Chivalry Part 24

"You have not conquered!" Katharine lifted the baton beside the gong, poising it. G.o.d had granted her prayer--to save France. Now the past and the ignominy of the past might be merged in Judith's n.o.bler guilt.

But I must tell you that in the supreme hour, Destiny at her beck, her main desire was to slap the man for his childishness. Oh, he had no right thus to besot himself with adoration! This dejection at her feet of his high destiny awed her, and p.r.i.c.ked her, too, with her inability to understand him. Angrily she flung away the baton. "Go! Ah, go!" she cried, like one strangling. "There has been enough of bloodshed, and I must spare you, loathing you as I do, for I cannot with my own hand murder you."

But the King was a kindly tyrant, crus.h.i.+ng independence from his a.s.sociates as lesser folk squeeze water from a sponge. "I cannot go thus. Acknowledge me to be Alain, the man you love, or else strike upon the gong."

"You are cruel!" she wailed, in her torture.

"Yes, I am cruel."

Katharine raised straining arms above her head in a hard gesture of despair. "You have conquered. You know that I love you. Oh, if I could find words to voice my shame, to shriek it in your face, I could better endure it! For I love you. With all my body and heart and soul I love you. Mine is the agony, for I love you! and presently I shall stand quite still and see little Frenchmen scramble about you as hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill you. And after that I shall live! I preserve France, but after I have slain you, Henry, I must live. Mine is the agony, the enduring agony." She stayed motionless for an interval. "G.o.d, G.o.d! Let me not fail!" Katharine breathed; and then: "O fair sweet friend, I am about to commit a vile action, but it is for the sake of the France that I love next to G.o.d.

As Judith gave her body to Holofernes, I crucify my heart for the preservation of France." Very calmly she struck upon the gong.

If she could have found any reproach in his eyes during the ensuing silence, she could have borne it; but there was only love. And with all that, he smiled like one who knew the upshot of this matter.

A man-at-arms came into the room. "Germain--" said Katharine, and then again, "Germain--" She gave a swallowing motion and was silent. When she spoke it was with crisp distinctness. "Germain, fetch a harp.

Messire Alain here is about to play for me."

At the man's departure she said: "I am very pitiably weak. Need you have dragged my soul, too, in the dust? G.o.d heard my prayer, and you have forced me to deny His favor, as Peter denied Christ. My dear, be very kind to me, for I come to you naked of honor." She fell at the King's feet, embracing his knees. "My master, be very kind to me, for there remains only your love."

He raised her to his breast. "Love is enough," he said.

She was conscious, as he held her thus, of the chain mail under his jerkin. He had come armed; he had his soldiers no doubt in the corridor; he had tricked her, it might be from the first. But that did not matter now.

"Love is enough," she told her master docilely.

Next day the English entered Troyes and in the cathedral church these two were betrothed. Henry was there magnificent in a curious suit of burnished armor; in place of his helmet-plume he wore a fox-brush ornamented with jewels, which unusual ornament afforded great matter of remark among the busybodies of both armies.

THE END OF THE TENTH NOVEL

THE EPILOGUE

"Et je fais scavoir a tous lecteurs de ce Livret que les choses que je dis avoir vues et sues sont enregistres icy, afin que vous pouviez les regarder selon vostre bon sens, s'il vous plaist."

HERE IS APPENDED THE EPILOGUE THAT MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN AFFIXED TO THE BOOK WHICH HE HAD MADE ACCORDING TO THE BEST OF HIS ABILITY; AND WHICH (IN CONSEQUENCE) HE DARED NOT APPRAISE.

_The Epilogue_

_A Son Livret_

Intrepidly depart, my little book, into the presence of that most ill.u.s.trious lady who bade me compile you. Bow down before her judgment. And if her sentence be that of a fiery death, I counsel you not to grieve at what cannot be avoided.

But, if by any miracle that glorious, strong fortress of the weak consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pa.s.s thence, my little book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live out your little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your appointed season perish and be forgotten. Thus may you share your betters' fate, and be at one with those famed comedies of Greek Menander and all the poignant songs of Sappho. _Et quid Pandoniae_--thus, little book, I charge you to poultice your more-merited oblivion--_quid Pandoniae restat nisi nomen Athenae?_

Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with those who will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and protest a.s.sertions which are only fables. To these you will reply that I, your maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of the most high and n.o.ble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at and about her house of Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person with Dame Katharine, then happily remarried to a private gentleman of Wales; and so obtained the matter of the ninth story and of the tenth authentically. You will say also that Messire de Montbrison afforded me the main matter of the sixth and seventh stories, and many of the songs which this book contains; and that, moreover, I once journeyed to Caer Idion and talked for some two hours with Richard Holland (whom I found a very old and garrulous and cheery person), and got of him the matter of the eighth tale in this dizain, together with much information as concerns the sixth and the seventh. And you will add that the matter of the fourth and fifth tales was in every detail related to me by my most ill.u.s.trious mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this information from her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady, and one that was in youth Dame Philippa's most dear a.s.sociate. For the rest you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book to be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say) even in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me.

I have pieced together these tales about the women who intermarried, not very enviably, with the demon-tainted blood of Edward Longshanks, because it seems to me that these tales, when they are rightly considered, compose the initial portion of a troubling history.

Whether (as some declare) the taint came from Manuel of Poictesme, or whether (as yet others say) this poison was inherited from the demon wife whom Foulques Plantagenet fetched out of h.e.l.l, the blood in these men was not all human. These men might not tread equally with human beings: their wives suffered therefor, just as they that had inherited this blood suffered therefor, and all England suffered therefor. And the upshot of it I have narrated elsewhere, in the book called and ent.i.tled _The Red Cuckold_, which composes the final portion of this history, and tells of the last spilling and of the extinction of this blood.

Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people who will jeer at you, and will say that you and I have cheated them of your purchase-money. To these you will reply, with Plutarch, _Non mi aurum posco, nec mi pretium_. Secondly you will say that, of necessity, the tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; and that he cannot undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering Orion suitably when the resources of his shop amount to only a few yards of cambric.

Indeed had I the power to make you better, my little book, I would have exercised that power to the utmost. A good conscience is a continual feast, and I summon high Heaven to be my witness that had I been Homer you had awed the world, another Iliad. I lament your inability to do this, as heartily as any person living; yet Heaven willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven these aforementioned cavillers should rightfully complain.

So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless indeed you should elect to answer them by repet.i.tion of this song which I now make for you, my little book, at your departure from me. And the song runs in this fas.h.i.+on:

Depart, depart, my book! and live and die Dependent on the idle fantasy Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I.

For I am fond, and willingly mistake My book to be the book I meant to make, And cannot judge you, for that phantom's sake.

Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill In making you, that never spared the will To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill.

Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I Had wrought in you some wizardry so high That no man but had listened ...

They pa.s.s by, And shrug--as we, who know that unto us It has been granted never to fare thus, And never to be strong and glorious.

Is it denied me to perpetuate What so much loving labor did create?-- I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate, And acquiesce, not all disconsolate.

For I have got such recompense Of that high-hearted excellence Which the contented craftsman knows, Alone, that to loved labor goes, And daily does the work he chose, And counts all else impertinence!

EXPLICIT DECAS REGINARUM