Chivalry: Dizain des Reines by James Branch Cabell (top 100 novels TXT) 📕
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- Author: James Branch Cabell
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Sir Gregory Darrell laughed, very bitterly. “He that is without blemish among you—” he said. Then they armed completely, and went forth to battle against the murderous harlot.
THE END OF THE FOURTH NOVEL
V
THE STORY OF THE HOUSEWIFE
“Selh que m blasma vostr’ amor ni m defen
Non podon far en re mon cor mellor,
Ni’l dous dezir qu’ieu ai de vos major,
Ni l’enveya’ ni’l dezir, ni’l talen.”
The Story of the Housewife
In the year of grace 1326, upon Walburga’s Eve, some three hours after sunset (thus Nicolas begins), had you visited a certain garden on the outskirts of Valenciennes, you might there have stumbled upon a big, handsome boy, prone on the turf, where by turns he groaned and vented himself in sullen curses. His profanity had its palliation. Heir to England though he was, you must know that this boy’s father in the flesh had hounded him from England, as more recently had the lad’s uncle Charles the Handsome driven him from France. Now had this boy and his mother (the same Queen Ysabeau about whom I have told you in the preceding tale) come as suppliants to the court of that stalwart nobleman Sire William (Count of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand, and Lord of Friesland), where their arrival had evoked the suggestion that they depart at their earliest convenience. To-morrow, then, these footsore royalties, the Queen of England and the Prince of Wales, would be thrust out-of-doors to resume the weary beggarship, to knock again upon the obdurate gates of this unsympathizing king or that deaf emperor.
Accordingly the boy aspersed his destiny. At hand a nightingale carolled as though an exiled prince were the blithest spectacle the moon knew.
There came through the garden a tall girl, running, stumbling in her haste. “Hail, King of England!” she said.
“Do not mock me, Philippa!” the boy half-sobbed. Sulkily he rose to his feet.
“No mockery here, my fair sweet friend. No, I have told my father all which happened yesterday. I pleaded for you. He questioned me very closely. And when I had ended, he stroked his beard, and presently struck one hand upon the table. ‘Out of the mouth of babes!’ he said. Then he said: ‘My dear, I believe for certain that this lady and her son have been driven from their kingdom wrongfully. If it be for the good of God to comfort the afflicted, how much more is it commendable to help and succor one who is the daughter of a king, descended from royal lineage, and to whose blood we ourselves are related!’ And accordingly he and your mother have their heads together yonder, planning an invasion of England, no less, and the dethronement of your wicked father, my Edward. And accordingly—hail, King of England!” The girl clapped her hands gleefully. The nightingale sang.
But the boy kept momentary silence. Not even in youth were the men of his race handicapped by excessively tender hearts; yesterday in the shrubbery the boy had kissed this daughter of Count William, in part because she was a healthy and handsome person, and partly because great benefit might come of an alliance with her father. Well! the Prince had found chance-taking not unfortunate. With the episode as foundation, Count William had already builded up the future queenship of England. The strong Count could do—and, as it seemed, was now in train to do—indomitable deeds to serve his son-in-law; and now the beggar of five minutes since foresaw himself, with this girl’s love as ladder, mounting to the high habitations of the King of England, the Lord of Ireland, and the Duke of Aquitaine. Thus they would herald him.
So he embraced the girl. “Hail, Queen of England!” said the Prince; and then, “If I forget—” His voice broke awkwardly. “My dear, if ever I forget—!” Their lips met now. The nightingale discoursed as if on a wager.
Presently was mingled with the bird’s descant another kind of singing. Beyond the yew-hedge as these two stood silent, breast to breast, passed young Jehan Kuypelant, one of the pages, fitting to the accompaniment of a lute his paraphrase of the song which Archilochus of Sicyon very anciently made in honor of Venus Melaenis, the tender Venus of the Dark.
At a gap in the hedge the young Brabanter paused. His singing ended, gulped. These two, who stood heart hammering against heart, saw for an instant Jehan Kuypelant’s lean face silvered by the moonlight, his mouth a tiny abyss. Followed the beat of lessening footfalls, while the nightingale improvised an envoi.
But earlier Jehan Kuypelant also had sung, as though in rivalry with the bird.
Sang Jehan Kuypelant:
“Hearken and heed, Melaenis!
For all that the litany ceased
When Time had pilfered the victim,
And flouted thy pale-lipped priest,
And set astir in the temple
Where burned the fires of thy shrine
The owls and wolves of the desert—
Yet hearken, (the issue is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!
“For I have followed, nor faltered—
Adrift in a land of dreams
Where laughter and pity and terror
Commingle as confluent streams,
I have seen and adored the Sidonian,
Implacable, fair and divine—
And bending low, have implored thee
To hearken, (the issue is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!”
It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of other matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the year of grace 1346, Master John Copeland—as men now called Jehan Kuypelant, now secretary to the Queen of England,—brought his mistress the unhandsome tidings that David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty thousand Scots to back him. The Brabanter found plump Queen Philippa with the kingdom’s arbitress—Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom King Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring in France, very notoriously adored and obeyed.
This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they narrate, to release the Countess’ husband, William de Montacute, from the French prison of the Châtelet. You may appraise her dominion by this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had denied all to King Edward, and in consequence he could deny her nothing; so she sent him to fetch back her husband, whom she almost loved. That armament had sailed from Southampton on Saint George’s day.
These two women, then, shared the Brabanter’s execrable news. Already Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the broken meats of King David.
The Countess presently exclaimed: “Let them weep for this that must! My place is not here.”
Philippa said, half hopefully, “Do you forsake Sire Edward, Catherine?”
“Madame and Queen,” the Countess answered, “in this world every man must scratch his own back. My lord has entrusted to me his castle of Wark, his fiefs in Northumberland. These, I hear, are being laid waste. Were there a thousand men-at-arms left in England I would say fight. As it is, our men are yonder in France and the island is defenceless. Accordingly I ride for the north to make what terms I may with the King of Scots.”
Now you might have seen the Queen’s eye brighten. “Undoubtedly,” said she, “in her lord’s absence it is the wife’s part to defend his belongings. And my lord’s fief is England. I bid you God-speed, Catherine.” And when the Countess was gone, Philippa turned, her round face somewhat dazed and flushed. “She betrays him! she compounds with the Scot! Mother of Christ, let me not fail!”
“A ship must be despatched to bid Sire Edward return,” said the secretary. “Otherwise all England is lost.”
“Not so, John Copeland! We must let Sire Edward complete his overrunning of France, if such be the Trinity’s will. You know perfectly well that he has always had a fancy to conquer France; and if I bade him return now he would be vexed.”
“The disappointment of the King,” John Copeland considered, “is a smaller evil than allowing all of us to be butchered.”
“Not to me, John Copeland,” the Queen said.
Now came many lords into the chamber, seeking Madame Philippa. “We must make peace with the Scottish rascal!—England is lost!—A ship must be sent entreating succor of Sire Edward!” So they shouted.
“Messieurs,” said Queen Philippa, “who commands here? Am I, then, some woman of the town?”
Ensued a sudden silence. John Copeland, standing by the seaward window, had picked up a lute and was fingering the instrument half-idly. Now the Marquess of Hastings stepped from the throng. “Pardon, Highness. But the occasion is urgent.”
“The occasion is very urgent, my lord,” the Queen assented, deep in meditation.
John Copeland flung back his head and without prelude began to carol lustily.
Sang John Copeland:
“There are taller lads than Atys,
And many are wiser than he,—
How should I heed them?—whose fate is
Ever to serve and to be
Ever the lover of Atys,
And die that Atys may dine,
Live if he need me—Then heed me,
And speed me, (the moment is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!
“Fair is the form unbeholden,
And golden the glory of thee
Whose voice is the voice of a vision
Whose face is the foam of the sea,
And the fall of whose feet is the flutter
Of breezes in birches and pine,
When thou drawest near me, to hear me,
And cheer me, (the moment is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!”
I must tell you that the Queen shivered, as if with extreme cold. She gazed toward John Copeland wonderingly. The secretary was fretting at his lutestrings, with his head downcast. Then in a while the Queen turned to Hastings.
“The occasion is very urgent, my lord,” the Queen assented. “Therefore it is my will that to-morrow one and all your men be mustered at Blackheath. We will take the field without delay against the King of Scots.”
The riot began anew. “Madness!” they shouted; “lunar madness! We can do nothing until our King returns with our army!”
“In his absence,” the Queen said, “I command here.”
“You are not Regent,” the Marquess answered. Then he cried, “This is the Regent’s affair!”
“Let the Regent be fetched,” Dame Philippa said, very quietly. They brought in her son, Messire Lionel, now a boy of eight years, and, in the King’s absence, Regent of England.
Both the Queen and the Marquess held papers. “Highness,” Lord Hastings began, “for reasons of state which I lack time to explain, this document requires your signature. It is an order that a ship be despatched to ask the King’s return. Your Highness may remember the pony you admired yesterday?” The Marquess smiled ingratiatingly. “Just here, your Highness—a crossmark.”
“The dappled one?” said the Regent; “and all for making a little mark?” The boy jumped for the pen.
“Lionel,” said the Queen, “you are Regent of England, but you are also my son. If you sign that paper you will beyond doubt get the pony, but you will not, I think, care to ride him. You will not care to sit down at all, Lionel.”
The Regent considered. “Thank you very much, my lord,” he said in the ultimate, “but I do not like ponies any more. Do I sign here, Mother?”
Philippa handed the Marquess a subscribed order to muster the English forces at Blackheath; then another, closing the English ports. “My lords,” the Queen said, “this boy is the King’s
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