Chapter V: Part 5

"Sit down!" snarled Gloucester. His lean and evil countenance was that of a tired devil. The priest obeyed, wondering that so high an honor should be accorded him in the view of three great noblemen. Then Gloucester said, in his sharp way: "Edward, you know, as England knows, the King's intention toward us three and our adherents. It has come to our demolishment or his. I confess a preference in the matter. I have consulted with the Pope concerning the advisability of taking the crown into my own hands. Edmund here does not want it, and my brother John is already achieving one in Spain. Eh, in imagination I was already King of England, and I had dreamed--Well! to-day the prosaic courier arrived. Urban--the Neapolitan swine!--dares give me no assistance. It is decreed I shall never reign in these islands. And I had dreamed--Meanwhile, de Vere and de la Pole are at the King day and night, urging revolt. As matters go, within a week or two, the three heads before you will be embellishing Temple Bar. You, of course, they will only hang."

"We must avoid England, then, my noble patron," the priest considered.

Angrily the Duke struck a clenched fist upon the table. "By the Cross! we remain in England, you and I and all of us. Others avoid. The Pope and the Emperor will have none of me. They plead for the Black Prince's heir, for the legitimate heir. Dompnedex! they shall have him!"

Maudelain recoiled, for he thought this twitching man insane.

"Besides, the King intends to take from me my fief at Sudbury," said the Duke of York, "in order to give it to de Vere. That is both absurd and monstrous and abominable."

Openly Gloucester sneered. "Listen!" he rapped out toward Maudelain; "when they were drawing up the Great Peace at Brétigny, it happened, as is notorious, that the Black Prince, my brother, wooed in this town the Demoiselle Alixe Riczi, whom in the outcome he abducted. It is not so generally known, however, that, finding this sister of the Vicomte de Montbrison a girl of obdurate virtue, my brother had prefaced the action by marriage."

"And what have I to do with all this?" said Edward Maudelain.

Gloucester retorted: "More than you think. For this Alixe was conveyed to Chertsey, here in England, where at the year's end she died in childbirth. A little before this time had Sir Thomas Holland seen his last day,--the husband of that Joane of Kent whom throughout life my brother loved most marvellously. The disposition of the late Queen-Mother is tolerably well known. I make no comment save that to her moulding my brother was as so much wax. In fine, the two lovers were presently married, and their son reigns to-day in England. The abandoned son of Alixe Riczi was reared by the Cistercians at Chertsey, where some years ago I found you."

He spoke with a stifled voice, wrenching forth each sentence; and now with a stiff forefinger flipped a paper across the table. "_In extremis_ my brother did more than confess. He signed,--your Majesty," said Gloucester. The Duke on a sudden flung out his hands, like a wizard whose necromancy fails, and the palms were bloodied where his nails had cut the flesh.

"Moreover, my daughter was born at Sudbury," said the Duke of York.

And of Maudelain's face I cannot tell you. He made pretence to read the paper carefully, but his eyes roved, and he knew that he stood among wolves. The room was oddly shaped, with eight equal sides: the ceiling was of a light and brilliant blue, powdered with many golden stars, and the walls were hung with smart tapestries which commemorated the exploits of Theseus. "Then I am King," this Maudelain said aloud, "of France and England, and Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine! I perceive that Heaven loves a jest." He wheeled upon Gloucester and spoke with singular irrelevance, "And what is to be done with the present Queen?"

Again the Duke shrugged. "I had not thought of the dumb wench. We have many convents."

Now Maudelain twisted the paper between his long, wet fingers and appeared to meditate.

"It would be advisable, your Grace," observed the Earl of Derby, suavely, and breaking his silence for the first time, "that you yourself should wed Dame Anne, once the Apostolic See has granted the necessary dispensation. Treading too close upon the fighting requisite to bring about the dethronement and death of our nominal lord the so-called King, a war with Bohemia, which would be only too apt to follow this noble lady's assassination, would be highly inconvenient, and, lacking that, we would have to pay back her dowry."

Then these three princes rose and knelt before the priest; they were clad in long bright garments, and they glittered with gold and many jewels. He standing among them shuddered in his sombre robe. "Hail, King of England!" cried these three.

"Hail, ye that are my kinsmen!" he answered; "hail, ye that spring of an accursed race, as I! And woe to England for that hour wherein Manuel of Poictesme held traffic with the Sorceress of Provence, and the devil's son begot an heir for England! Of ice and of lust and of hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and fickle and cold and ravenous and without shame are all our race until the end. Of your brother's dishonor ye make merchandise to-day, and to-day fratricide whispers me, and leers, and, Heaven help me! I attend. O God of Gods! wilt Thou dare bid a man live stainless, having aforetime filled his veins with such a venom? Then haro, will I cry from Thy deepest hell.... Oh, now let the adulterous Redeemer of Poictesme rejoice in his tall fires, to note that his descendants know of what wood to make a crutch! You are very wise, my kinsmen. Take your measures, messieurs who are my kinsmen! Though were I of any other race, with what expedition would I now kill you, I that recognize within me the strength to do it! Then would I slay you! without any animosity, would I slay you then, just as I would kill as many splendid snakes!"

He went away, laughing horribly. Gloucester drummed upon the table, his brows contracted. But the lean Duke said nothing; big York seemed to drowse; and Henry of Derby smiled as he sounded a gong for that scribe who would draw up the necessary letters. The Earl's time was not yet come, but it was nearing.

In the antechamber the priest encountered two men-at-arms dragging a dead body from the castle. The Duke of Kent, Maudelain was informed, had taken a fancy to a peasant girl, and in remonstrance her misguided father had actually tugged at his Grace's sleeve.

Maudelain went into the park of Windsor, where he walked for a long while alone. It was a fine day in the middle spring; and now he seemed to understand for the first time how fair was his England. For all England was his fief, held in vassalage to God and to no man alive, his heart now sang; allwhither his empire spread, opulent in grain and metal and every revenue of the earth, and in stalwart men (his chattels), and in strong orderly cities, where the windows would be adorned with scarlet hangings, and women (with golden hair and red lax lips) would presently admire as King Edward rode slowly by at the head of a resplendent retinue. And always the King would bow, graciously and without haste, to his shouting people.... He laughed to find himself already at rehearsal of the gesture.

It was strange, though, that in this glorious fief of his so many persons should, as yet, live day by day as cattle live, suspicious of all other moving things (with reason), and roused from their incurious and filthy apathy only when some glittering baron, like a resistless eagle, swept uncomfortably near as he passed on some by-errand of the more bright and windy upper-world. East and north they had gone yearly, for so many centuries, these dumb peasants, to fight out their master's uncomprehended quarrel, and to manure with their carcasses the soil of France and of Scotland. Give these serfs a king, now, who (being absolute), might dare to deal in perfect equity with rich and poor, who with his advent would bring Peace into England as his bride, as Trygaeus did very anciently in Athens--"And then," the priest paraphrased, "may England recover all the blessings she has lost, and everywhere the glitter of active steel will cease." For everywhere men would crack a rustic jest or two, unhurriedly. Virid fields would heave brownly under their ploughs; they would find that with practice it was almost as easy to chuckle as it was to cringe.

Meanwhile on every side the nobles tyrannized in their degree, well clothed and nourished, but at bottom equally comfortless in condition. As illuminate by lightning Maudelain saw the many factions of his barons squabbling for gross pleasures, like wolves over a corpse, and blindly dealing death to one another to secure at least one more delicious gulp before that inevitable mangling by the teeth of some burlier colleague. The complete misery of England showed before Maudelain like a winter landscape. The thing was questionless. He must tread henceforward without fear among frenzied beasts, and to their ultimate welfare. On a sudden Maudelain knew himself to be invincible and fine, and hesitancy ebbed.

True, Richard, poor fool, must die. Squarely the priest faced that stark and hideous circumstance; to spare Richard was beyond his power, and the boy was his brother; yes, this oncoming King Edward would be a fratricide, and after death would be irrevocably damned. To burn, and eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the torment was eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of Richard's ignoble life and of Edward's inconsiderable soul, to win so many men to manhood was not a bargain to be refused.

The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden which adjoined Dame Anne's apartments. He found the Queen there, alone, as nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused to wonder at her bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd was this beauty, he reflected, too; how alien in its effect to that of any other woman in sturdy England, and how associable it was, somehow, with every wild and gracious denizen of the woods which blossomed yonder.

In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but undiluted. They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short to ripple, which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and left, birds sang as if in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint and radiant blue throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the zenith, so that the Queen's brows cast honey-colored shadows upon either cheek. The priest was greatly troubled by the proud and heatless brilliancies, the shrill joys, of every object within the radius of his senses.

She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, tinted like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and wore over all a gown of white, cut open on each side as far as the hips. This garment was embroidered with golden leopards and was trimmed with ermine. About her yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein emeralds glowed. Her blue eyes were as large and shining and changeable (he thought) as two oceans in midsummer; and Maudelain stood motionless and seemed to himself but to revere, as the Earl Ixion did, some bright unstable wisp of cloud, while somehow all elation departed from him as water does from a wetted sponge compressed. He laughed discordantly.

"Wait--! O my only friend--!" said Maudelain. Then in a level voice he told her all, unhurriedly and without any apparent emotion.

She had breathed once, with a deep inhalation. She had screened her countenance from his gaze the while you might have counted fifty. Presently she said: "This means more war, for de Vere and Tressilian and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons know that the King's fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands die to-morrow."

He answered, "It means a war which will make me King of England, and will make you my wife."

"In that war the nobles will ride abroad with banners and gay surcoats, and will kill and ravish in the pauses of their songs; while daily in that war the naked peasants will kill the one the other, without knowing why."

His thought had forerun hers. "Yes, some must die, so that in the end I may be King, and the general happiness may rest at my disposal. The adventure of this world is wonderful, and it goes otherwise than under the strict tutelage of reason."

"It would not be yours, but Gloucester's and his barons'. Friend, they would set you on the throne to be their puppet and to move only as they pulled the strings. Thwart them in their maraudings and they will fling you aside, as the barons have pulled down every king that dared oppose them. No, they desire to live pleasantly, to have fish on Fridays, and white bread and the finest wine the whole year through, and there is not enough for all, say they. Can you alone contend against them? and conquer them? for not unless you can do this may I dare bid you reign."

The sun had grown too bright, too merciless, but as always she drew the truth from him. "I could not venture to oppose in anything the barons who supported my cause: for if I did, I would not endure a fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor I nor any one may transform through any personal force this bitter world, this piercing, cruel place of frost and sun. Charity and Truth are excommunicate, and a king is only an adorned and fearful person who leads wolves toward their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and devour him. Everywhere the powerful labor to put one another out of worship, and each to stand the higher with the other's corpse as his pedestal; and Lechery and Greed and Hatred sway these proud and inconsiderate fools as winds blow at will the gay leaves of autumn. We walk among shining vapors, we aspire to overpass a mountain of unstable sparkling sand! We two alone in all the scuffling world! Oh, it is horrible, and I think that Satan plans the jest! We dream for a while of refashioning this bright desolation, and know that we alone can do it! we are as demigods, you and I, in those gallant dreams! and at the end we can but poultice some dirty rascal!"

The Queen answered sadly: "Once and only once did God tread this tangible world, for a very little while, and, look you, to what trivial matters He devoted that brief space! Only to chat with fishermen, and to talk with light women, and to consort with rascals, and at last to die between two cutpurses, ignominiously! If Christ Himself achieved so little that seemed great and admirable, how should we two hope to do any more?"

He answered: "It is true. Of anise and of cumin the Master gets His tithe--" Maudelain broke off with a yapping laugh. "Puf! Heaven is wiser than we. I am King of England. It is my heritage."

"It means war. Many will die, thousands will die, and to no betterment of affairs."

"I am King of England. I am Heaven's satrap here, and answerable to Heaven alone. It is my heritage." And now his large and cruel eyes were aflame as he regarded her.

And visibly beneath their glare the woman changed. "My friend, must I not love you any longer? You would be content with happiness? Then I am jealous of that happiness! for you are the one friend that I have had, and so dear to me--Look you!" she said, with a light, wistful laugh, "there have been times when I was afraid of everything you touched, and I hated everything you looked at. I would not have you stained; I desired to pass my whole life between the four walls of some dingy and eternal gaol, forever alone with you, lest you become like other men. I would in that period have been the very bread you eat, the least perfume which delights you, the clod you touch in crushing it, and I have often loathed some pleasure I derived from life because I might not transfer it to you undiminished. For I wanted somehow to make you happy to my own anguish.... It was wicked, I suppose, for the imagining of it made me happy, too."

Now while he listened to this dear and tranquil speaking, Edward Maudelain's raised hands had fallen like so much lead, and remembering his own nature, he longed for annihilation, before she had appraised his vileness. He said:

"With reason Augustine crieth out against the lust of the eyes. 'For pleasure seeketh objects beautiful, melodious, fragrant, savory, and soft; but this disease those contrary as well, not for the sake of suffering annoyance, but out of the lust of making trial of them!' Ah! ah! too curiously I planned my own damnation, too presumptuously I had esteemed my soul a worthy scapegoat, and I had gilded my enormity with many lies. Yet indeed, indeed, I had believed brave things, I had planned a not ignoble bargain--! Ey, say, is it not laughable, madame?--as my birth-right Heaven accords me a penny, and with that only penny I must presently be seeking to bribe Heaven."

Then he said: "Yet are we indeed God's satraps, as but now I cried in my vainglory, and we hold within our palms the destiny of many peoples. Depardieux! God is wiser than we are. Still, Satan offers no unhandsome bribes--bribes that are tangible and sure. For Satan, too, is wiser than we are."

They stood like effigies, lit by the broad, unsparing splendor of the morning, but again their kindling eyes had met, and again the man shuddered. "Decide! oh, decide very quickly, my only friend!" he said, "for throughout I am all filth!"

Closer she drew to him, and laid one hand upon each shoulder. "O my only friend!" she breathed, with red lax lips which were very near to his, "through these six years I have ranked your friendship as the chief of all my honors! and I pray God with an entire heart that I may die so soon as I have done what I must do to-day!"

Now Maudelain was trying to smile, but he could not quite manage it. "God save King Richard!" said the priest. "For by the cowardice and greed and ignorance of little men is Salomon himself confounded, and by them is Hercules lightly unhorsed. Were I Leviathan, whose bones were long ago picked clean by pismires, I could perform nothing against the will of many human pismires. Therefore do you pronounce my doom."

"O King," then said Dame Anne, "I bid you go forever from the court and live forever a landless man, friendless, and without even any name. Otherwise, you can in no way escape being made an instrument to bring about the misery and death of many thousands. This doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's satraps, you and I."

Twice or thrice his dry lips moved before he spoke. He was aware of innumerable birds that carolled with a piercing and intolerable sweetness. "O Queen!" he hoarsely said, "O fellow satrap! Heaven has many fiefs. A fair province is wasted and accords to Heaven no revenue. So wastes beauty, and a shrewd wit, and an illimitable charity, which of their pride go in fetters and achieve no increase. To-day the young King junkets with his flatterers, and but rarely thinks of England. You have that beauty by which men are lightly conquered, and the mere sight of which may well cause a man's voice to tremble as my voice trembles now, and through desire of which--But I tread afield! Of that beauty you have made no profit. O daughter of the Caesars, I bid you now gird either loin for an unlovely traffic. Old Legion must be fought with fire. True that the age is sick, true that we may not cure, we can but salve the hurt--" His hand had torn open his sombre gown, and the man's bared breast shone in the sunlight, and on his breast heaved sleek and glittering beads of sweat. Twice he cried the Queen's name. In a while he said: "I bid you weave incessantly such snares of brain and body as may lure King Richard to be swayed by you, until against his will you daily guide this shallow-hearted fool to some commendable action. I bid you live as other folk do hereabouts. Coax! beg! cheat! wheedle! lie!" he barked like a teased dog, "and play the prostitute for him that wears my crown, till you achieve in part the task which is denied me. This doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, because we are royal and God's satraps, you and I."

She answered with a tiny, wordless sound. But presently, "I take my doom," the Queen proudly said. "I shall be lonely now, my only friend, and yet--it does not matter," the Queen said, with a little shiver. "No, nothing will ever greatly matter now, I think, now that I may not ever see you any more, my dearest."

Her eyes had filled with tears; she was unhappy, and, as always, this knowledge roused in Maudelain a sort of frenzied pity and a hatred, quite illogical, of all other things existent. She was unhappy, that only he comprehended: and for her to be made unhappy was unjust.

So he stood thus for an appreciable silence, staying motionless save that behind his back his fingers were bruising one another. Everywhere was this or that bright color and an incessant melody. It was unbearable. Then it was over; the ordered progress of all happenings was apparent, simple, and natural; and contentment came into his heart like a flight of linnets over level fields at dawn. He left her, and as he went he sang.

Sang Maudelain:

"Christ save us all, as well He can,
A solis ortus cardine!
For He is both God and man,
Qui natus est de virgine,
And we but part of His wide plan
That sing, and heartily sing we,
'Gloria Tibi, Domine!'

"Between a heifer and an ass
Enixa est puerpera;
In ragged woollen clad He was
Qui régnât super aethera,
And patiently may we then pass
That sing, and heartily sing we,
'Gloria Tibi, Domine!'"

The Queen shivered in the glad sunlight. "I am, it must be, pitiably weak," she said at last, "because I cannot sing as he does. And, since I am not very wise, were he to return even now--But he will not return. He will never return," the Queen repeated, carefully. "It is strange I cannot comprehend that he will never return! Ah, Mother of God!" she cried, with a steadier voice, "grant that I may weep! nay, of thy infinite mercy let me presently find the heart to weep!" And about the Queen of England many birds sang joyously.

She sent for the King that evening, after supper, and they may well have talked of many matters, for he did not return to his own apartments that night. Next day the English barons held a council, and in the midst of it King Richard demanded to be told his age.

"Your Grace is in your twenty-second year," said the uneasy Gloucester, who was now with reason troubled, since he had been vainly seeking everywhere for the evanished Maudelain.

"Then I have been under tutors and governors longer than any other ward in my dominion. My lords, I thank you for your past services, but I need them no more." They had no check handy, and Gloucester in particular foreread his death-warrant, but of necessity he shouted with the others, "Hail, King of England!"

That afternoon the King's assumption of all royal responsibility was commemorated by a tournament, over which Dame Anne presided. Sixty of her ladies led as many knights by silver chains into the tilting-grounds at Smithfield, and it was remarked that the Queen appeared unusually mirthful. The King was in high good humor, a pattern of conjugal devotion; and the royal pair retired at dusk to the Bishop of London's palace at Saint Paul's, where was held a merry banquet, with dancing both before and after supper.

THE END OF THE SIXTH NOVEL

VII

THE STORY OF THE HERITAGE

"Pour vous je suis en prison mise,
En ceste chambre à voulte grise,
Et traineray ma triste vie
Sans que jamais mon cueur varie,
Car toujours seray vostre amye."

THE SEVENTH NOVEL.--ISABEL OF VALOIS, BEING FORSAKEN BY ALL OTHERS, IS BEFRIENDED BY A PRIEST, WHO IN CHIEF THROUGH A CHILD'S INNOCENCE, CONTRIVES AND EXECUTES A LAUDABLE IMPOSTURE, AND WINS THEREBY TO DEATH.

_The Story of the Heritage_

In the year of grace 1399 (Nicolas begins) dwelt in a hut near Caer Dathyl in Arvon, as he had dwelt for some five years, a gaunt hermit, notoriously consecrate, whom neighboring Welshmen revered as the Blessed Evrawc. There had been a time when people called him Edward Maudelain, but this period he dared not often remember.

For though in macerations of the flesh, in fasting, and in hour-long prayers he spent his days, this holy man was much troubled by devils. He got little rest because of them. Sometimes would come into his hut Belphegor in the likeness of a butler, and whisper, "Sire, had you been King, as was your right, you had drunk to-day not water but the wines of Spain and Hungary." Or Asmodeus saying, "Sire, had you been King, as was your right, you had lain now not upon the bare earth but on cushions of silk."

One day in early spring, they say, the spirit called Orvendile sent the likeness of a fair woman with yellow hair and large blue eyes. She wore a massive crown which seemed too heavy for her frailness to sustain. Soft tranquil eyes had lifted from her book. "You are my cousin now, messire," this phantom had appeared to say.

That was the worst, and Maudelain began to fear he was a little mad because even this he had resisted with many aves.

There came also to his hut, through a sullen snowstorm, upon the afternoon of All Soul's day, a horseman in a long cloak of black. He tethered his black horse and he came noiselessly through the doorway of the hut, and upon his breast and shoulders the snow was white as the bleached bones of those women that died in Merlin's youth.

"Greetings in God's name, Messire Edward Maudelain," the stranger said.

Since the new-comer spoke intrepidly of holy things a cheerier Maudelain knew that this at least was no demon. "Greetings!" he answered. "But I am Evrawc. You name a man long dead."

"But it is from a certain Bohemian woman I come. What matter, then, if the dead receive me?" And thus speaking, the stranger dropped his cloak.

He was clad, as you now saw, in flame-colored satin, which shimmered with each movement like a high flame. He had the appearance of a tall, lean youngster, with crisp, curling, very dark red hair. He now regarded Maudelain. He displayed peculiarly wide-set brown eyes; and their gaze was tender, and the tears somehow had come to Maudelain's eyes because of his great love for this tall stranger. "Eh, from the dead to the dead I travel, as ever," said the new-comer, "with a message and a token. My message runs, _Time is, O fellow satrap!_ and my token is this."

In this packet, wrapped with white parchment and tied with a golden cord, was only a lock of hair. It lay like a little yellow serpent in Maudelain's palm. "And yet five years ago," he mused, "this hair was turned to dust. God keep us all!" Then he saw the tall lean emissary puffed out like a candle-flame; and upon the floor he saw the huddled cloak waver and spread like ink, and he saw the white parchment slowly dwindle, as snow melts under the open sun. But in his hand remained the lock of yellow hair.

"O my only friend," said Maudelain, "I may not comprehend, but I know that by no unhallowed art have you won back to me." Hair by hair he scattered upon the floor that which he held. "_Time is!_ and I have not need of any token to spur my memory." He prized up a corner of the hearthstone, took out a small leather bag, and that day purchased a horse and a sword.

At dawn the Blessed Evrawc rode eastward in secular apparel. Two weeks later he came to Sunninghill; and it happened that the same morning the Earl of Salisbury, who had excellent reason to consider ...

_Follows a lacuna of fourteen pages. Maudelain's successful imposture of his half-brother, Richard the Second, so strangely favored by their physical resemblance, and the subsequent fiasco at Circencester, are now, however, tolerably well known to students of history._

_In one way or another, Maudelain contrived to take the place of his now dethroned brother, and therewith also the punishment designed for Richard. It would seem evident, from the Argument of the story in hand, that Nicolas de Caen attributes a large part of this mysterious business to the co-operancy of Isabel of Valois, King Richard's eleven year old wife. And (should one have a taste for the deductive) the foregoing name of Orvendile, when compared with "THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD," would certainly hint that Owain Glyndwyr had a finger in the affair._

_It is impossible to divine by what method, according to Nicolas, this Edward Maudelain was substituted for his younger brother. Nicolas, if you are to believe his "EPILOGUE," had the best of reasons for knowing that the prisoner locked up in Pontefract Castle in the February of 1400, after Harry of Derby had seized the crown of England, was not Richard Plantagenet: as is attested, also, by the remaining fragment of this same_ "STORY OF THE HERITAGE."

... and eight men-at-arms followed him.

Quickly Maudelain rose from the table, pushing his tall chair aside, and as he did this, one of the soldiers closed the door securely. "Nay, eat your fill, Sire Richard," said Piers Exton, "since you will not ever eat again."

"Is it so?" the trapped man answered quietly. "Then indeed you come in a good hour." Once only he smote upon his breast. "_Mea culpa!_ O Eternal Father, do Thou shrive me very quickly of all those sins I have committed, both in thought and deed, for now the time is very short."

And Exton spat upon the dusty floor. "Foh, they had told me I would find a king here. I discover only a cat that whines."

"Then 'ware his claws!" As a viper leaps Maudelain sprang upon the nearest fellow and wrested away his halberd. "Then 'ware his claws, my men! For I come of an accursed race. And now let some of you lament that hour wherein the devil's son begot an heir for England! For of ice and of lust and of hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and fickle and cold and ravenous and without fear are all our race until the end. Hah, until the end! O God of Gods!" this Maudelain cried, with a great voice, "wilt Thou dare bid a man die patiently, having aforetime filled his veins with such a venom? For I lack the grace to die as all Thy saints have died, without one carnal blow struck in my own defence. I lack the grace, my Father, for even at the last the devil's blood You gave me is not quelled. I dare atone for that old sin done by my father in the flesh, but yet I must atone as befits the race of Oriander!"

Then it was he and not they who pressed to the attack. Their meeting was a bloody business, for in that dark and crowded room Maudelain raged among his nine antagonists like an angered lion among wolves.

They struck at random and cursed shrilly, for they were now half-afraid of this prey they had entrapped; so that presently he was all hacked and bleeding, though as yet he had no mortal wound. Four of these men he had killed by this time, and Piers Exton also lay at his feet.

Then the other four drew back a little. "Are ye tired so soon?" said Maudelain, and he laughed terribly. "What, even you! Why, look ye, my bold veterans, I never killed before to-day, and I am not breathed as yet."

Thus he boasted, exultant in his strength. But the other men saw that behind him Piers Exton had crawled into the chair from which (they thought) King Richard had just risen, and they saw Exton standing erect in this chair, with both arms raised. They saw this Exton strike the King with his pole-axe, from behind, once only, and they knew no more was needed.

"By God!" said one of them in the ensuing stillness, and it was he who bled the most, "that was a felon's blow."

But the dying man who lay before them made as though to smile. "I charge you all to witness," he faintly said, "how willingly I render to Caesar's daughter that which was ever hers."

Then Exton fretted, as if with a little trace of shame: "Who would have thought the rascal had remembered that first wife of his so long? Caesar's daughter, saith he! and dares in extremis to pervert Holy Scripture like any Wycliffite! Well, he is as dead as that first Caesar now, and our gracious King, I think, will sleep the better for it. And yet--God only knows! for they are an odd race, even as he said--these men that have old Manuel's blood in them."

THE END OF THE SEVENTH NOVEL

VIII

THE STORY OF THE SCABBARD

"Ainsi il avait trouvé sa mie
Si belle qu'on put souhaiter.
N'avoit cure d'ailleurs plaider,
Fors qu'avec lui manoir et estre.
Bien est Amour puissant et maistre."

THE EIGHTH NOVEL.--BRANWEN OF WALES GETS A KING'S LOVE UNWITTINGLY, AND IN ALL INNOCENCE CONVINCES HIM OF THE LITTLENESS OF HIS KINGDOM; SO THAT HE BESIEGES AND IN DUE COURSE OCCUPIES ANOTHER REALM AS YET UNMAPPED.

_The Story of the Scabbard_

In the year of grace 1400 (Nicolas begins) King Richard, the second monarch of that name to rule in England, wrenched his own existence, and nothing more, from the close wiles of his cousin, Harry of Derby, who was now sometimes called Henry of Lancaster, and sometimes Bolingbroke. The circumstances of this evasion having been recorded in the preceding tale, it suffices here to record that this Henry was presently crowned King of England in Richard's place. All persons, saving only Owain Glyndwyr and Henry of Lancaster, believed King Richard dead at that period when Richard attended his own funeral, as a proceeding taking to the fancy, and, among many others, saw the body of Edward Maudelain interred with every regal ceremony in the chapel at Langley Bower. Then alone Sire Richard crossed the seas, and at thirty-three set out to inspect a transformed and gratefully untrammelling world wherein not a foot of land belonged to him.

Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his half-brothers; and to detail his Asian wanderings would be tedious and unprofitable. But at the end of each four months would come to him a certain messenger from Glyndwyr, supposed by Richard to be the imp Orvendile, who notoriously ran every day around the world upon the Welshman's business. It was in the Isle of Taprobane, where the pismires are as great as hounds, and mine and store the gold of which the inhabitants afterward rob them through a very cunning device, that this emissary brought the letter which read simply, "Now is England fit pasture for the White Hart." Presently Richard Holland was in Wales, and then he rode to Sycharth.

There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long stewardship. It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester, Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open revolt. "By the God I do not altogether serve," Owain ended, "you have but to declare yourself, sire, and within the moment England is yours."

Richard spoke with narrowed eyes. "You forget that while Henry of Lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign tranquilly in these islands. Come then! the hour strikes; and we will coax the devil for once in a way to serve God."

"Oh, but there is a boundary appointed," Glyndwyr moodily returned. "You, too, forget that in cold blood this Henry stabbed my best-loved son. But I do not forget this, and I have tried divers methods which we need not speak of,--I who can at will corrupt the air, and cause sickness and storms, raise heavy mists, and create plagues and fires and shipwrecks; yet the life itself I cannot take. For there is a boundary appointed, sire, and beyond that frontier the Master of our Sabbaths cannot serve us even though he would."

Richard crossed himself. "You horribly mistake my meaning. Your practices are your own affair, and in them I decline to dabble. I merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait. For you have a fief at Caer Idion, I think?--Very well! I intend to herd your sheep there, for a week or two, after the honorable example of Apollo. It is your part to see that Henry knows I am living disguised and defenceless at Caer Idion."

The gaunt Welshman chuckled. "Yes, squinting Henry of Lancaster would cross the world, much less the Severn, to make quite sure of Richard's death. He would come in his own person with at most some twenty trustworthy followers. I will have a hundred there; and certain aging scores will then be settled in that place." Glyndwyr meditated afterward, very evilly. "Sire," he said without prelude, "I do not recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have garnered much in travelling!"

"Why, look you," Richard returned, "I have garnered so much that I do not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. With age I begin to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing very seriously. You barons here believe it an affair of importance who may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you take sides between Henry and me. I tell you frankly that neither of us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything save discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking disaster. No, Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, depend upon it, to the burden of _Fools All_. For I am as liberally endowed as most people; and when I consider my abilities, my performances, my instincts, and so on, quite aloofly, as I would appraise those of another person, I can only shrug: and to conceive that common-sense, much less Omnipotence, would ever concern itself about the actions of a creature so entirely futile is, to me at least, impossible."

"I have known the thought," said Owain,--"though rarely since I found the Englishwoman that was afterward my wife, and never since my son, my Gruffyd, was murdered by a jesting man. He was more like me than the others, people said.... You are as yet the empty scabbard, powerless alike for help or hurt. Ey, hate or love must be the sword, sire, that informs us here, and then, if only for a little while, we are as gods."

"Pardie! I have loved as often as Salomon, and in fourteen kingdoms."

"We of Cymry have a saying, sire, that when a man loves par amours the second time he may safely assume that he has never been in love at all."

"--And I hate Henry of Lancaster as I do the devil."

"I greatly fear," said Owain with a sigh, "lest it may be your irreparable malady to hate nothing, not even that which you dislike. No, you consider things with both eyes open, with an unmanly rationality: whereas Sire Henry views all matters with that heroic squint which came into your family from Poictesme."

"Be off with your dusty scandals!" said Richard, laughing.

So then Glyndwyr rode south to besiege and burn the town of Caerdyf, while at Caer Idion Richard Holland abode tranquilly for some three weeks. There was in this place only Caradawc (the former shepherd), his wife Alundyne, and their sole daughter Branwen. They gladly perceived Sire Richard was no more a peasant than he was a curmudgeon; as Caradawc observed: "It is perfectly apparent that the robe of Padarn Beisrudd, which refuses to adjust itself to any save highborn persons, would fit him as a glove does the hand; but we will ask no questions, since it is not wholesome to dispute the orderings of Owain Glyndwyr."

Now day by day would Richard Holland drive the flocks to pasture near the Severn, and loll there in the shade, and make songs to his lute. He grew to love this leisured life of bright and open spaces; and its long solitudes, grateful with the warm odors of growing things and with poignant bird-noises; and the tranquillity of these meadows, that were always void of hurry, bedrugged the man through many fruitless and contented hours.

Each day at noon Branwen would bring his dinner, and she would sometimes chat with him while he ate. After supper he would discourse to Branwen of remote kingdoms, through which, as aimlessly as a wind veers, he had ridden at adventure, among sedate and alien peoples who adjudged him a madman; and she, in turn, would tell him curious tales from the _Red Book of Hergest_,--telling of Gwalchmai, and Peredur, and Geraint, in each one of which fine heroes she had presently discerned an inadequate forerunnership of Richard's existence.

This Branwen was a fair wench, slender and hardy. She had the bold demeanor of a child who is ignorant of evil and in consequence of suspicion. Happily, though, had she been named for that unhappy lady of old, the wife of King Matholwch, for this Branwen, too, had a white, thin, wistful face, like that of an empress on a silver coin which is a little worn. Her eyes were large and brilliant, colored like clear emeralds, and her abundant hair was so much cornfloss, only it was more brightly yellow and was of immeasurably finer texture. In full sunlight her cheeks were frosted like the surface of a peach, but the underlying cool pink of them was rather that of a cloud just after sunset, Richard decided. In all, a taking morsel! though her shapely hands were hard with labor, and she rarely laughed; for, as if in recompense, her heart was tender, and she rarely ceased to smile as though she were thinking of some peculiar and wonderful secret which she intended, in due time, to share with you and with nobody else. Branwen had many lovers, and preferred among them young Gwyllem ap Llyr, a portly lad, who was handsome enough, though he had tiny and piggish eyes, and who sang divinely.

One day this Gwyllem came to Richard with two quarter-staves. "Saxon," he said, "you appear a stout man. Take your pick of these, then, and have at you."

"Such are not the weapons I would have named," Richard answered: "yet in reason, Messire Gwyllem, I can deny you nothing that means nothing to me."

With that they laid aside their coats and fell to exercise. In these unaccustomed bouts Richard was soundly drubbed, as he had anticipated, but he found himself the stronger man of the two, and he managed somehow to avoid an absolute overthrow. By what method he contrived this he never ascertained.

"I have forgotten what we are fighting about," he observed, after ten minutes of heroic thumps and hangings; "or, to be perfectly exact, I never knew. But we will fight no more in this place. Come and go with me to Welshpool, Messire Gwyllem, and there we will fight to a conclusion over good sack and claret."

"Content!" cried Gwyllem; "but only if you yield me Branwen."

"Have we indeed wasted a whole half-hour in squabbling over a woman?" Richard demanded; "like two children in a worldwide toyshop over any one particular toy? Then devil take me if I am not heartily ashamed of my folly! Though, look you, Gwyllem, I would speak naught save commendation of these delicate and livelily-tinted creatures so long as one is able to approach them in a becoming spirit of levity: it is only their not infrequent misuse which I would condemn; and in my opinion the person who elects to build a shrine for any one of them has only himself to blame if his chosen goddess will accept no burnt-offering except his honor and happiness. Yet since time's youth have many fine men been addicted to this insane practice, as, for example, were Hercules and Merlin to their illimitable sorrow; and, indeed, the more I reconsider the old gallantries of Salomon, and of other venerable and sagacious potentates, the more profoundly am I ashamed of my sex."

Gwyllem said: "This lazy gabbling of yours is all very fine. Perhaps it is also reasonable. Only when you love you do not reason."

"I was endeavoring to prove that," said Richard gently. Then they went to Welshpool, ride and tie on Gwyllem's horse. Tongue loosened by the claret, Gwyllem raved aloud of Branwen, like a babbling faun, while to each rapture Richard affably assented. In his heart he likened the boy to Dionysos at Naxos, and could find no blame for Ariadne. Moreover, the room was comfortably dark and cool, for thick vines hung about the windows, rustling and tapping pleasantly, and Richard was content.

"She does not love me?" Gwyllem cried. "It is well enough. I do not come to her as one merchant to another, since love was never bartered. Listen, Saxon!" He caught up Richard's lute. The strings shrieked beneath Gwyllem's fingers as he fashioned his rude song.

Sang Gwyllem:

"Love me or love me not, it is enough
That I have loved you, seeing my whole life is
Uplifted and made glad by the glory of Love,--
My life that was a scroll bescrawled and blurred
With tavern-catches, which that pity of his
Erased, and wrote instead one lonely word,
O Branwen!

"I have accorded you incessant praise
And song and service, dear, because of this;
And always I have dreamed incessantly
Who always dreamed, when in oncoming days
This man or that shall love you, and at last
This man or that shall win you, it must be
That, loving him, you will have pity on me
When happiness engenders memory
And long thoughts, nor unkindly, of the past,
O Branwen!

"Of this I know not surely, who am sure
That I shall always love you while I live,
And that, when I am dead, with naught to give
Of song or service, Love will yet endure,
And yet retain his last prerogative,
When I lie still, and sleep out centuries,
With dreams of you and the exceeding love
I bore you, and am glad dreaming thereof,
And give God thanks for all, and so find peace,
O Branwen!"

"Now, were I to get as tipsy as that," Richard enviously thought, midway in a return to his stolid sheep, "I would simply go to sleep and wake up with a headache. And were I to fall as many fathoms deep in love as this Gwyllem ventures, or, rather, as he hurls himself with a splurge, I would perform--I wonder, now, what miracle?"

For he was, though vaguely, discontent. This Gwyllem was so young, so earnest over every trifle, and above all, was so untroubled by forethought: each least desire controlled him, as varying winds sport with a fallen leaf, whose frank submission to superior vagaries the boy appeared to emulate. Richard saw that in a fashion Gwyllem was superb. "And heigho!" said Richard, "I am attestedly a greater fool than he, but I begin to weary of a folly so thin-blooded."

The next morning came a ragged man, riding upon a mule. He declared himself a tinker. He chatted out an hour with Richard, who perfectly recognized him as Sir Walter Blount; and then this tinker crossed over into England.

Richard whistled. "Now my cousin will be quite sure, and now my anxious cousin will come to speak with Richard of Bordeaux. And now, by every saint in the calendar! I am as good as King of England."

He sat down beneath a young oak and twisted four or five blades of grass between his fingers while he meditated. Undoubtedly he would kill this squinting Henry of Lancaster with a clear conscience and even with a certain relish, much as one crushes the uglier sort of vermin, but, hand upon heart, Richard was unable to avow any particularly ardent desire for the scoundrel's death. Thus crudely to demolish the knave's adroit and year-long schemings savored actually of grossness. The spider was venomous, and his destruction laudable; granted, but in crushing him you ruined his web, a miracle of patient machination, which, despite yourself, compelled hearty admiring and envy. True, the process would recrown a certain Richard, but then, as Richard recalled it, being King was rather tedious. Richard was not now quite sure that he wanted to be King, and, in consequence, be daily plagued by a host of vexatious and ever-squabbling barons. "I shall miss the little huzzy, too," he thought.

"Heigho!" said Richard, "I shall console myself with purchasing all beautiful things that can be touched and handled. Life is a flimsy vapor which passes and is not any more: presently Branwen will be married to this Gwyllem and will be grown fat and old, and I shall be remarried to little Dame Isabel, and shall be King of England: and a trifle later all four of us shall be dead. Pending this deplorable consummation a wise man will endeavor to amuse himself."

Next day he despatched Caradawc to Owain Glyndwyr to bid the latter send the promised implements to Caer Idion. Richard, returning to the hut the same evening, found Alundyne there, alone, and grovelling at the threshold. Her forehead was bloodied when she raised it and through tearless sobs told of what had happened. A half-hour earlier, while she and Branwen were intent upon their milking, Gwyllem had ridden up, somewhat the worse for liquor. Branwen had called him sot, had bidden him go home. "That I will do," said Gwyllem and suddenly caught up the girl. Alundyne sprang for him, and with clenched fist Gwyllem struck her twice full in the face, and laughing, rode away with Branwen.

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.