Chivalry (18 page)

There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long
stewardship. It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless
machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the
barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their
squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester,
Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open revolt.
"By the God I do not altogether serve," Owain ended, "you have but to
declare yourself, sire, and within the moment England is yours."

Richard spoke with narrowed eyes. "You forget that while Henry of
Lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign tranquilly in
these islands. Come then! the hour strikes; and we will coax the devil
for once in a way to serve God."

"Oh, but there is a boundary appointed," Glyndwyr moodily returned.
"You, too, forget that in cold blood this Henry stabbed my best-loved
son. But I do not forget this, and I have tried divers methods which
we need not speak of,—I who can at will corrupt the air, and cause
sickness and storms, raise heavy mists, and create plagues and fires
and shipwrecks; yet the life itself I cannot take. For there is a
boundary appointed, sire, and beyond that frontier the Master of our
Sabbaths cannot serve us even though he would."

Richard crossed himself. "You horribly mistake my meaning. Your
practices are your own affair, and in them I decline to dabble. I
merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait. For you have
a fief at Caer Idion, I think?—Very well! I intend to herd your sheep
there, for a week or two, after the honorable example of Apollo. It is
your part to see that Henry knows I am living disguised and
defenceless at Caer Idion."

The gaunt Welshman chuckled. "Yes, squinting Henry of Lancaster would
cross the world, much less the Severn, to make quite sure of Richard's
death. He would come in his own person with at most some twenty
trustworthy followers. I will have a hundred there; and certain aging
scores will then be settled in that place." Glyndwyr meditated
afterward, very evilly. "Sire," he said without prelude, "I do not
recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have garnered much in travelling!"

"Why, look you," Richard returned, "I have garnered so much that I do
not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. With age I begin
to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing
very seriously. You barons here believe it an affair of importance who
may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you
take sides between Henry and me. I tell you frankly that neither of
us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can
ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything
save discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the
discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking
disaster. No, Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is,
depend upon it, to the burden of
Fools All
. For I am as liberally
endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my
performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would
appraise those of another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive
that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself
about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least,
impossible."

"I have known the thought," said Owain,—"though rarely since I found
the Englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son,
my Gruffyd, was murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than
the others, people said.... You are as yet the empty scabbard,
powerless alike for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword,
sire, that informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we
are as gods."

"Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms."

"We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the
second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at
all."

"—And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the devil."

"I greatly fear," said Owain with a sigh, "lest it may be your
irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike.
No, you consider things with both eyes open, with an unmanly
rationality: whereas Sire Henry views all matters with that heroic
squint which came into your family from Poictesme."

"Be off with your dusty scandals!" said Richard, laughing.

So then Glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of Caerdyf,
while at Caer Idion Richard Holland abode tranquilly for some three
weeks. There was in this place only Caradawc (the former shepherd),
his wife Alundyne, and their sole daughter Branwen. They gladly
perceived Sire Richard was no more a peasant than he was a curmudgeon;
as Caradawc observed: "It is perfectly apparent that the robe of
Padarn Beisrudd, which refuses to adjust itself to any save highborn
persons, would fit him as a glove does the hand; but we will ask no
questions, since it is not wholesome to dispute the orderings of Owain
Glyndwyr."

Now day by day would Richard Holland drive the flocks to pasture near
the Severn, and loll there in the shade, and make songs to his lute.
He grew to love this leisured life of bright and open spaces; and its
long solitudes, grateful with the warm odors of growing things and
with poignant bird-noises; and the tranquillity of these meadows, that
were always void of hurry, bedrugged the man through many fruitless
and contented hours.

Each day at noon Branwen would bring his dinner, and she would
sometimes chat with him while he ate. After supper he would discourse
to Branwen of remote kingdoms, through which, as aimlessly as a wind
veers, he had ridden at adventure, among sedate and alien peoples who
adjudged him a madman; and she, in turn, would tell him curious tales
from the
Red Book of Hergest
,—telling of Gwalchmai, and Peredur,
and Geraint, in each one of which fine heroes she had presently
discerned an inadequate forerunnership of Richard's existence.

This Branwen was a fair wench, slender and hardy. She had the bold
demeanor of a child who is ignorant of evil and in consequence of
suspicion. Happily, though, had she been named for that unhappy lady
of old, the wife of King Matholwch, for this Branwen, too, had a
white, thin, wistful face, like that of an empress on a silver coin
which is a little worn. Her eyes were large and brilliant, colored
like clear emeralds, and her abundant hair was so much cornfloss, only
it was more brightly yellow and was of immeasurably finer texture. In
full sunlight her cheeks were frosted like the surface of a peach, but
the underlying cool pink of them was rather that of a cloud just after
sunset, Richard decided. In all, a taking morsel! though her shapely
hands were hard with labor, and she rarely laughed; for, as if in
recompense, her heart was tender, and she rarely ceased to smile as
though she were thinking of some peculiar and wonderful secret which
she intended, in due time, to share with you and with nobody else.
Branwen had many lovers, and preferred among them young Gwyllem ap
Llyr, a portly lad, who was handsome enough, though he had tiny and
piggish eyes, and who sang divinely.

One day this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. "Saxon,"
he said, "you appear a stout man. Take your pick of these, then, and
have at you."

"Such are not the weapons I would have named," Richard answered: "yet
in reason, Messire Gwyllem, I can deny you nothing that means nothing
to me."

With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In these
unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated,
but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and he managed
somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he contrived
this he never ascertained.

"I have forgotten what we are fighting about," he observed, after ten
minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; "or, to be perfectly exact, I
never knew. But we will fight no more in this place. Come and go with
me to Welshpool, Messire Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a
conclusion over good sack and claret."

"Content!" cried Gwyllem; "but only if you yield me Branwen."

"Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?"
Richard demanded; "like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any
one particular toy? Then devil take me if I am not heartily ashamed of
my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I would speak naught save
commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long
as one is able to approach them in a becoming spirit of levity: it is
only their not infrequent misuse which I would condemn; and in my
opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them
has only himself to blame if his chosen goddess will accept no
burnt-offering except his honor and happiness. Yet since time's youth
have many fine men been addicted to this insane practice, as, for
example, were Hercules and Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and,
indeed, the more I reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of
other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I
ashamed of my sex."

Gwyllem said: "This lazy gabbling of yours is all very fine. Perhaps
it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not reason."

"I was endeavoring to prove that," said Richard gently. Then they went
to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem's horse. Tongue loosened by the
claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to
each rapture Richard affably assented. In his heart he likened the boy
to Dionysos at Naxos, and could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover,
the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the
windows, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content.

"She does not love me?" Gwyllem cried. "It is well enough. I do not
come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered.
Listen, Saxon!" He caught up Richard's lute. The strings shrieked
beneath Gwyllem's fingers as he fashioned his rude song.

Sang Gwyllem:

"Love me or love me not, it is enough
That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is
Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,—
My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred
With tavern-catches, which that pity of his
Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word,
O Branwen!

"I have accorded you incessant praise
And song and service, dear, because of this;
And always I have dreamed incessantly
Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days
This man or that shall love you, and at last
This man or that shall win you, it must be
That, loving him, you will have pity on me
When happiness engenders memory
And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past,
O Branwen!

"Of this I know not surely, who am sure
That I shall always love you while I live,
And that, when I am dead, with naught to give
Of song or service, Love will yet endure,
And yet retain his last prerogative,
When I lie still, and sleep out centuries,
With dreams of you and the exceeding love
I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,
And give God thanks for all, and so find peace,
O Branwen!"

"Now, were I to get as tipsy as that," Richard enviously thought,
midway in a return to his stolid sheep, "I would simply go to sleep
and wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep
in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, rather, as he hurls himself with
a splurge, I would perform—I wonder, now, what miracle?"

For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so
earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so untroubled by
forethought: each least desire controlled him, as varying winds sport
with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the
boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was
superb. "And heigho!" said Richard, "I am attestedly a greater fool
than he, but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded."

The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He declared
himself a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who perfectly
recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker crossed over
into England.

Richard whistled. "Now my cousin will be quite sure, and now my
anxious cousin will come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux. And now,
by every saint in the calendar! I am as good as King of England."

He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades of
grass between his fingers while he meditated. Undoubtedly he would
kill this squinting Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience and
even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort of
vermin, but, hand upon heart, Richard was unable to avow any
particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel's death. Thus crudely to
demolish the knave's adroit and year-long schemings savored actually
of grossness. The spider was venomous, and his destruction laudable;
granted, but in crushing him you ruined his web, a miracle of patient
machination, which, despite yourself, compelled hearty admiring and
envy. True, the process would recrown a certain Richard, but then, as
Richard recalled it, being King was rather tedious. Richard was not
now quite sure that he wanted to be King, and, in consequence, be
daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons. "I
shall miss the little huzzy, too," he thought.

"Heigho!" said Richard, "I shall console myself with purchasing all
beautiful things that can be touched and handled. Life is a flimsy
vapor which passes and is not any more: presently Branwen will be
married to this Gwyllem and will be grown fat and old, and I shall be
remarried to little Dame Isabel, and shall be King of England: and a
trifle later all four of us shall be dead. Pending this deplorable
consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself."

Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the latter
send the promised implements to Caer Idion. Richard, returning to the
hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, and grovelling at
the threshold. Her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and
through tearless sobs told of what had happened. A half-hour earlier,
while she and Branwen were intent upon their milking, Gwyllem had
ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. Branwen had called him sot,
had bidden him go home. "That I will do," said Gwyllem and suddenly
caught up the girl. Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist
Gwyllem struck her twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away
with Branwen.