Chivalry (16 page)

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 I nor any one may transform
through any personal force this bitter world, this piercing, cruel
place of frost and sun. Charity and Truth are excommunicate, and a
king is only an adorned and fearful person who leads wolves toward
their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and devour him. Everywhere
the powerful labor to put one another out of worship, and each to
stand the higher with the other's corpse as his pedestal; and Lechery
and Greed and Hatred sway these proud and inconsiderate fools as winds
blow at will the gay leaves of autumn. We walk among shining vapors,
we aspire to overpass a mountain of unstable sparkling sand! We two
alone in all the scuffling world! Oh, it is horrible, and I think that
Satan plans the jest! We dream for a while of refashioning this bright
desolation, and know that we alone can do it! we are as demigods, you
and I, in those gallant dreams! and at the end we can but poultice
some dirty rascal!"

The Queen answered sadly: "Once and only once did God tread this
tangible world, for a very little while, and, look you, to what
trivial matters He devoted that brief space! Only to chat with
fishermen, and to talk with light women, and to consort with rascals,
and at last to die between two cutpurses, ignominiously! If Christ
Himself achieved so little that seemed great and admirable, how should
we two hope to do any more?"

He answered: "It is true. Of anise and of cumin the Master gets His
tithe—" Maudelain broke off with a yapping laugh. "Puf! Heaven is
wiser than we. I am King of England. It is my heritage."

"It means war. Many will die, thousands will die, and to no betterment
of affairs."

"I am King of England. I am Heaven's satrap here, and answerable to
Heaven alone. It is my heritage." And now his large and cruel eyes
were aflame as he regarded her.

And visibly beneath their glare the woman changed. "My friend, must I
not love you any longer? You would be content with happiness? Then I
am jealous of that happiness! for you are the one friend that I have
had, and so dear to me—Look you!" she said, with a light, wistful
laugh, "there have been times when I was afraid of everything you
touched, and I hated everything you looked at. I would not have you
stained; I desired to pass my whole life between the four walls of
some dingy and eternal gaol, forever alone with you, lest you become
like other men. I would in that period have been the very bread you
eat, the least perfume which delights you, the clod you touch in
crushing it, and I have often loathed some pleasure I derived from
life because I might not transfer it to you undiminished. For I wanted
somehow to make you happy to my own anguish.... It was wicked, I
suppose, for the imagining of it made me happy, too."

Now while he listened to this dear and tranquil speaking, Edward
Maudelain's raised hands had fallen like so much lead, and remembering
his own nature, he longed for annihilation, before she had appraised
his vileness. He said:

"With reason Augustine crieth out against the lust of the eyes. 'For
pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, and
soft; but this disease those contrary as well, not for the sake of
suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of making trial of them!' Ah!
ah! too curiously I planned my own damnation, too presumptuously I had
esteemed my soul a worthy scapegoat, and I had gilded my enormity with
many lies. Yet indeed, indeed, I had believed brave things, I had
planned a not ignoble bargain—! Ey, say, is it not laughable,
madame?—as my birth-right Heaven accords me a penny, and with that
only penny I must presently be seeking to bribe Heaven."

Then he said: "Yet are we indeed God's satraps, as but now I cried in
my vainglory, and we hold within our palms the destiny of many
peoples. Depardieux! God is wiser than we are. Still, Satan offers no
unhandsome bribes—bribes that are tangible and sure. For Satan, too,
is wiser than we are."

They stood like effigies, lit by the broad, unsparing splendor of the
morning, but again their kindling eyes had met, and again the man
shuddered. "Decide! oh, decide very quickly, my only friend!" he said,
"for throughout I am all filth!"

Closer she drew to him, and laid one hand upon each shoulder. "O my
only friend!" she breathed, with red lax lips which were very near to
his, "through these six years I have ranked your friendship as the
chief of all my honors! and I pray God with an entire heart that I may
die so soon as I have done what I must do to-day!"

Now Maudelain was trying to smile, but he could not quite manage it.
"God save King Richard!" said the priest. "For by the cowardice and
greed and ignorance of little men is Salomon himself confounded, and
by them is Hercules lightly unhorsed. Were I Leviathan, whose bones
were long ago picked clean by pismires, I could perform nothing
against the will of many human pismires. Therefore do you pronounce my
doom."

"O King," then said Dame Anne, "I bid you go forever from the court
and live forever a landless man, friendless, and without even any
name. Otherwise, you can in no way escape being made an instrument to
bring about the misery and death of many thousands. This doom I dare
adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's satraps, you
and I."

Twice or thrice his dry lips moved before he spoke. He was aware of
innumerable birds that carolled with a piercing and intolerable
sweetness. "O Queen!" he hoarsely said, "O fellow satrap! Heaven has
many fiefs. A fair province is wasted and accords to Heaven no
revenue. So wastes beauty, and a shrewd wit, and an illimitable
charity, which of their pride go in fetters and achieve no increase.
To-day the young King junkets with his flatterers, and but rarely
thinks of England. You have that beauty by which men are lightly
conquered, and the mere sight of which may well cause a man's voice to
tremble as my voice trembles now, and through desire of which—But I
tread afield! Of that beauty you have made no profit. O daughter of
the Caesars, I bid you now gird either loin for an unlovely traffic.
Old Legion must be fought with fire. True that the age is sick, true
that we may not cure, we can but salve the hurt—" His hand had torn
open his sombre gown, and the man's bared breast shone in the
sunlight, and on his breast heaved sleek and glittering beads of
sweat. Twice he cried the Queen's name. In a while he said: "I bid you
weave incessantly such snares of brain and body as may lure King
Richard to be swayed by you, until against his will you daily guide
this shallow-hearted fool to some commendable action. I bid you live
as other folk do hereabouts. Coax! beg! cheat! wheedle! lie!" he
barked like a teased dog, "and play the prostitute for him that wears
my crown, till you achieve in part the task which is denied me. This
doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's
satraps, you and I."

She answered with a tiny, wordless sound. But presently, "I take my
doom," the Queen proudly said. "I shall be lonely now, my only friend,
and yet—it does not matter," the Queen said, with a little shiver.
"No, nothing will ever greatly matter now, I think, now that I may not
ever see you any more, my dearest."