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

“I will make an offering to Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne! But I will thank you, too,—and most, I think.”

“It rests,” said Gaucelm, “that you must marry.”

“Ah, must I so surely?”

Prince Gaucelm regarded her ponderingly, with bent brows. “What is there else for women? You will not be a nun?”

“Not I!”

“Fief by fief,” said Gaucelm, “Roche-de-Frêne was built, now by conquest and now by alliance. If I have no son, you are my heir. There is a bell that rings in all men’s ears. Make for your heir betimes a prudent marriage, adding land to land, gold to gold!”

“Does it ring so joyously in your ears? It does not ring joyously in mine. No, nor with a goodly, solemn sound!”

“It is the world’s way,” said the prince. “I do not know if it is the right way.”

The Princess Audiart watched the dove, iris against the morning sky, then turned, full face, to her father. “I am not fair,” she said. “Men who[102] want just that will never want me. It seems to me also that I am not loving. At times, when I listen to what they say, I want to laugh. I can see great love. But it seems to me that what they see is not great love.... Well, but we marry without love! Well, it seems to me that that is very irksome!—Well, but you may have a knight to love, so that it be courtly love and your lord’s honour goes unhurt! Well, it seems to me that that is children’s love.—I wish not to marry, but to stay here and learn and learn and learn, and with you rule and serve Roche-de-Frêne!”

In the distance a horn was winded. The mounting sun struck strongly upon the roofs of Roche-de-Frêne. The dove spread its wings and flew down to its cote. Voices and a sound of trampling hoofs came from the court, and a nearer trumpet blew.

“Time and the mind have wings,” said Prince Gaucelm, “and it is not well to look too far into the future!” He rose from his chair. “Load not the camel and the day too heavily! Let us go now and watch the knights joust.”

The tournament was held without the walls, in a long meadow sunk like a floor between verdant slopes of earth. At either end were pavilions, pitched for those who jousted. Midway of the lists appeared a wreathed platform, silken-canopied, built for the great. Right and left of this space of honour was found place for men-at-arms and castle retainers, and likewise for the magistrates of the town and the[103] more important burghers. But on the other side of the lists there were slopes of turf with out-cropping stones and an occasional well-placed tree, and here the town poured out its workers, men and women. The crowd was cheerful. There surged a loud, beating sea of talk. Up and down and across sprang glitter and light, with sharp notes of colour. Squires and men-at-arms, heralds and pages gave their quota. Nor did there lack priest and pilgrim,—and that though the Church thundered against tournaments,—Jew, free-lance and travelling merchant, jongleur and stroller. All was gay beneath a bright blue sky, and esquires held the knights’ horses before the painted pavilions.

The trumpets blew, and out of the castle gates and down the road cut in the living rock came the great folk. When they reached the meadow and the gallery built for them, and when presently all were seated, it was like a long bank of flowers, coloured glories. At each end of the lists waited twenty knights in mail with painted surcoats. Between, over the green meadow, rode and staidly consulted the marshals. Horses neighed, metal jingled, the folk laughed, talked, gesticulated, now and then disputed. Jongleurs picked at stringed instruments, trumpeters made a gay shower of notes. Towers and battlements closed the scene, and the walled town spread upon the hill-top.

The prince did not tilt, but the duke had granted that during the day he would splinter one lance. His[104] pavilion was therefore pitched, his shield hung before it, and two esquires walked up and down with a great black stallion. Now, with Stephen the Marshal and with his own knights, he left the gallery of honour and went to arm himself. Edging the lists ran a pathway, wide enough for two horsemen abreast. A railing divided it from the throng. As the duke and his party passed along this road, the crowd, suddenly learning or conjecturing that here was the lord in whose honour was planned the tournament, craned, many-headed, that way. It was very important to know if this lord were going to wed the princess! There were townsmen who had caught the word and called her the ugly princess. As yet they did not know much about her, though they saw her ride through the streets with her father, and that she looked at the people not with haughtiness but attentively. Of Alazais they were proud. Merchants of Roche-de-Frêne, when they travelled far away and there insinuated the praises of home, bragged of the beauty of their lord’s wife. Her name was known in Eastern bazaars.—But if there was to be a marriage it was important, and important to know the looks of the bridegroom.

Some crowding took place, some pressing against the wooden barrier. At one point a plane tree, old and gnarled, stretched a bough above the pathway. It made a superb tower of observation and as such had been seized upon. The duke, walking with the marshal, and approaching this tree, became aware of[105] folk aloft, thick as fruit upon the bough, half-hidden by the bronzing leaves, and more vocal than elsewhere. Certain judgements floated down.

Holiday and festival encouraged licence of speech. The time enforced a reality of obedience from rank to rank, but that provided for, cared not to prevent mere wagging of tongues. The ruling castes never thought it out, but had they done so they might have said that it was not amiss that the people should somewhere indemnify themselves. Let them laugh, exercise their wit, so that it grew not too caustic—be merry-hearted, bold, and familiar! Who held the land held them, but it was pleasanter for the lord himself when the land knew jollity. Add that the courts of the south were more democratic than those of the north, and that Gaucelm was a democratic prince.

The duke was of another temper,—a martinet and a stickler for respect on the part of the vulgar. He caught the comment and flushed. “An unmannerly people!” he said to Stephen the Marshal.

That baron darted an experienced glance. “They are the younger, mechanical sort. Take no heed of them, fair lord.”

The remark caught had not been ill-natured, was more jocose than turbulent, might pass where any freedom of speech was accorded. But suddenly came clearly from the bough of the plane tree a genuinely seditious utterance. Given forth in a round, naturally sonorous voice, it carried further than the[106] speaker intended. “One day a burgher will be as good as a duke!”

The great folk were almost beneath that wide-spreading bough. They looked sharply up—the duke, Stephen the Marshal, all the knights. The voice said on, like an oracle aloft among the leaves: “The man in my skin isn’t any less than the man in his skin. I say that one day—”

A branch that had served to steady the oracle suddenly broke, snapping short. Amid ejaculations, oracle and branch came together to earth. Down they tumbled, on the inner side of the barrier, upon the grassy path before the duke and Stephen the Marshal.

Laughter arose with, on the knights’ side, some angry exclamation. The fallen man got hastily to his feet. “The branch was rotten—” He put a hand to either side his head, seemed to settle it upon his shoulders and recover his wits. “Give me pardon, good lords, for tumbling there like a pippin—” He was a young man, square-shouldered and sturdy, with crisply curling black hair, a determined mouth, and black, bold, and merry eyes.

Stephen the Marshal spoke sternly. “That bough brought you to earth, Thibaut Canteleu, but, an you rein it not, your tongue will bring you into earth!”

The offender turned his cap in his hand. “I spoke not to be heard by great lords,” he said. “I know not that I said harm. I said that, change my lord[107] duke and me, and I might make a fair duke, and he a fair master-saddler and worker in Cordovan! I think that he might, and I will tell you that it taketh skill—”

The duke saw fit to laugh, though after an irritated and peevish fashion. “Roche-de-Frêne,” he said, “breeds fair princesses and townsmen with limber tongues!—Well, my Lord Stephen, let us not tarry here!”

Lords and knights passed on toward the pavilions. Thibaut Canteleu, pressed aside, stood close to the barrier until they were gone, then put his hands upon the rail and swung himself up and over. The folk, men and women, received him with laughter, and some admiration, and he laughed at himself. Being a holiday, that was the best thing to do.

A jongleur, a dark Moorish-looking fellow in yellow and brown, accosted him. “Thou poor mad-house citizen! Burgher and knight, lion and lamb, priest and heretic, pope and paynim, villein and lord, jongleur and troubadour, Jean and Jeanne, let us all go to heaven together!”

“We might,” answered Thibaut Canteleu sturdily. “That is a fine lute of thine! Play us a tune while we wait.”

“Not I!” said the jongleur coolly. “It would demean me. Last night I gave a turn of my art in the hall up yonder, before the prince and all his court.—Who is this coming now, with a green-and-silver banner and fifty men behind him?”

[108]

The meadow was pitched by the high road running from the north, and now from this road there turned toward the lists, the holiday crowd, and the wreathed gallery, a troop of half a hundred mounted men, at their head one who seemed of importance. Not only the rustling people on the green banks, but the lists now making final preparation, and the silken-canopied gallery took cognizance of the approach. The troop came nearer. A tall man rode in front upon a bay mare. Behind him an esquire held aloft a spear with a small green-and-silver banner attached. A poursuivant, gorgeously clad, detached himself from the mass and cried out: “Montmaure!”

“Ha!” exclaimed Gaucelm the Fortunate. “Here is Count Savaric!” He spoke to the seneschal. “Take five or six of the best and go meet him. Bring him here with due honour.”

“Perhaps,” said Alazais, “he will joust. He is a mighty man of his arms and bears down good knights.”

The unlooked-for guests were now riding close at hand, coming upon the edge of the meadow, full before the platform of state. So important was this arrival, that for the moment it halted interest in the tourney. All turned to watch the troop with the green-and-silver banner.

Montmaure was less powerful than Roche-de-Frêne, but not greatly less. Roche-de-Frêne held from the French King Philip. Montmaure did homage[109] for his lands to Richard, Duke of Aquitaine. But there was a certain fief, a small barony,—to wit, the one that included Castel-Noir and Raimbaut the Six-fingered’s keep,—for which Montmaure had put his hands between the hands of Gaucelm of Roche-de-Frêne. To the extent of three castles with their villages Gaucelm was his liege lord. Now, as he came beneath the platform and immediately opposite that prince, he gave ceremonious recognition of the fact. Turning in his saddle, he drew his sword an inch from its sheath, holding the pommel toward the prince, then let it slip home again. Gaucelm the Fortunate made a sign of acceptance. The superb cavalcade passed on and in another moment was met by the welcoming seneschal.

It seemed that Montmaure would not joust, though several of his knights wished no better hour’s play. It was explained that he was travelling to Montferrat, proceeding on a visit to the marquis his kinsman. Last night he had slept with such a baron. To-day, servitors and sumpter-mules had gone on, but the count with his immediate following would halt at Roche-de-Frêne to enquire after the health and well-being of Prince Gaucelm.

With ceremony Montmaure was marshalled to the gallery, and, mounting the steps, came between the wreathed posts to the seats of state. The prince with Alazais rose to greet him. In Gaucelm of the Star’s time there had been trouble between Montmaure and[110] Roche-de-Frêne. Some harrying had taken place, the blood of a number of knights and men-at-arms been shed, a few hundred peasants slain. But this present Gaucelm was a man of peace, and had effected peace with Montmaure. But Roche-de-Frêne was sceptical of its lasting forever. Who knew Montmaure, knew an ambitious, grasping, warring lord—and a cruel and unscrupulous.

He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, long-armed, with red-gold hair and beard. When all courtesies of speech had been exchanged, when he had saluted in courtly fashion the most beautiful Alazais and the Princess Audiart, he took the chair of worth that was placed for him, and made enquiry for the duke. He had heard last night that he was a visitor at Roche-de-Frêne. Told that