called to her was Fernand Ximenes, and when the Spaniard was by her side she turned to look into the court-yard, and he following her example, none could hear their speech.

"You have not been brisk to wish me felicity," the duchess complained.

Ximenes shrugged his shoulders.

"I do not think you have made a good shot for fortune," he answered, frankly. "The boy is a fool, and you might have had a man for a master."

The duchess's eyes mocked him under lowered lids, and she patted his hands with her fan.

"Such an one as a certain soldier of fortune?" questioned Esclaramonde. "But I believe I do not desire a master, and, besides, this boy-fool will be Duke of Athens, whereas--"

She left her sentence unfinished, provocatively. Ximenes stared impassive into her defiant face.

"I say you have made a bad shot," he replied, firmly. "You might have chosen better; but I dare say you will be content enough, and, indeed, I hope so."

And with that he bowed very stately and left her, knowing well that his words would rankle uncomfortably. Which indeed they did, for the duchess bit her lip and picked at her fan, brooding over troublous fancies. She thought as well of Ximenes as it was possible for her to think well of any one, and she knew that she held her betrothed by lies and guile. But she had always desired to win him since the first time that her eyes had entreated and his eyes had denied, and it seemed to her a great thing to conquer his scorn. While she stood thus moody there was a flutter among the women a-nigh, and then knights and ladies made a lane down which came the burly Duke Baldwin arm in arm with his son.

Duke Baldwin, sturdy soldier of fortune, with bright eyes ever fixed on the main chance, was all for keeping the young couple together. Enthusiastic about the match, he had confided to his intimates that he thought it the most sensible act his son had ever undertaken, far more sensible than he could have hoped for from a youth who wasted precious living-time in the reading of foolish books. But if Duke Baldwin understood and approved of the alliance, he did not altogether understand or approve of the conduct of his son on the preceding day. In the duchess's company Rainouart appeared to be the very proper image of a perfect knightly worshipper; he had no eyes but for his lady, and his voice echoed with a fair show of passion the endearments of which the duchess was amiably prodigal. But apart from her the youth seemed, in his father's words, to mope. He walked apart with head bent like a scholar pursuing some tangled thread of thought rather than like a soldierly lover hugging his heart at the capture of a fair prize.

This was not an attitude Duke Baldwin admired. Love-making with him was a brisk business, alien from melancholy, sunning itself lustily in the company of the beloved; and as Rainouart seemed to stand in shadow when alone, Duke Baldwin made it his business to see that he should sun himself as much as possible in the duchess's company until the marriage ceremony was over and Thebes and Athens indissolubly linked. So it was that but now having found his son walking apart in a quiet colonnade, Duke Baldwin had rated him for a sluggard lover, had thrust a strong arm within his, and haled him neither willing nor unwilling to the great gallery where he knew that he should find the duchess.

That conduct in the son which had so perplexed the father had not escaped the notice of those knights who were the nearest companions of the prince. These thought him changed, thought his meditative moods strange; but for the most part they set it down playfully to moon-calfishness. "It is the young candle burning overhotly with its first love, and guttering with every draught of fancy," was the comment of Jaufre de Brabant. Guy de Hainault, more sympathetic, if not less cynical, had his doubts, and tried to answer them with friendly questions to which he got no satisfactory answers. Certainly he saw that the prince when in her presence seemed devoted to his imperious mistress, walked loyally by her side, listened reverently to her speech, and seemed to thrill at her frequent caresses. Yet Guy de Hainault said to Count Ernault, who bade him keep his thoughts to himself, that to his eyes the young prince seemed more like a man in a dream than a man in love, and Guy de Hainault had dreamed enough and loved enough to speak with authority.

On one point there was no quarrel: there certainly was no doubt of the duchess's free and full devotion to her lover. She had not even for form's sake made any diffident protest against so swift a wedding, the swiftness whereof came so largely from her own suggestion. Indeed, it seemed as if with shining eyes and sugared tongue she spurred her young lord to protestations and entreaties. The court, for the most part, however, entered into no niceties of discrimination between the conduct of the youth and the lady. It sufficed for those jolly spirits, male and female, that there was to be a wedding, for a wedding meant festivals, and the sight of a wedding, too, had a way of spurring laggard gentlemen into proposals and prompting ladies that would be coy to come to directer terms. Wedding calls for wedding, as blood is said to call for blood.

The genial duke made his way with his son through the rapidly formed alley of retiring lords and ladies to the place where Esclaramonde leaned against a pillar of the gallery and fanned herself languidly, watching their advance with bright eyes.

"Here," said the duke, cheerfully, "is one who would not be denied to come to your presence for all that I could do to occupy him with other matters."

He gently urged Rainouart forward as he spoke, and Rainouart, under the influence of the eyes of Esclaramonde, moved with what seemed to the spectators a lover's eagerness to greet her. The duke smiled a vast smile on all around him.

"I was like that once," he said, with a leer, pinching the chin of the nearest pretty woman and clipping another round the waist. "Come, friends, come; let us leave the young people to themselves. They have little time for courting and must make the most of it." And so with a laughing baggage under each arm Baldwin led the way from the gallery followed obediently by a merry retinue of knights and ladies. The place was swiftly quiet that had been so lively, and for the moment Esclaramonde and Rainouart were left alone. It was, indeed, to be their last occasion for wooing in solitude. The day was all laid out: first the tournament, then the wedding ceremony, then the banquet; the next time this pair were to meet alone it was to be as man and wife. The youth and the woman leaned over the balcony looking down into the almost deserted court-yard. Neither heeded how in a corner, wellnigh concealed from view by an ancient image, a shepherd was standing with a sturdy fellow by his side. Indeed, there was little need to heed, for but a moment after the princely pair were left together the shepherd lad had touched the soldier on the arm, and the two passed quietly out of the court-yard and went their way together in the direction of the tilting-field. When they were gone, Rainouart, who had neither noticed their presence nor their departure, still kept silence for a while, but it was with a strained silence of one who seeks to remember what it was that brought him to the place where he stands. The duchess was silent for a while, with the serenity of one who triumphs and wears her triumph with delight. So a few seconds sped, and then Esclaramonde placed her hand on the hand of her companion where it rested on the marble, and Rainouart's flesh and blood tingled in response to the warm clasp.

"Dear lord," she said, with that caressing voice which always ran like kindly fire over the nerves of those she sought to conquer--"dear lord, your father reminds us that we stand alone as lovers for the last time. You are happy, dear lord?"

Though her words had the form of a question, something in their utterance seemed to sound like a command. The prince turned to her as if he obeyed a summons, and fixed his eyes upon her face--eyes at first indifferent, but which began to glow ardent from the moment that they met her gaze. He put his hand to his forehead and brushed away his hair as a man does who seeks to dissipate perplexing thoughts. It seemed to him as if he had lost his way in the rose-garden; as if, though his heart were still the quivering target for the shafts of love, the living presence of the god were veiled and his voice obscure; as if the noble rose were still afar. He sought in vain to frame the face of Esclaramonde with the mystic petals. But her words sounded imperious and sweet in the halls of his ears, and he took them for the behests of love.

"Surely I am happy," he answered, and the duchess smiled at his speech.

"You love me very much?" she said again, and again her voice was blended with the two notes of interrogation and command.

"Surely I love you very much," he answered again, still in the same smooth, measured manner. It was not very ardent, but it seemed to satisfy the duchess that she could make him say what she pleased.

"When we meet again," she murmured, "you will be the hero of the tournament, yet I think you peril your fame and jeopardize your judgment to proclaim me most fair."

Her words and her eyes stimulated him to the measure of her intention.

"Are you not most fair?" he asked, wonderingly, and his look was compelled admiration and his voice paid the demanded homage.

The duchess smiled provocatively.

"Some have said so, and I smiled at their little wit, but when you assert it my fond heart leaps to believe what my honest mirror denies."

She held out both her hands as she spoke, and Rainouart caught them in his own obediently. It seemed rather that she drew him nearer to her than that he drew her nearer to him.

"The mirror were wicked crystal that showed you other than most fair," he declared, "but there is no such lying glass in the world."

The duchess shook her head, and a cherub wind that was playing along the gallery caught a free lock of her dark hair and blew the tresses against his cheeks, and his cheeks burned.

"I should be proud," she said, "to count myself fair for your sake, for you are the fairest of men and the bravest."

Even while she spoke her spirit seemed to laugh within her, for she remembered to whom she had last said those words, and she wondered to whom she would say them next. But the prince's eyes glowed as if with the exaltation of strong wine.

"Your words are sweet to hear," he vowed. "I will do my best endeavor to merit some little of their grace."

She bent her head forward as if to kiss him on the lips. There was no one to see her--at least no one that counted; no page or servant loitering in the court-yard mattered, and even before a larger audience the duchess would scarcely have denied herself. But even as Rainouart waited for her kiss the quiet of the noontime was broken by the shrill call of a clarion, the call that warned all knights to hasten to the lists and make them ready for the tournament. Rainouart stooped and kissed the white hand of the duchess.

"Farewell, fair lady," he said; "I must go to my tent."

"I will watch your triumph from the gallery," Esclaramonde said, and he turned and left her with no other word, and went down the stairway into the court-yard.

Esclaramonde waited a little while, watching him depart and thinking Thessalian thoughts. He was under her spell; he had forgotten what she willed him to forget; he should never remember while she was by his side. That he was only her lover through the make-believe of her philtres and her will troubled her nothing. He was her lover, comely and young, and she saw herself Duchess of Athens, and her heart leaped and she laughed at times. When Rainouart was out of sight and she was tired of her thoughts, she turned to the far end of the gallery, where her immediate women waited, and summoned them with a gesture to follow her to her appointed pavilion by the lists.

XV

THE CHALLENGE OF RAINOUART

Rainouart walked slowly down the sacred mound through the long lines of soldiers that made a lane for the gentry all along the winding road and at the foot of the hill. He went as he always went after parting with Esclaramonde in these few fantastic hours--like one in a feverish day-dream who found himself unfamiliar amid familiar surroundings. The realities of life distorted themselves into unrealities; your simple soldier standing on guard in his rank loomed monstrous as a giant; your habitual building chose to enlarge and radiate door upon door and gallery upon gallery into infinite, meaningless space. Rainouart walked airily, for his physical condition seemed strangely light; he walked warily, because his mental condition seemed strangely heavy. He was troubled at he knew not what; he wondered, he knew not why; he thought ceaselessly of Esclaramonde, and yet the thought of her seemed always to tease his drugged memory with a desire for some face, some voice, that were not the face and voice of the Duchess of Thebes. So, like a man that walks in sleep, he came from the Acropolis to the meadow at its foot, heedless of the mass of folk, heedless of the clamor and the flapping banners, the eager mien of knights and the radiant faces of ladies, only conscious that his duty in life was that day to sustain in arms the fame of the Lady Esclaramonde.