Chivalry (20 page)

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

She answered: "I am the happier for your folly. I am the happiest of
God'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.

"J'ay en mon cueur joyeusement
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
ASSAULTS, IS IN A LONG DUEL, WHEREIN TIME AND COMMON-SENSE ARE
FLOUTED, AND KINGDOMS ARE SHAKEN, DETHRONED AND RECOMPENSED BY AN
ENDURING LUNACY.

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. "Duchess 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 title 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 God 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 God 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 passage with stentorian shouts. She passed
interminable days amid bright curious arrasses 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 Duchess-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.
Silent he stood before her, still as an effigy, while meltingly the
jongleur sang.

"Jehane!" said Antoine Riczi, in a while, "have you, then, forgotten,
O Jehane?"

The resplendent woman had not moved at all. It was as though she were
some tinted and lavishly adorned statue of barbaric heathenry, and he
her postulant; and her large eyes appeared to judge an immeasurable
path, beyond him. Now her lips fluttered somewhat. "I am the Duchess
of Brittany," she said, in the phantom of a voice. "I am the Countess
of Rougemont. The Lady of Nantes and of Guerrand! of Rais and of
Toufon and Guerche!... Jehane is dead."

The man had drawn one audible breath. "You are that Jehane, whose only
title is the Constant Lover!"

"Friend, the world smirches us," she said half-pleadingly, "I have
tasted too deep of wealth and power. I am drunk with a deadly wine,
and ever I thirst—I thirst—"

"Jehane, do you remember that May morning in Pampeluna when first I
kissed you, and about us sang many birds? Then as now you wore a gown
of green, Jehane."

"Friend, I have swayed kingdoms since."

"Jehane, do you remember that August twilight in Pampeluna when last I
kissed you? Then as now you wore a gown of green, Jehane."

"But I wore no such chain as this about my neck," the woman answered,
and lifted a huge golden collar garnished with emeralds and sapphires
and with many pearls. "Friend, the chain is heavy, yet I lack the will
to cast it off. I lack the will, Antoine." And now with a sudden shout
of mirth her courtiers applauded the evolutions of the saltatrice.

"King's daughter!" said Riczi then; "O perilous merchandise! a god
came to me and a sword had pierced his breast. He touched the gold
hilt of it and said, 'Take back your weapon.' I answered, 'I do not
know you.' 'I am Youth' he said; 'take back your weapon.'"

"It is true," she responded, "it is lamentably true that after
to-night we are as different persons, you and I."

He said: "Jehane, do you not love me any longer? Remember old years
and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God abhors nothing
so much as unfaith. For your own sake, Jehane,—ah, no, not for your
sake nor for mine, but for the sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, so
you tell me, time has slain!"

Once or twice she blinked, as if dazzled by a light of intolerable
splendor, but otherwise she stayed rigid. "You have dared, messire, to
confront me with the golden-hearted, clean-eyed Navarrese that once
was I! and I requite." The austere woman rose. "Messire, you swore to
me, long since, eternal service. I claim my right in domnei.
Yonder—gray-bearded, the man in black and silver—is the Earl of
Worcester, the King of England's ambassador, in common with whom the
wealthy dowager of Brittany has signed a certain contract. Go you,
then, with Worcester into England, as my proxy, and in that island, as
my proxy, become the wife of the King of England. Messire, your
audience is done."

Riczi said this: "Can you hurt me any more, Jehane?—no, even in hell
they cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face
I fling faith like a glove—old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,—and
I will go, Jehane."

Her heart raged. "Poor, glorious fool!" she thought; "had you but the
wit even now to use me brutally, even now to drag me from this
dais—!" Instead he went away from her smilingly, treading through the
hall with many affable salutations, while the jongleur sang.

Sang the jongleur:

"There is a land those hereabout
Ignore ... Its gates are barred
By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt.
These mercifully guard
That land we seek—the land so fair!—
And all the fields thereof,
Where daffodils flaunt everywhere
And ouzels chant of love,—
Lest we attain the Middle-Land,
Whence clouded well-springs rise,
And vipers from a slimy strand
Lift glittering cold eyes.

"Now, the parable all may understand,
And surely you know the name of the land!
Ah, never a guide or ever a chart
May safely lead you about this land,—
The Land of the Human Heart!"

And the following morning, being duly empowered, Antoine Riczi sailed
for England in company with the Earl of Worcester; and upon Saint
Richard's day the next ensuing was, at Eltham, as proxy of Jehane,
married in his own person to the bloat King Henry, the fourth of that
name to reign. This king was that same squinting Harry of Derby
(called also Henry of Lancaster and Bolingbroke) who stole his
cousin's crown, and about whom I have told you in the preceding story.
First Sire Henry placed the ring on Riczi's finger, and then spoke
Antoine Riczi, very loud and clear:

"I, Antoine Riczi,—in the name of my worshipful lady, Dame Jehane,
the daughter of Messire Charles until lately King of Navarre, the
Duchess of Brittany and the Countess of Rougemont,—do take you, Sire
Henry of Lancaster, King of England and in title of France, and Lord
of Ireland, to be my husband; and thereto I, Antoine Riczi, in the
spirit of my said lady"—the speaker paused here to regard the gross
hulk of masculinity before him, and then smiled very sadly—"in
precisely the spirit of my said lady, I plight you my troth."

Afterward the King made him presents of some rich garments of scarlet
trimmed with costly furs, and of four silk belts studded with silver
and gold, and with valuable clasps, of which the owner might well be
proud, and Riczi returned to Lyonnois. "Depardieux!" his uncle said;
"so you return alone!"

"I return as did Prince Troilus," said Riczi—"to boast to you of
liberal entertainment in the tent of Diomede."

"You are certainly an inveterate fool," the Vicomte considered after a
prolonged appraisal of his face, "since there is always a deal of
other pink-and-white flesh as yet unmortgaged—Boy with my brother's
eyes!" the Vicomte said, in another voice; "I have heard of the task
put upon you: and I would that I were God to punish as is fitting! But
you are welcome home, my lad."

So these two abode together at Montbrison for a long time, and in the
purlieus of that place hunted and hawked, and made sonnets once in a
while, and read aloud from old romances some five days out of the
seven. The verses of Riczi were in the year of grace 1410 made public,
not without acclamation; and thereafter the stripling Comte de
Charolais, future heir to all Burgundy and a zealous patron of rhyme,
was much at Montbrison, and there conceived for Antoine Riczi such
admiration as was possible to a very young man only.

In the year of grace 1412 the Vicomte, being then bedridden, died
without any disease and of no malady save the inherencies of his age.
"I entreat of you, my nephew," he said at last, "that always you use
as touchstone the brave deed you did at Eltham. It is necessary for a
gentleman to serve his lady according to her commandments, but you
performed the most absurd and the most cruel task which any woman ever
imposed upon her lover and servitor in domnei. I laugh at you, and I
envy you." Thus he died, about Martinmas.

Now was Antoine Riczi a powerful baron, but he got no comfort of his
lordship, because that old incendiary, the King of Darkness, daily
added fuel to a smouldering sorrow until grief quickened into vaulting
flames of wrath and of disgust.

"What now avail my riches?" said the Vicomte. "How much wealthier was
I when I was loved, and was myself an eager lover! I relish no other
pleasures than those of love. I am Love's sot, drunk with a deadly
wine, poor fool, and ever I thirst. All my chattels and my acres
appear to me to be bright vapors, and the more my dominion and my
power increase, the more rancorously does my heart sustain its
bitterness over having been robbed of that fair merchandise which is
the King of England's. To hate her is scant comfort and to despise her
none at all, since it follows that I who am unable to forget the
wanton am even more to be despised than she. I will go into England
and execute what mischief I may against her."