Chivalry Part 2

They made Hurlburt prosperously and found it vacant, for the news of Falmouth's advance had driven the villagers hillward. There was in this place a child, a naked boy of some two years, lying on a doorstep, overlooked in his elders' gross terror. As the Queen with a sob lifted this boy the child died.

"Starved!" said Osmund Heleigh; "and within a stone's throw of my snug home!"

The Queen laid down the tiny corpse, and, stooping, lightly caressed its spa.r.s.e flaxen hair. She answered nothing, though her lips moved.

Past Vachel, scene of a recent skirmish, with many dead in the gutters, they were overtaken by Falmouth himself, and stood at the roadside to afford his troop pa.s.sage. The Marquess, as he went by, flung the Queen a coin, with a jest sufficiently high flavored. She knew the man her inveterate enemy, knew that on recognition he would have killed her as he would a wolf; she smiled at him and dropped a curtsey.

"This is remarkable," Messire Heleigh observed. "I was hideously afraid, and am yet shaking. But you, madame, laughed."

The Queen replied: "I laughed because I know that some day I shall have Lord Falmouth's head. It will be very sweet to see it roll in the dust, my Osmund."

Messire Heleigh somewhat dryly observed that tastes differed.

At Jessop Minor befell a more threatening adventure. Seeking food at the _Cat and Hautbois_ in that village, they blundered upon the same troop at dinner in the square about the inn. Falmouth and his lieutenants were somewhere inside the house. The men greeted the supposed purveyors of amus.e.m.e.nt with a shout; and one of these soldiers--a swarthy rascal with his head tied in a napkin--demanded that the jongleurs grace their meal with a song.

Osmund tried to put him off with a tale of a broken viol.

But, "Haro!" the fellow bl.u.s.tered; "by blood and by nails! you will sing more sweetly with a broken viol than with a broken head. I would have you understand, you hedge thief, that we gentlemen of the sword are not partial to wordy argument." Messire Heleigh fluttered inefficient hands as the men-at-arms gathered about them, scenting some genial piece of cruelty. "Oh, you rabbit!" the trooper jeered, and caught at Osmund's throat, shaking him. In the act this rascal tore open Messire Heleigh's tunic, disclosing a thin chain about his neck and a handsome locket, which the fellow wrested from its fastening. "Ahoi!" he continued.

"Ahoi, my comrades, what sort of minstrel is this, who goes about England all hung with gold like a Cathedral Virgin! He and his sweetheart"--the actual word was grosser--"will be none the worse for an interview with the Marquess."

The situation smacked of awkwardness, because Lord Falmouth was familiar with the Queen, and to be brought specifically to his attention meant death for two detected masqueraders. Hastily Osmund Heleigh said:

"Messire, the locket contains the portrait of a lady whom in my youth I loved very greatly. Save to me, it is valueless. I pray you, do not rob me of it."

But the trooper shook his head with drunken solemnity. "I do not like the looks of this. Yet I will sell it to you, as the saying is, for a song."

"It shall be the king of songs," said Osmund,--"the song that Arnaut Daniel first made. I will sing for you a Sestina, messieurs,--a Sestina in salutation of Spring."

The men disposed themselves about the dying gra.s.s, and presently he sang.

Sang Messire Heleigh:

"Awaken! for the servitors of Spring Proclaim his triumph! ah, make haste to see With what tempestuous pageantry they bring The victor homeward! haste, for this is he That cast out Winter and all woes that cling To Winter's garments, and bade April be!

"And now that Spring is master, let us be Content, and laugh, as anciently in spring The battle-wearied Tristan laughed, when he Was come again Tintagel-ward, to bring Glad news of Arthur's victory--and see Ysoude, with parted lips, that waver and cling.

"Not yet in Brittany must Tristan cling To this or that sad memory, and be Alone, as she in Cornwall; for in spring Love sows against far harvestings,--and he Is blind, and scatters baleful seed that bring Such fruitage as blind Love lacks eyes to see!"

Osmund paused here for an appreciable interval, staring at the Queen.

You saw his flabby throat a-quiver, his eyes melting, saw his cheeks kindle, and youth seeping into the lean man like water over a crumbling dam. His voice was now big and desirous.

Sang Messire Heleigh:

"Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling, Never again when in the grave ye be Incurious of your happiness in spring, And get no grace of Love there, whither he That bartered life for love no love may bring.

"No braggart Heracles avails to bring Alcestis hence; nor here may Roland see The eyes of Aude; nor here the wakening spring Vex any man with memories: for there be No memories that cling as cerements cling, No force that baffles Death, more strong than he.

"Us hath he noted, and for us hath he An hour appointed; and that hour will bring Oblivion.--Then, laugh! Laugh, dear, and see The tyrant mocked, while yet our bosoms cling, While yet our lips obey us, and we be Untrammeled in our little hour of spring!

"Thus in the spring we jeer at Death, though he Will see our children perish and will briny Asunder all that cling while love may be."

Then Osmund put the viol aside and sat quite silent. The soldiery judged, and with cordial frankness stated, that the difficulty of his rhyming scheme did not atone for his lack of indecency, but when the Queen of England went among them with Messire Heleigh's faded green hat she found them liberal. Even the fellow with the broken head admitted that a bargain was proverbially a bargain, and returned the locket with the addition of a coin. So for the present these two went safe, and quitted the _Cat and Hautbois_ fed and unmolested.

"My Osmund," Dame Alianora said, presently, "your memory is better than I had thought."

"I remembered a boy and a girl," he returned. "And I grieved that they were dead."

Afterward they plodded on toward Bowater, and the ensuing night rested in Chantrell Wood. They had the good fortune there to encounter dry and windless weather and a sufficiency of brushwood, with which Osmund constructed an agreeable fire. In its glow these two sat, eating bread and cheese.

But talk languished at the outset. The Queen had complained of an ague, and Messire Heleigh was sedately suggesting three spiders hung about the neck as an infallible corrective for this ailment, when Dame Alianora rose to her feet. "Eh, my G.o.d!" she said; "I am wearied of such ungracious aid! Not an inch of the way but you have been thinking of your filthy books and longing to be back at them! No; I except the moments when you were frightened into forgetfulness--first by Falmouth, then by the trooper. O Eternal Father! afraid of a single dirty soldier!"

"Indeed, I was very much afraid," said Messire Heleigh, with perfect simplicity; "_timidus perire, madame._"

"You have not even the grace to be ashamed! Yet I am shamed, messire, that Osmund Heleigh should have become the book-muddled pedant you are.

For I loved young Osmund Heleigh."

He also had risen in the firelight, and now its convulsive shadows marred two dogged faces. "I think it best not to recall that boy and girl who are so long dead. And, frankly, madame and Queen, the merit of the business I have in hand is questionable. It is you who have set all England by the ears, and I am guiding you toward opportunities for further mischief. I must serve you. Understand, madame, that ancient folly in Provence yonder has nothing to do with the affair. Count Manuel left you: and between his evasion and your marriage you were pleased to amuse yourself with me--"

"You were more civil then, my Osmund--"

"I am not uncivil, I merely point out that this old folly const.i.tutes no overwhelming obligation, either way. I cry _nihil ad Andromachen!_ For the rest, I must serve you because you are a woman and helpless; yet I cannot forget that he who spares the wolf is the sheep's murderer. It would be better for all England if you were dead. Hey, your gorgeous follies, madame! Silver peac.o.c.ks set with sapphires! Cloth of fine gold--"

"Would you have me go unclothed?" Dame Alianora demanded, pettishly.

"Not so," Osmund retorted; "again I say to you with Tertullian, 'Let women paint their eyes with the tints of chast.i.ty, insert into their ears the Word of G.o.d, tie the yoke of Christ about their necks, and adorn their whole person with the silk of sanct.i.ty and the damask of devotion.' I say to you that the boy you wish to rescue from Wallingford, and make King of England, is freely rumored to be not verily the son of Sire Henry but the child of tall Manuel of Poictesme.

I say to you that from the first you have made mischief in England. And I say to you--"

But Dame Alianora was yawning quite frankly. "You will say to me that I brought foreigners into England, that I misguided the King, that I stirred up strife between the King and his barons. Eh, my G.o.d! I am sufficiently familiar with the harangue. Yet listen, my Osmund: They sold me like a bullock to a man I had never seen. I found him a man of wax, and I remoulded him. They asked of me an heir for England: I provided that heir. They gave me England as a toy; I played with it. I was the Queen, the source of honor, the source of wealth--the trough, in effect, about which swine gathered. Never since I came into England, Osmund, has any man or woman loved me; never in all my English life have I loved man or woman. Do you understand, my Osmund?--the Queen has many flatterers, but no friends. Not a friend in the world, my Osmund! And so the Queen made the best of it and amused herself."

Somewhat he seemed to understand, for he answered without asperity:

"Mon bel esper, I do not find it anywhere in Holy Writ that G.o.d requires it of us to amuse ourselves; but upon many occasions we have been commanded to live righteously. We are tempted in divers and insidious ways. And we cry with the Psalmist, 'My strength is dried up like a potsherd.' But G.o.d intends this, since, until we have here demonstrated our valor upon Satan, we are manifestly unworthy to be enregistered in G.o.d's army. The great Captain must be served by proven soldiers. We may be tempted, but we may not yield. O daughter of the South! we must not yield!"

"Again you preach," Dame Alianora said. "That is a venerable truism."

"Ho, madame," he returned, "is it on that account the less true?"

Pensively the Queen considered this. "You are a good man, my Osmund,"

she said, at last, "though you are very droll. Ohime! it is a pity that I was born a princess! Had it been possible for me to be your wife, I would have been a better woman. I shall sleep now and dream of that good and stupid and contented woman I might have been." So presently these two slept in Chantrell Wood.

Followed four days of journeying. As Messer Dante had not yet surveyed Malebolge, Osmund Heleigh and Dame Alianora lacked a parallel for that which they encountered; their traverse discovered England razed, charred, and depopulate--picked bones of an island, a vast and absolute ruin about which pa.s.sion-wasted men skulked like rats. Messire Heleigh and the Queen traveled without molestation; malice and death had journeyed before them on this road, and had swept it clear.

At every trace of these hideous precessors Osmund Heleigh would say, "By a day's ride I might have prevented this." Or, "By a day's ride I might have saved this woman." Or, "By two days' riding I might have fed this child."

The Queen kept Spartan silence, but daily you saw the fine woman age. In their slow advance every inch of misery was thrust before her for inspection; meticulously she observed and evaluated her handiwork.

Enthroned, she had appraised from a distance the righteous wars she set afoot; trudging thus among the debris of these wars, she found they had unsuspected aspects. Bastling the royal army had recently sacked.

There remained of this village the skeletons of two houses, and for the rest a jumble of bricks, rafters half-burned, many calcined fragments of humanity, and ashes. At Bastling, Messire Heleigh turned to the Queen toiling behind.

"Oh, madame!" he said, in a dry whisper, "this was the home of so many men!"