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

THE GARDEN

The Abbot of Saint Pamphilius and Garin the squire rode westward—that is to say they rode away from the busy town of Roche-de-Frêne; the cathedral, where, atop the mounting tower, trowel clinked against stone; the bishop’s palace, where, that morning Ugo wrote a letter to Pope Alexander; and the vast castle with Gaucelm the Fortunate’s banner above it.

Roche-de-Frêne dyed with scarlet second only to that of Montpellier. It wove fine stuffs, its saddlers were known for their work, it made good weapons. Rome had left it a ruined amphitheatre—not so large as that at Arles, but large enough to house a trade. Here was the quarter of the moulders of candles. A fair wine was made in the country roundabout, brought to Roche-de-Frêne and sold, and thence sold again. It was a mart likewise for great, creamy-flanked cattle. They came in droves over the bridge that crossed the river and were sold and bought without the walls, in the long, poplar-streaked field where was held the yearly fair.

It was not a free town—not yet. Time was when its people had been serfs wholly, chattels and thralls completely of the lords who built the great castle.[74] Less than a hundred years ago that was still largely true. Then had entered small beginnings, fragmentary privileges, rights of trade, commutations, market grants. These had increased; every decade saw a little freedom filched. Lords must have wealth, and the craftsmen and traders made it; money-rent entered in place of old obediences. Silver paid off body-service. Skill increased, and the number of wares made, and commerce in them. Wealth increased. The town grew bolder and consciously strove for small liberties. Roche-de-Frêne was different now indeed from the old times when it had been wholly servile. It was growing with the strong twelfth century. All manner of ideas entered its head.

Gaucelm the Fortunate’s father had been Gaucelm the Crusader, Gaucelm of the Star. Certain of the ideas of the burghers of Roche-de-Frêne had been approved by this prince. Others found themselves stingingly rebuked. One of Roche-de-Frêne’s concepts of its own good might flourish in court favour, a second just exist like grass under a stone, wan and sere, a third encounter all the forces of extirpation. In the main Gaucelm of the Star bore hardly against the struggle for liberty. But at the last he took the cross, and needing moneys so that he might go to Jerusalem with great array, granted “privileges.” After three years he returned from Palestine and granted no more. He died and Gaucelm the Fortunate reigned. For five years he fought the ideas[75] of Roche-de-Frêne. Then he changed, almost in a night-time, and granted almost more than was asked. His barons and knights stared and wondered; Gaucelm was no weakling. Roche-de-Frêne sat down to digest and assimilate what it had gained. The town was no more radical than it thought reasonable. The meal was sufficient for the time being. There began a string of quiet years.

The bishop’s palace stood a long building, with wings at right angles. Before it spread a flagged place, and in the middle of this a fountain jetted, the water streaming from dolphins’ jaws. In old times the bishops of Roche-de-Frêne had been mightier than its ravening, war-shredded lords. Then had arisen the great line that built the castle and subdued the fiefs and turned from baron to prince and outweighed the bishops. The fountain, shifting its spray as the wind blew, had seen a-many matters, a-many ambitions rise and fall and rise again.

The fountain streamed and the spray shifted this autumn, while the trees turned to gold and bronze and the grapes were gathered, and through the country-side bare feet of peasants trod the wine-press, and over the bridge in droves lowed the cream-hued cattle. It rose and fell time before and time after that feast-day on which the squire Garin had knelt in the cathedral dusk between the Palestine pillars, before Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne in blue[76] samite and a gemmy crown. It streamed and sparkled on a sunny morning when Bishop Ugo, bound for the castle, behind him a secretary and other goodly following, checked his white mule beside the basin and blessed the lounging folk who sank upon their knees.

The process consumed no great while. Ugo was presently riding up the town’s chief street, a thoroughfare that marked the ridge pole of the hill of Roche-de-Frêne. People were abroad, and as he passed they did him reverence. He was a great churchman, who could hurt or help them, soul and body, here and hereafter! But at a quieter corner, before a pile of old, dark buildings, he came upon, and that so closely that his mantle almost brushed them, a man and two women, poorly dressed, who stood without movement or appeal for blessing. Had they been viewed at a distance, noted merely for three stony units in a bending crowd, the bishop had been too superb to notice, but here they were under his nose, unreverent, stocks before his eyes, their own eyes gazing as though he were not!

Ugo checked his mule, spoke sharply. “Why, shameless ones, do you not bend to Holy Church, her councillors and seneschals?”

The man spoke. “We bend to God.”

“To God within,” said one of the women. “Not to ill within—not to luxury, pomp, and tyranny!”

“Woe!” cried the other woman, the younger.[77] “Woe when the hearth no longer warms, but destroys!”

“Bougres,” spoke the secretary at his master’s ear. “Paulicians, Catharists, Bons hommes, Perfecti, Manichees.”

“That is to say, heretics,” said Ugo. “They grow hideously bold, having Satan for saviour and surety! Take order for these. Lodge complaint against them. See them laid fast in prison.”

The younger woman looked at him earnestly. “Ah, ah!” she said. “Thou poor prisoner! Let me whisper thee—there is a way out of thy dark hold! If only the door is not too high and wide and fully open for thine eyes to see it!”

“They are not of Roche-de-Frêne,” spoke the secretary. “I warrant them from Toulouse or Albi!”

“I, and more than I, have eyes upon Count Raymond of Toulouse,” said the bishop. “Two or three of you take these wretches to the right officer. And do thou, Nicholas, appear against them to-morrow.”

He touched his mule with his riding switch and rode on, a dark-browed man, with a thin cheek and thin, close-shutting lips. He was a martial bishop; he had fought in Sicily and at Damascus and Edessa, and at Constantinople.

The street ran steeply upward, closing where, in the autumn day, there spread and towered the castle. Ugo, approaching moat and drawbridge, put[78] with a customary action his hand over his lips and so regarded outer and inner walls, the southward-facing barbican and the towers that flanked it,—Lion Tower and Red Tower. Men-at-arms in number lounged within the gate, straightening when the warder cried the bishop’s train. Ugo took his hand from his lips and crossed the hollow-sounding bridge. He rode beneath the portcullis and through the deep, reverberating, vaulted passage opening on either hand into Lion Tower and Red Tower, and so came to the court of dismounting, where esquires and pages started into activity. From here he was marshalled, the secretary and a couple of canons behind him, to the Court of Honour, where met him other silken pages.

They bowed before him. “Lord Bishop, our great ones are gathered in the garden, harkening to troubadours.”

One of higher authority came and took the word from them. “My lord, I will lead you to where these rossignols are singing! They sing in honour of ladies, and of the court’s guest, the duke from Italy who would marry our princess!”

They moved through a noble, great hall, bare of all folk but doorkeepers.

“Will the match be made?” asked Ugo.

“We do not know,” answered his conductor. “Our Lady Alazais favours it. But we do not know the mind of Prince Gaucelm.”

Ugo walked in silence. His own mind was granting[79] with anger the truth of that. Presently he spoke in a measured voice. “If it be made, it will be a fair alliance. Undoubtedly a good marriage! For say that to our sorrow Prince Gaucelm hath never a son of his own, then it may come that his daughter’s son rule that duchy and this land.”

“Dame Alazais,” said the other in a tone of discreetness, “hath been six years a wife. The last pilgrimage brought naught, but the next may serve.”

“Pray Our Lady it may!” answered Ugo with lip-devoutness, “and so Gaucelm the Fortunate become more fortunate yet.—The Princess Audiart hath been from home.”

“Aye, at Our Lady in Egypt’s. But she is returned, the prince having sent for her. Hark! Raimon de Saint-Rémy is singing.”

There was to be heard, indeed, a fine, manly voice coming from where, through an arched exit, they now had a glimpse of foliage and sky. It sang loudly and boldly, a chanson of the best, a pæan to woman’s lips and throat and breast, a proud, determined declaration of slavery, a long, melodious cry for mistress mercy.

The bishop stood still to listen. “Ha!” he said, “many a song like that does my Lady Alazais hear!”

“Just,” answered his companion. “When they look on her they begin to sing.”

Moving forward they stood within the door that gave upon the garden. It lay before them, a velvet[80] sward enclosed by walls, with a high watch-tower pricked against the eastern heavens.

“It is a great pity,” said Ugo guardedly, “that the young princess stands so very far from her stepdame’s loveliness!”

“Aye, the court holds it a pity.”

“The prince hath an extraordinary affection toward her.”

“As great as if she were a son! She hath wit to please him,—though,” said he who acted usher, “she doth not please every one.”

They passed a screen of fruit trees and came upon a vision first of formal paths with grass, flowers, and aromatic herbs between, then of a wide raised space, stage or dais, of the smoothest turf that ever was. It had a backing of fruit trees, and behind these of grey wall and parapet, and it was attained by shallow steps of stone. On these, and on low seats and cushions and on banks of turf, sat or half-reclined men and women, for the most part youthful or in the prime of life. Others stood; others, men and women, away from the raised part, strolled through the garden that here was formal and here maintained a studied rusticity. The men wore neither armour nor weapons, save, maybe, a dagger. Men and women were very richly dressed, for even where was perpetual state, this was an occasion.

In a greater space than a confined castle garden they would not have seemed so many; as it was there appeared a throng. In reality there might be a hundred[81] souls. The castle was as populous as an ant-heap, but here was only the garland of the castle. The duke who was seeking a mate had with him the very spice-pink of his own court. He and they were of the garden. The festival that was made for him had drawn neighbouring barons and knights, vassals of Gaucelm. There was no time when such a court failed to entertain travellers of note, wandering knights, envoys of sorts, lords going in state to Italy on the one hand, to France or Spain or England on the other. Of such birds of passage several were in the garden. And there were troubadours of more than local fame, poets so great that they travelled with their own servants and jongleurs. When the bishop came with two canons in his train there were churchmen. And, moving or seated, glowed bright dames and damosels.

But in the centre sat Alazais, and she seemed, indeed, of Venus’s meinie. She was a fair beauty, with deep-red, perfect lips, and a curve of cheek and throat to make men tremble. Her long brown eyes, set well apart, had a trick of always looking from between half-shut lids. Her limbs spoke the same languor, and yet she had strength, strength, it seemed, of a pard or a great serpent. She was not pard