Chivalry Part 14

"Now by the splendor of G.o.d--!" King Edward began, very terrible in his wrath. He saw that John Copeland held a dagger to his breast, and he shrugged. "Well, my man, you perceive I am defenceless."

"First you will hear me out," John Copeland said.

"It would appear," the King retorted, "that I have little choice."

At this time John Copeland began: "Sire, you are the mightiest monarch your race has known. England is yours, France is yours, conquered Scotland lies prostrate at your feet. To-day there is no other man in all the world who possesses a t.i.the of your glory; yet twenty years ago Madame Philippa first beheld you and loved you, an outcast, an exiled, empty-pocketed prince. Twenty years ago the love of Madame Philippa, great Count William's daughter, got for you the armament with which England was regained. Twenty years ago but for Madame Philippa you had died naked in some ditch."

"Go on," the King said presently.

"Afterward you took a fancy to reign in France. You learned then that we Brabanters are a frugal people: Madame Philippa was wealthy when she married you, and twenty years had quadrupled her private fortune.

She gave you every penny of it that you might fit out this expedition; now her very crown is in p.a.w.n at Ghent. In fine, the love of Madame Philippa gave you France as lightly as one might bestow a toy upon a child who whined for it."

The King fiercely said, "Go on."

"Eh, sire, I intend to. You left England undefended that you might posture a little in the eyes of Europe. And meanwhile a woman preserves England, a woman gives you Scotland as a gift, and in return asks nothing--G.o.d have mercy on us!--save that you nightly chafe your feet with a bit of woollen. You hear of it--and inquire, '_Where is Madame de Salisbury?_' Here beyond doubt is the c.o.c.k of Aesop's fable," snarled John Copeland, "who unearthed a gem and grumbled that his diamond was not a grain of corn."

"You shall be hanged at dawn," the King replied. "Meanwhile spit out your venom."

"I say to you, then," John Copeland continued, "that to-day you are master of Europe. I say to you that, but for this woman whom for twenty years you have neglected, you would to-day be mouldering in some pauper's grave. Eh, without question, you most magnanimously loved that shrew of Salisbury! because you fancied the color of her eyes, Sire Edward, and admired the angle between her nose and her forehead.

Minstrels unborn will sing of this great love of yours. Meantime I say to you"--now the man's rage was monstrous--"I say to you, go home to your too-tedious wife, the source of all your glory! sit at her feet!

and let her teach you what love is!" He flung away the dagger. "There you have the truth. Now summon your attendants, my tres beau sire, and have me hanged."

The King made no movement. "You have been bold--" he said at last.

"But you have been far bolder, sire. For twenty years you have dared to flout that love which is G.o.d's n.o.blest heritage to His children."

King Edward sat in meditation for a long while. The squinting of his left eye was now very noticeable. "I consider my wife's clerk," he drily said, "to discourse of love in somewhat too much the tone of a lover." And a flush was his reward.

But when this Copeland spoke he was like one transfigured. His voice was grave and very tender, and he said:

"As the fish have their life in the waters, so I have and always shall have mine in love. Love made me choose and dare to emulate a lady, long ago, through whom I live contented, without expecting any other good. Her purity is so inestimable that I cannot say whether I derive more pride or sorrow from its preeminence. She does not love me, and she will never love me. She would condemn me to be hewed in fragments sooner than permit her husband's finger to be injured. Yet she surpa.s.ses all others so utterly that I would rather hunger in her presence than enjoy from another all which a lover can devise."

Sire Edward stroked the table through this while, with an inverted pen. He cleared his throat. He said, half-fretfully:

"Now, by the Face! it is not given every man to love precisely in this troubadourish fas.h.i.+on. Even the most generous person cannot render to love any more than that person happens to possess. I have read in an old tale how the devil sat upon a cathedral spire and white doves flew about him. Monks came and told him to begone. 'Do not the spires show you, O son of darkness' they clamored, 'that the place is holy?' And Satan (in this old tale) replied that these spires were capable of various interpretations. I speak of symbols, John. Yet I also have loved, in my own fas.h.i.+on,--and, it would seem, I win the same reward as you."

The King said more lately: "And so she is at Stirling now? hobn.o.b with my armed enemies, and cajoling that red lecher Robert Stewart?" He laughed, not overpleasantly. "Eh, yes, it needed a bold person to bring all your tidings! But you Brabanters are a very thorough-going people."

The King rose and flung back his high head. "John, the loyal service you have done us and our esteem for your valor are so great that they may well serve you as an excuse. May shame fall on those who bear you any ill-will! You will now return home, and take your prisoner, the King of Scotland, and deliver him to my wife, to do with as she may elect. You will convey to her my entreaty--not my orders, John,--that she come to me here at Calais. As remuneration for this evening's insolence, I a.s.sign lands as near your house as you can choose them to the value of 500 a year for you and for your heirs."

You must know that John Copeland fell upon his knees before King Edward. "Sire--" he stammered.

But the King raised him. "No, no," he said, "you are the better man.

Were there any equity in fate, John Copeland, your lady had loved you, not me. As it is, I must strive to prove not altogether unworthy of my fortune. But I make no large promises," he added, squinting horribly, "because the most generous person cannot render to love any more than that person happens to possess. So be off with you, John Copeland,--go, my squire, and bring me back my Queen!"

Presently he heard John Copeland singing without. And through that instant, they say, his youth returned to Edward Plantagenet, and all the scents and shadows and faint sounds of Valenciennes on that ancient night when a tall girl came to him, running, stumbling in her haste to bring him kings.h.i.+p. "She waddles now," he thought forlornly.

"Still, I am blessed." But Copeland sang, and the Brabanter's heart was big with joy.

Sang John Copeland:

"Long I besought thee, nor vainly, Daughter of Water and Air-- Charis! Idalia! Hortensis!

Hast thou not heard the prayer, When the blood stood still with loving, And the blood in me leapt like wine, And I cried on thy name, Melaenis?-- That heard me, (the glory is thine!) And let the heart of Atys, At last, at last, be mine!

"Falsely they tell of thy dying, Thou that art older than Death, And never the Horselberg hid thee, Whatever the slanderer saith, For the stars are as heralds forerunning, When laughter and love combine At twilight, in thy light, Melaenis-- That heard me, (the glory is thine!) And let the heart of Atys, At last, at last, be mine!"

THE END OF THE FIFTH NOVEL

VI

THE STORY OF THE SATRAPS

"Je suis voix au desert criant Que chascun soyt rectifiant La voye de Sauveur; non suis, Et accomplir je ne le puis."

THE SIXTH NOVEL.--ANNE OF BOHEMIA HAS ONE SOLE FRIEND, AND BY HIM PLAYS THE FRIEND'S PART; AND IN DOING SO ACHIEVES THEIR COMMON ANGUISH, AS WELL AS THE CONFUSION OF STATECRAFT AND THE POULTICING OF A GREAT DISEASE.

_The Story of the Satraps_

In the year of grace 1381 (Nicolas begins) was Dame Anne magnificently fetched from remote Bohemia, and at Westminster married to Sire Richard, the second monarch of that name to reign in England. This king, I must tell you, had succeeded while he was yet an infant, to the throne of his grandfather, the third King Edward, about whom I have told you in the story preceding this.

Queen Anne had presently noted a certain priest who went forbiddingly about her court, where he was accorded a provisional courtesy, and who went also into many hovels, where pitiable wrecks of humankind received his alms and ministrations.

Queen Anne made inquiries. This young cleric was amanuensis to the Duke of Gloucester, she learned, and was notoriously a by-blow of the Duke's brother, dead Lionel of Clarence. She sent for this Edward Maudelain. When he came her first perception was, "How wonderful is his likeness to the King!" while the thought's commentary ran, unacknowledged, "Yes, as an eagle resembles a falcon!" For here, to the observant eye, was a more zealous person, already pa.s.sion-wasted, and a far more dictatorial and stiff-necked person than the lazy and amiable King; also, this Maudelain's face and nose were somewhat too long and high: the priest was, in a word, the less comely of the pair by a very little, and to an immeasurable extent the more kinglike.

"You are my cousin now, messire," the Queen told him, and innocently offered to his lips her own.

He never moved; but their glances crossed, and for that instant she saw the face of a man who has just stepped into a quicksand. She grew red, without knowing why. Then he spoke, composedly, of trivial matters.

Thus began the Queen's acquaintance with Edward Maudelain. She was by this time the loneliest woman in the island. Her husband granted her a bright and fresh perfection of form and color, but desiderated any appetizing tang, and lamented, in his phrase, a certain kins.h.i.+p to the impeccable loveliness of some female saint in a jaunty tapestry; bright as ice in suns.h.i.+ne, just so her beauty chilled you, he complained: moreover, this daughter of the Caesars had been fetched into England, chiefly, to breed him children, and this she had never done. Undoubtedly he had made a bad bargain,--he was too easy-going, people presumed upon it. His barons s.n.a.t.c.hed their cue and esteemed Dame Anne to be negligible; whereas the clergy, finding that she obstinately read the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, under the irrelevant plea of not comprehending Latin, began to denounce her from their pulpits as a heretic and as the evil woman prophesied by Ezekiel.

It was the nature of this desolate child to crave affection, as a necessary, and pitifully she tried to purchase it through almsgiving.

In the attempt she could have found no coadjutor more ready than Edward Maudelain. Giving was with these two a sort of obsession, though always he gave in a half scorn of his fellow creatures which was not more than half concealed. This b.a.s.t.a.r.d was charitable and pious because he knew his soul, conceived in double sin, to be doubly evil, and therefore doubly in need of redemption through good works.

Now in and about the Queen's lonely rooms the woman and the priest met daily to discuss now this or that point of theology, or now (to cite a single instance) Gammer Tudway's obstinate sciatica. Considerate persons found something of the pathetic in their preoccupation by these matters while, so clamantly, the dissension between the young King and his uncles gathered to a head. The King's uncles meant to continue governing England, with the King as their ward, as long as they could; he meant to relieve himself of this guardians.h.i.+p, and them of their heads, as soon as he was able. War seemed inevitable, the air was thick with portents; and was this, then, an appropriate time, the judicious demanded of high Heaven, for the Queen of imperilled England to concern herself about a peasant's toothache?

Long afterward was Edward Maudelain to remember this quiet and amiable period of his life, and to wonder over the man that he had been through this queer while. Embittered and suspicious she had found him, noted for the carping tongue he lacked both power and inclination to bridle; and she had, against his nature, made Maudelain see that every person is at bottom lovable, and that human vices are but the stains of a traveller midway in a dusty journey; and had incited the priest no longer to do good for his soul's health, but simply for his fellow's benefit.

In place of that monstrous pa.s.sion which had at first view of her possessed the priest, now, like a sheltered taper, glowed an adoration which made him yearn, in defiance of common-sense, to suffer somehow for this beautiful and gracious comrade; though very often pity for her loneliness and knowledge that she dared trust no one save him would throttle Maudelain like two a.s.sa.s.sins, and would move the hot-blooded young man to a rapture of self-contempt and exultation.

Now Maudelain made excellent songs, it was a matter of common report.