The Fortunes of Garin by Mary Johnston (romantic novels in english .txt) 📖

great hall appeared to blossom like the garden. At the table of state sat the prince and Alazais and the Princess Audiart, the duke, Bishop Ugo, and three or four others whom Gaucelm would honour. Musicians played in a gallery. Waiting men in long procession brought the viands—venison and peacocks, pasties of all kinds, mutton, spitted small birds, wheaten bread—a multitude of matters. Afterwards came cakes and tarts, with many fruits. Always there was wine served in rich cups. The oddity to a later taste would have been the excess of seasoning,—the pepper, saffron, ginger, cloves, the heat and pungency of the solid meats,—and then the honey dropped in wine. At the prince’s table a knight carved, at the others the noblest esquires. The apparel of the tables was rich; there were gold and silver vessels[92] of many sorts, dishes, bowls, fine knives and spoons,—but, high and low, no fork.

The hall was very large, and so the talk of many people, subdued in tone as, of late years, good manners had learnt to demand, created no more than a pleasant deep humming. For the most part the talk ran upon love, arms, and policy, the latest, most resounding public events, and the achievements and abilities, personal adventures and misadventures, of various members of the company. At the raised table it was high politics and what was occurring in the world of rulers, for that was what the duke liked to talk about and the prince bent the conversation to suit his guest. Bishop Ugo liked it, too. Ugo’s mind ran at times from realm to realm, but there was a main land in which he was most at home. In that he passioned, schemed, and strove for Holy Church’s temporal no less than spiritual ascendancy. The Hohenstauffen and Pope Alexander—Guelph and Ghibelline—Church and Empire—the new, young French King Philip, suzerain of Roche-de-Frêne—Henry the Second of England and his sons, specifically his son Richard, not so far from here, in Aquitaine—so ran the talk. The visiting duke spoke much, in the tone of peer to them of whom he spoke. Ugo listened close-lipped; now and then he entered eloquently, and always in the Papal service. The prince said little. It was not easy to discover where he stood. The barons at the table took judicious part. The dazzling Alazais displayed a flattering[93] interest, and the duke, noting that, gave his destrier further rein, shook a more determined lance. He spoke of that same Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, a man much talked of by his time, and he related instances that showed that Richard’s strength and weakness. He bore hard upon a fantastic generosity which, appealed to, could at times make Richard change and forsake his dearest plans.

The Princess Audiart sipped her wine. She heard the duke as in a dream. Atop of all the voices in the hall her mind was off in a forest glade.... She looked across at the prince her father. She had not told him of that adventure—of how she had desperately tired of Our Lady in Egypt and of her aunt the Abbess and of most of her own women, and would spend one day a-shepherdessing, and had done so. She was going to tell him—even though she reckoned on some anger. She had for Gaucelm a depth of devotion.... A forest glade, and an evil knight and a squire in brown and green—and now what were they talking of?

That afternoon half the court rode out a-hawking. The prince did not go; he was heavy now for the saddle. But the duke rode, and the two princesses. The day was good, the sport was fair; the great thing, air and exercise, all obtained without thinking of it. There was much mirthful sound, laughter, men’s voices and women’s voices. Alazais dazzled; so fair was she on her white palfrey that had its mane tied with little silver bells. The duke rode[94] constantly by her side. The Princess Audiart had for escort Stephen the Marshal, a goodly baron and knight. The duke was well and correct where he was, Alazais being Gaucelm’s princess, and his hostess. Manners demanded toward the younger princess a decorum of restraint and distance. Only this restraint should have been managed with an exquisite semblance of repressed ardour, with a fineness of “Truly a fair and precious link between Houses!” This it was that was missing, and noted as missing by every knight and lady that went a-hawking.

The return to the castle was made in the sunset-glow. Supper followed, and after supper a short interval of repose. Then all met again in the cleared hall and the musicians began to play. Gaucelm in red samite sat upon the dais, and by him the duke in purple. Alazais, in white, with a jewelled zone and a mantle hued like flame, looked Venus come to earth. Beside her sat the ugly princess in dark blue over a silver robe.

Before them, on the floor of the hall, knights and ladies trod an intricate measure. Great candles burned, viols and harps, the jongleurs played their best, varlets stationed by the walls scattered Eastern perfumes. The duke, with a word to the prince his host, rose and bending to Alazais offered his hand. All watched this couple—the measure over, all acclaimed. The duke led Alazais again to the dais, then did what others must expect of him and he of[95] himself. “Fair, sweet lady,” he said to Gaucelm’s daughter. “Will you grace me with this measure?”

The ugly princess gave him her finger-tips. He led her upon the floor and they danced. As the measure, formal and stately, dictated, now they took attitudes before each other, now they came together, palms and fingers touching, now again parted. They were watched with strong interest by the length and breadth of the hall, by both the Court of Roche-de-Frêne and the duke’s following. A marriage such as this—say, what men began to doubt, that it came to pass—by no means concerned only the two who married. Thousands of folk were concerned, their children and their children’s children.

Gaucelm the Fortunate watched from his dais and his great chair, where he sat with bent elbow and his chin resting upon his hand. Sitting so, he opened his other hand and looked again at a small piece of cotton paper that had been slipped within it. Upon the paper appeared, in the up-and-down, architectural writing of the period, these words: “Messire, my father; do not, of your good pity, make me wed this lord! I will be unhappy. You will be unhappy. He will be unhappy. I do think that our lands and his lands will be unhappy. Messire my father, I do not wish to wed.” Prince Gaucelm closed his hand and watched again.

The duke was dancing stiffly, with a bad grace masked as well as he could mask anything that he truly felt. He wished to be prudent, and certainly[96] it were not prudent to give to Roche-de-Frêne either open or secret offence. Not yet, even, had he determined.—He yet might, and he might not.—But he was an arrogant man and a vain, and to his own mind it was important that the world should not think he was fooled. Lasting love between lord and lady, duke and duchess, mattered, forsooth, little enough! It was not in the bond. When it came to beauty, he had seen great queens without beauty of face or form. But the duke, though he had it not himself, demanded that beauty in any woman immediately about him, and with it complaisance, bent head, and burning of incense. And he wished men to envy him, in some sort, all his goods, including the woman whom he would make duchess. That was where Gaucelm was fortunate. What living man, thought the duke, but would like to take from him golden Alazais?

He danced as starkly as though he were in hauberk and helmet, and his hand might have been mailed, so stiffly did it touch Audiart’s hand. Who would envy him this Egyptian? He never noted if she danced well or ill, if she had some grace of body or no; he looked for no expression in her face that he might admire. She was outlandish—ugly. There was—as would have become such a changeling—no awe of him, no tremulous fear lest she should not please. He had an injured, hot heart within him. Report had been too careless, bringing him only news that here was a marriageable princess.[97] He blamed his councillors, determined to withdraw his favour from one who had been called his bosom friend, but who had advocated this match. He blamed Gaucelm, who, to his elaborate letter, had answered only with an invitation to visit Roche-de-Frêne. He should have said: “Fair lord, you do my daughter too much honour, who, you must know—” But chiefly the duke blamed that princess herself.

The measure was over. The duke and the princess returned to the dais. The jongleurs played loudly. The candles burned, the flung perfumes floated through the hall. The music hid the whispers. Gaucelm the Fortunate sat with a slight smile, his chin upon his hand. For an interlude there was brought upon the floor the jongleur who had made part of the forenoon’s entertainment. Elias of Montaudon he called himself, and he was skilful beyond the ordinary with balls of coloured glass and Eastern platters and daggers.

The ugly princess wished the taste of that dance taken from her lips. She watched the jongleur, and because he was all in brown and yellow like an autumn leaf and was as light as one and as quick as a woodland creature, he brought the country to her mind and made her see forests and streams. Her mother had been a mountain lady, and she herself would have liked to rove the earth. She sat still, her gaze straight before her, seeing the coloured balls, but beyond them imagined lands and wanderings.

[98]

The duke spoke across to the prince her father, and the words came clean and clear to her hearing, and to that of Stephen the Marshal and others standing near. “I have had letters, sir,” said the duke, “which make me to think that I am required at home.”

[99]