Chivalry: Dizain des Reines by James Branch Cabell (top 100 novels TXT) 📕
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- Author: James Branch Cabell
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Richard made no observation. In silence he fetched his horse, and did not pause to saddle it. Quickly he rode to Gwyllem’s house, and broke in the door. Against the farther wall stood lithe Branwen fighting silently: her breasts and shoulders were naked, where Gwyllem had torn away her garments. He wheedled, laughed, swore, and hiccoughed, turn by turn, but she was silent.
“On guard!” Richard barked. Gwyllem wheeled. His head twisted toward his left shoulder, and one corner of his mouth convulsively snapped upward, so that his teeth were bared. There was a knife at Richard’s girdle, which he now unsheathed and flung away. He stepped eagerly toward the snarling Welshman, and with both hands seized the thick and hairy throat. What followed was brutal.
For many minutes Branwen stood with averted face, shuddering. She very dimly heard the sound of Gwyllem’s impotent fists as they beat against the countenance and body of Richard, and heard the thin splitting vicious noise of torn cloth as Gwyllem clutched at Richard’s tunic and tore it many times. Richard did not utter any articulate word, and Gwyllem could not. There was entire silence for a heart-beat, and the thudding fall of something ponderous and limp.
“Come!” Richard said then. Through the hut’s twilight he came, as glorious in her eyes as Michael fresh from that primal battle with old Satan. Tall Richard came to her, his face all blood, and lifted her in his arms lest Branwen’s skirt be soiled by the demolished thing which sprawled across their path. She never spoke. She could not speak. In his arms she rode homeward, passive, and content. The horse trod with deliberation. In the east the young moon was taking heart as the darkness thickened, and innumerable stars awoke. Branwen noted these things incuriously.
Richard was horribly afraid. He it had been, in sober verity it had been Richard of Bordeaux, that some monstrous force had seized, and had lifted, and had curtly utilized as its handiest implement. He had been, and in the moment had known himself to be, the thrown spear as yet in air, about to kill and quite powerless to refrain from killing. It was a full three minutes before he had got the better of his bewilderment and laughed, very softly, lest he disturb this Branwen, who was so near his heart....
Next day she came to him at noon, bearing as always the little basket. It contained to-day a napkin, some garlic, a ham, and a small soft cheese; some shalots, salt, nuts, wild apples, lettuce, onions, and mushrooms. “Behold a feast!” said Richard. He noted then that she carried also a blue pitcher filled with thin wine, and two cups of oak-bark. She thanked him for last night’s performance, and drank a mouthful of wine to his health.
“Decidedly, I shall be sorry to have done with shepherding,” said Richard as he ate.
Branwen answered, “I too shall be sorry, lord, when the masquerade is ended.” And it seemed to Richard that she sighed, and he was the happier.
But he only shrugged. “I am the wisest person unhanged, since I comprehend my own folly. Yet I grant you that he was wise, too, the minstrel of old time that sang: ‘Over wild lands and tumbling seas flits Love, at will, and maddens the heart and beguiles the senses of all whom he attacks, whether his quarry be some monster of the ocean or some fierce denizen of the forest, or man; for thine, O Love, thine alone is the power to make playthings of us all.’”
“Your bard was wise, no doubt, yet it was not in such terms that Gwyllem sang of this passion. Lord,” she demanded shyly, “how would you sing of love?”
Richard was replete and contented with the world. He took up the lute, in full consciousness that his compliance was in large part cenatory. “In courtesy, thus—”
Sang Richard:
“The gods in honor of fair Branwen’s worth
Bore gifts to her:—and Jove, Olympus’ lord,
Co-rule of Earth and Heaven did accord,
And Hermes brought that lyre he framed at birth,
And Venus her famed girdle (to engirth
A fairer beauty now), and Mars his sword,
And wrinkled Plutus half the secret hoard
And immemorial treasure of mid-earth;—
“And while the careful gods were pondering
Which of these goodly gifts the goodliest was,
Young Cupid came among them carolling
And proffered unto her a looking-glass,
Wherein she gazed, and saw the goodliest thing
That Earth had borne, and Heaven might not surpass.”
“Three sounds are rarely heard,” said Branwen; “and these are the song of the birds of Rhiannon, an invitation to feast with a miser, and a speech of wisdom from the mouth of a Saxon. The song you have made of courtesy is tinsel. Sing now in verity.”
Richard laughed, though he was sensibly nettled and perhaps a shade abashed. Presently he sang again.
Sang Richard:
“Catullus might have made of words that seek
With rippling sound, in soft recurrent ways,
The perfect song, or in remoter days
Theocritus have hymned you in glad Greek;
But I am not as they,—and dare not speak
Of you unworthily, and dare not praise
Perfection with imperfect roundelays,
And desecrate the prize I dare to seek.
“I do not woo you, then, by fashioning
Vext analogues ’twixt you and Guenevere,
Nor do I come with agile lips that bring
The sugared periods of a sonneteer,
And bring no more—but just with, lips that cling
To yours, in murmuring, ‘I love you, dear!’”
Richard had resolved that Branwen should believe him. Tinsel, indeed! then here was yet more tinsel which she must receive as gold. He was very angry, because his vanity was hurt, and the pin-prick spurred him to a counterfeit so specious that consciously he gloried in it. He was superb, and she believed him now; there was no questioning the fact, he saw it plainly, and with exultant cruelty; then curt as lightning came the knowledge that what Branwen believed was the truth.
Richard had taken just two strides toward this fair girl. Branwen stayed motionless, her lips a little parted. The affairs of earth and heaven were motionless throughout the moment, attendant, it seemed to him; and to him his whole life was like a wave that trembled now at full height, and he was aware of a new world all made of beauty and of pity. Then the lute fell from his spread out hands, and Richard sighed, and shrugged.
“There is a task set me,” he said—“it is God’s work, I think. But I do not know—I only know that you are very beautiful, Branwen,” he said, and in the name he found a new and piercing loveliness.
And he said also: “Go! For I have loved many women, and, God help me! I know that I have but to wheedle you and you, too, will yield! Yonder is God’s work to be done, and within me rages a commonwealth of devils. Child! child!” he cried, “I am, and ever was, a coward, too timid to face life without reserve, and always I laughed because I was afraid to concede that anything is serious!”
For a long while Richard lay at his ease in the lengthening shadows of the afternoon.
“I love her. She thinks me an elderly imbecile with a flat and reedy singing-voice, and she is perfectly right. She has never even entertained the notion of loving me. That is well, for to-morrow, or, it may be, the day after, we must part forever. I would not have the parting make her sorrowful—or not, at least, too unalterably sorrowful. It is very well that Branwen does not love me.
“Why should she? I am almost twice her age, an aging fellow now, battered and selfish and too indolent to love her—say, as Gwyllem loved her. I did well to kill that Gwyllem. I am profoundly glad I killed him, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it; but, after all, the man loved her in his fashion, and to the uttermost reach of his gross nature. I love her in a rather more decorous and acceptable fashion, it is true, but only a half of me loves her. The other half of me remembers that I am aging, that Caradawc’s hut is leaky, that, in fine, bodily comfort is the single luxury of which one never tires. I am a very contemptible creature, the empty scabbard of a man, precisely as Owain said.” This settled, Richard whistled to his dog.
The sun had set. There were no shadows anywhere as Richard and his sheep went homeward, but on every side the colors of the world were more sombre. Twice his flock roused a covey of partridges which had settled for the night. The screech-owl had come out of his hole, and bats were already blundering about, and the air was cooling. There was as yet but one star in the green and cloudless heaven, and this was very large, like a beacon: it appeared to him symbolical that he trudged away from this star.
Next morning the Welshmen came, and now the trap was ready for Henry of Lancaster.
It befell just two days later, about noon, that while Richard idly talked with Branwen a party of soldiers, some fifteen in number, rode down the river’s bank from the ford above. Their leader paused, then gave an order. The men drew rein. He cantered forward.
“God give you joy, fair sir,” said Richard, when the cavalier was near him.
The new-comer raised his visor. “God give you eternal joy, my fair cousin,” he said, “and very soon. Now send away this woman before that happens which must happen.”
“Do you plan,” said Richard, “to disfigure the stage of our quiet pastorals with murder?”
“I design my own preservation,” King Henry answered, “for while you live my rule is insecure.”
“I am sorry,” Richard said, “that in part my blood is yours.”
Twice he sounded his horn, and everywhere from rustling underwoods arose the half-naked Welshmen. Said Richard: “You should read history more carefully, Cousin Henry. You might have profited, as I have done, by considering the trick which our grandfather, old Edward Longshanks, played on the French King at Mezelais. As matters stand, your men are one to ten. You are impotent. Now, now we balance our accounts! These persons here will first deal with your followers. Then they will conduct you to Glyndwyr, who has long desired to deal with you himself, in privacy, since that Whit-Monday when you murdered his son.”
The King began, “In mercy, sire—!” and Richard laughed a little, saying:
“That virtue is not overabundant among us of Oriander’s blood, as we both know. No, cousin, Fate and Time are merry jesters. See, now, their latest mockery! You the King of England ride to Sycharth to your death, and I the tender of sheep depart into London, without any hindrance, to reign henceforward over these islands. To-morrow you are worm’s-meat, Cousin Henry: to-morrow, as yesterday, I am King of England.”
Then Branwen gave one sharp, brief cry, and Richard forgot all things saving this girl, and strode to her. He had caught up her hard, lithe hands; against his lips he strained them close and very close.
“Branwen—!” he said. His eyes devoured her.
“Yes, King,” she answered. “O King of England! O fool that I have been to think you less!”
In a while Richard said: “Well, I at least am not fool enough to think of making you a king’s whore. So I must choose between a peasant wench and England. Now I choose, and how gladly! Branwen, help me to be more than King of England!”
Low and very low he spoke, and long and very long he gazed at her, and neither seemed to breathe. Of what she thought I cannot tell you; but in Richard there was no power of thought, only a great wonderment. Why, between this woman’s love and aught else there was no choice for him, he knew upon a sudden. Perhaps he would thus worship her always, he reflected: and then again, perhaps he would be
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