Chivalry (23 page)

"Madam, recall that in the sun we play
But for an hour, then have the worm for wife,
The tomb for habitation—and to-day
Grudge us not life!"

Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the crotch
of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but the
Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort.

"You came!" this harper said, transfigured; and then again, "You
came!"

She breathed, "Yes."

So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found
adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man's mind not
a grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to leer at his
unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man and woman,
meeting, knew no sweeter terror.

It was by the minstrel that a familiar earth and the grating speech of
earth were earlier regained. "The affair is of the suddenest," Alain
observed, and he now swung the lute behind him. He indicated no
intention of touching her, though he might easily have done so as he
sat there exalted by the height of his horse. "A meteor arrives with
more prelude. But Love is an arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has
seized it, and accordingly I would now brave hell to come to you, and
finding you there, would esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already
made my prayer to Destiny that she concede me love. Now of God, our
Father and Master, I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For,
God willing, I shall come to you again, even if in order to do this I
have to split the world like a rotten orange."

"Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!" Katharine said. "You are a
minstrel and I am a king's daughter."

"Is it madness? Why, then, I think sane persons are to be
commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this some design. Across half
the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Hey, God's face!" Alain swore;
"the foxes which Samson, that old sinewy captain, loosed among the
corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as this fox has set
afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and olives spoilt, a bushel
or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin.
There will be martial argument shortly if you bid me come again."

"I bid you come," said Katharine; and after they had stared at each
other for a long while, he rode away in silence. It was through a dank
and tear-flawed world that she stumbled conventward, while out of the
east the sun came bathed in mists, a watery sun no brighter than a
silver coin.

And for a month the world seemed no less dreary, but about Michaelmas
the Queen-Regent sent for her. At the Hotel de Saint-Pol matters were
much the same. Katharine found her mother in foul-mouthed rage over
the failure of a third attempt to poison the Dauphin of Vienne, as
Queen Isabeau had previously poisoned her two elder sons; I might here
trace out a curious similitude between the Valois and that
dragon-spawned race which Jason very anciently slew at Colchis, since
the world was never at peace so long as any two of them existed. But
King Charles greeted his daughter with ampler deference, esteeming her
to be the wife of Presbyter John, the tyrant of Aethiopia. However,
ingenuity had just suggested card-playing for King Charles' amusement,
and he paid little attention nowadays to any one save his opponent at
this new game.

So the French King chirped his senile jests over the card-table, while
the King of England was besieging the French city of Rouen sedulously
and without mercy. In late autumn an armament from Ireland joined
Henry's forces. The Irish fought naked, it was said, with long knives.
Katharine heard discreditable tales of these Irish, and reflected how
gross are the exaggerations of rumor.

In the year of grace 1419, in January, the burgesses of Rouen, having
consumed their horses, and finding frogs and rats unpalatable, yielded
the town. It was the Queen-Regent who brought the news to Katharine.

"God is asleep," the Queen said; "and while He nods, the Butcher of
Agincourt has stolen our good city of Rouen." She sat down and
breathed heavily. "Never was any poor woman so pestered as I! The
puddings to-day were quite uneatable, as you saw for yourself, and on
Sunday the Englishman entered Rouen in great splendor, attended by his
chief nobles; but the Butcher rode alone, and before him went a page
carrying a fox-brush on the point of his lance. I put it to you, is
that the contrivance of a sane man? Euh! euh!" Dame Isabeau squealed
on a sudden; "you are bruising me."

Katharine had gripped her by the shoulder. "The King of England—a
tall, fair man? with big teeth? a tiny wen upon his neck—here—and
with his left cheek scarred? with blue eyes, very bright, bright as
tapers?" She poured out her questions in a torrent, and awaited the
answer, seeming not to breathe at all.

"I believe so," the Queen said, "and they say, too, that he has the
damned squint of old Manuel the Redeemer."

"O God!" said Katharine.

"Ay, our only hope now. And may God show him no more mercy than has
this misbegotten English butcher shown us!" the good lady desired,
with fervor. "The hog, having won our Normandy, is now advancing on
Paris itself. He repudiated the Aragonish alliance last August; and
until last August he was content with Normandy, they tell us, but now
he swears to win all France. The man is a madman, and Scythian
Tamburlaine was more lenient. And I do not believe that in all France
there is a cook who understands his business." She went away
whimpering, and proceeded to get tipsy.

The Princess remained quite still, as Dame Isabeau had left her; you
may see a hare crouch so at sight of the hounds. Finally the girl
spoke aloud. "Until last August!" Katharine said. "Until last August!
Poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin, now that you bid me come
to you again
. And I bade this devil's grandson come to me, as my
lover!" Presently she went into her oratory and began to pray.

In the midst of her invocation she wailed: "Fool, fool! How could I
have thought him less than a king!"

You are to imagine her breast thus adrum with remorse and hatred of
herself, the while that town by town fell before the invader like
card-houses. Every rumor of defeat—and the news of some fresh defeat
came daily—was her arraignment; impotently she cowered at God's
knees, knowing herself a murderess, whose infamy was still afoot,
outpacing her prayers, whose victims were battalions. Tarpeia and
Pisidice and Rahab were her sisters; she hungered in her abasement for
Judith's nobler guilt.

In May he came to her. A truce was patched up, and French and English
met amicably in a great plain near Meulan. A square space was staked
out and on three sides boarded in, the fourth side being the river
Seine. This enclosure the Queen-Regent, Jehan of Burgundy, and
Katharine entered from the French side. Simultaneously the English
King appeared, accompanied by his brothers the Dukes of Clarence and
Gloucester, and followed by the Earl of Warwick. Katharine raised her
eyes with I know not what lingering hope; but it was he, a young Zeus
now, triumphant and uneager. In his helmet in place of a plume he wore
a fox-brush spangled with jewels.

These six entered the tent pitched for the conference—the hanging of
blue velvet embroidered with fleurs-de-lys of gold blurred before the
girl's eyes,—and there the Earl of Warwick embarked upon a sea of
rhetoric. His French was indifferent, his periods were interminable,
and his demands exorbitant; in brief, the King of England wanted
Katharine and most of France, with a reversion at the French King's
death of the entire kingdom. Meanwhile Sire Henry sat in silence, his
eyes glowing.

"I have come," he said, under cover of Warwick's oratory—"I have come
again, my lady."

Katharine's gaze flickered over him. "Liar!" she said, very softly.
"Has God no thunders remaining in His armory that this vile thief
still goes unblasted? Would you steal love as well as kingdoms?"

His ruddy face was now white. "I love you, Katharine."

"Yes," she answered, "for I am your pretext. I can well believe,
messire, that you love your pretext for theft and murder."

Neither spoke after this, and presently the Earl of Warwick having
come to his peroration, the matter was adjourned till the next day.
The party separated. It was not long before Katharine had informed her
mother that, God willing, she would never again look upon the King of
England's face uncoffined. Isabeau found her a madwoman. The girl
swept opposition before her with gusts of demoniacal fury, wept,
shrieked, tore at her hair, and eventually fell into a sort of
epileptic seizure; between rage and terror she became a horrid,
frenzied beast. I do not dwell upon this, for it is not a condition in
which the comeliest maid shows to advantage. But, for the Valois,
insanity always lurked at the next corner, and they knew it; to save
the girl's reason the Queen was forced to break off all discussion of
the match. Accordingly, the Duke of Burgundy went next day to the
conference alone. Jehan began with "ifs," and over these flimsy
barriers Henry, already fretted by Katharine's scorn, presently
vaulted to a towering fury.

"Fair cousin," the King said, after a deal of vehement bickering, "we
wish you to know that we will have the daughter of your King, and that
we will drive both him and you out of this kingdom."

The Duke answered, not without spirit, "Sire, you are pleased to say
so; but before you have succeeded in ousting my lord and me from this
realm, I am of the opinion that you will be very heartily tired."

At this the King turned on his heel; over his shoulder he flung: "I am
tireless; also, I am agile as a fox in the pursuit of my desires. Say
that to your Princess." Then he went away in a rage.

It had seemed an approvable business to win love incognito, according
to the example of many ancient emperors, but in practice he had
tripped over an ugly outgrowth from the legendary custom. The girl
hated him, there was no doubt about it; and it was equally certain he
loved her. Particularly caustic was the reflection that a twitch of
his finger would get him Katharine as his wife, for before long the
Queen-Regent was again attempting secret negotiations to bring this
about. Yes, he could get the girl's body by a couple of pen-strokes,
and had he been older that might have contented him: as it was, what
he wanted was to rouse the look her eyes had borne in Chartres orchard
that tranquil morning, and this one could not readily secure by
fiddling with seals and parchments. You see his position: this
high-spirited young man now loved the Princess too utterly to take her
on lip-consent, and this marriage was now his one possible excuse for
ceasing from victorious warfare. So he blustered, and the fighting
recommenced; and he slew in a despairing rage, knowing that by every
movement of his arm he became to her so much the more detestable.

Then the Vicomte de Montbrison, as you have heard, betrayed France,
and King Henry began to strip the French realm of provinces as you
peel the layers from an onion. By the May of the year of grace 1420
France was, and knew herself to be, not beaten but demolished. Only a
fag-end of the French army lay entrenched at Troyes, where King
Charles and his court awaited Henry's decision as to the morrow's
action. If he chose to destroy them root and branch, he could; and
they knew such mercy as was in the man to be quite untarnished by
previous using. Sire Henry drew up a small force before the city and
made no overtures toward either peace or throat-cutting.

This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday after
Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in his
apartments at the Hotel de Ville. The King was pursing his lips over
an alternative play, when somebody began singing below in the
courtyard.

Sang the voice:

"I can find no meaning in life,
That have weighed the world,—and it was
Abundant with folly, and rife
With sorrows brittle as glass,
And with joys that flicker and pass
Like dreams through a fevered head;
And like the dripping of rain
In gardens naked and dead
Is the obdurate thin refrain
Of our youth which is presently dead.

"And she whom alone I have loved
Looks ever with loathing on me,
As one she hath seen disproved
And stained with such smirches as be
Not ever cleansed utterly;
And is both to remember the days
When Destiny fixed her name
As the theme and the goal of my praise;
And my love engenders shame,
And I stain what I strive for and praise.

"O love, most perfect of all,
Just to have known you is well!
And it heartens me now to recall
That just to have known you is well,
And naught else is desirable
Save only to do as you willed
And to love you my whole life long;—
But this heart in me is filled
With hunger cruel and strong,
And with hunger unfulfilled.

"Fond heart, though thy hunger be
As a flame that wanders unstilled,
There is none more perfect than she!"

Malise now came into the room, and, without speaking, laid a fox-brush
before the Princess.

Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered table.
"So you are in his pay, Malise? I am sorry. But you know that your
employer is master here. Who am I to forbid him entrance?" The girl
went away silently, abashed, and the Princess sat quite still, tapping
the brush against the table.

"They do not want me to sign another treaty, do they?" her father
asked timidly. "It appears to me they are always signing treaties, and
I cannot see that any good comes of it. And I would have won the last
game, Katharine, if Malise had not interrupted us. You know I would
have won."

"Yes, Father, you would have won. Oh, he must not see you!" Katharine
cried, a great tide of love mounting in her breast, the love that
draws a mother fiercely to shield her backward boy. "Father, will you
not go into your chamber? I have a new book for you, Father—all
pictures, dear. Come—" She was coaxing him when Sire Henry appeared
in the doorway.