The dryad a novel
entertain the hope that the Duchess of Thebes would be willing to take
for consort a certain valiant captain of the Catalan Grand Company.
He began at once to work with his usual patience towards his goal. It
was the result of his suggestions that Duke Baldwin welcomed the idea
of holding a tournament, to which tournament the principal potentates
in Greece should be bidden. Ximenes counted on his skill at arms to
distinguish himself in the tourney; he counted on his way with women to
ingratiate himself anew with the supple duchess--all seemed pleasantly
and feasibly mapped out, and he thought of the project as much as he
allowed himself to think of anything that lay ahead closed in the
folded fingers of fate. And then, lo and behold! one moony May evening
the Duchess of Thebes comes riding into Athens with Duke Baldwin's son
and heir dozing on a litter, and in less than no time it is buzzed
abroad through all the babblesome city that Rainouart, heir of Athens,
is infatuated with the lovely Duchess of Thebes, that she is nothing
unwilling to unwidow herself for his sake, that Duke Baldwin is hugely
delighted at this union of Athens and Thebes, and that the marriage
is decided and to take place with a celerity only excusable through
the ungovernable passion of the prince. All of which is galling to an
ambitious captain of Catalans, who shows, however, no sign of anger,
but imperturbably waits on events.
XII
THE WINDING OF THE HORN
The palace of Duke Baldwin on the Acropolis was the stateliest of
the many stately buildings which the French lords had made for their
pleasure in Athens. All that the lessons of Western civilization could
teach, all that the experience of Eastern luxury could suggest, to
embellish the ducal dwelling had been accepted, and the daily state of
Baldwin's existence was little, if at all, less regal than that of the
monarch of France. The living-rooms were richly furnished and hung with
costly tapestries. The walls of the great banqueting-hall were painted
with vivid representations of the deeds of the Crusaders in the Holy
Land. Vessels of gold and vessels of silver were in common use, and the
jewelled pride of Byzantine mosaic filled every corridor with coloring
as lustrous as the dawn and as glowing as the sunset. Whatever the arts
could do to enrich and to adorn had been generously welcomed, and the
people of Duke Baldwin's household moved familiarly, while the guests
of Duke Baldwin's hospitality walked in wonder, amid surroundings as
lovely as the liberal creation of a dream. Never had an abode been
known more worthy of the presence of beautiful women, and the fair
faces and shapely forms that made the home of Baldwin a wanton paradise
in the minds of his knights found in every part of the great mansion a
background worthy of their favor and their grace.
Duke Baldwin's palace, look at it one way, hummed like a human hive.
It was full of sounds from dawn till night--servants going and coming,
minstrels bowing and thrumming, the rustle of women's dresses, the
flutter of women's fans, the patter of pages' footsteps running on
delectable errands, merry messengers of love, the ring of noble voices,
the clink of noble swords. Here, there, and everywhere Duke Baldwin's
presence loomed, jovial, ferocious, vehemently alive and blithe, making
love to a dozen ladies with a whole heart, drinking a dozen wines with
a clear head, voluble, jocular, a brawny image of the lusts of the
flesh. He was very well content with the world, and would not have it
other than it was. To indulge all appetites furiously without hurt
or satiety, to play the prodigal host and to read the reward of his
opulence in the admiring eyes of easy women, this was Duke Baldwin's
simple ideal of existence. It was the ideal of many others, but few
attained it as completely as the genial, truculent duke, for few had
his length of purse and fewer his strength of body.
But just now Duke Baldwin had other causes for complacency and content
than gluttonizing in all the passions. The presence of the Duchess
of Thebes in his palace he had at first looked forward to as an
experiment in the affections, and it had never occurred to him that he
might have his own son as a rival. But now this was so, as it seemed,
and yet Duke Baldwin was plainly satisfied and limber of spirit over
the business. For when the Duchess Esclaramonde came riding up to his
gates on that memorable evening and told him her strange tale, Baldwin
was well content with the way of affairs. Here was his son's life saved
by this great lady and neighbor, and here was his son's heart given
to, and taken by, this same great lady, which meant the welding of
Thebes and Athens in a common strength and a common splendor. Baldwin
thought better of his son for a sensible choice, and was quite willing
to forego dalliance with the duchess in consequence, the more readily,
indeed, that a number of lovely, affable ladies had newly landed from
Byzantium.
The duchess was all for a speedy wedding. Her brief term of widowhood
was expired; she needed, she said, the prop of a man's arm, and the
duke, grinning in his sleeve, was delighted to meet her wishes. As
for Rainouart, he took his good-fortune with a curious apathy, which
might have puzzled his parent if that parent ever troubled his mind
about people's motives so long as their actions conformed to his idea
of the precisely right. Whatever the duchess said Rainouart echoed.
Recovered from his hurt, thanks to the deep sleep and easeful rest on
the duchess's litter, he squired her pertinaciously, patently in love
to all beholders, patently under the spell of her beauty: under the
spell also of her ministrations, for she must needs continue to be his
leech who had begun by being his rescuer, and she slyly plied him with
philtres in his drink. So it was settled out of hand that the heir
to the Duchy of Athens and the dame of the Duchy of Thebes should be
married on the second day following the evening of their arrival in the
city, and that all the pomp and ceremony of the joustings should be
regarded as incidental and obsequious to the hurried nuptials.
Fernand Ximenes was sorely displeased at the news, but he protested
pleasure with the best, persistently patient. Everybody else was hugely
delighted, for this sudden marriage put the perfect top to all the
jollity--it was the cream on the milk of mirth, the finest feather in
the cap of happiness. Of course the opinions of the gentlefolk were
the only opinions that counted, but in their obscurity the citizens of
Athens made merry with the rest, for the waves of great folk's pleasure
always carried some flotsam and jetsam to their humble thresholds. As
for those dark subalterns of St. Nicholas, Captain Fox and Captain
Gander, Captain Bat and Captain Chanticleer, Captain Rat and Captain
Badger, they were neck-high in delights, and drank of the best daily
and nightly in popular taverns, toasting bride and groom mellifluously,
and thanking their saint and their stars that they by a storm and a
strange voice were stayed from slitting the weasand of the son of Duke
Baldwin the Beneficent.
On the morning of the marriage-day the great court-yard of Duke
Baldwin's palace was a little world of many types and many
nationalities. From the gallery of the palace the loveliest ladies of
the court looked down upon the flower of the French chivalry below and
named their names to new-arrived beauties, and told tales of them, not
always without malice. The slender fellow with the yellow hair was Sir
Guy de Hainault. The gallant with the brown curls who sat apart and
nursed a lute upon his knee was Sir Jaufre de Brabant. That lean, dark,
strenuous figure, his visage bronzed by Spanish suns, the man with
something Moorish in his garb and accoutrements, was Fernand Ximenes,
chief among the leaders of the Catalan Grand Company. The portly,
florid man, no longer young but comely in his prime, who carried a
white staff in his hand and moved hither and thither among the knights
with cheerful greeting for each, was Count Ernault of Toulouse, Duke
Baldwin's right-hand man and lord-marshal of the lists. The two who
walked and talked together in the shade, talking very surely of
women and deeds of war, were Sir Ambrose of Blois and Sir Raymond
of Provence. The two who sat and diced upon a drum-head, with faces
as grave as if every cast gave or took great slices of empire, were
Demetrius, the vassal prince of Epirus, and Andronicus Palæologus, the
great noble from Constantinople.
So the fair told their tale to the fair, and pointed out for admiration
of the strangers the two huge soldiers who stood at guard inside the
great gates of the court-yard. They were veritable giants, chosen by
Baldwin--feeding his greed for the monstrous and excessive in all--for
their extraordinary size and strength. They leaned upon such mighty
battle-axes as were the familiar weapons of the Varangian Guard at
Constantinople, and their duties were to open the great gates to every
summons. Outside the gate a huge horn hung for any comer to wind who
desired admittance. An ordinary knight was to sound the horn once;
a baron was to wind it twice; a triple summons was the privilege of
princes. Such was Duke Baldwin's etiquette, familiar to all his world.
So the ladies laughed and chattered, eying the bright throng through
which every now and then little shimmering pages or servants in
heraldic colors picked their way, carrying hawks on wrist or hounds in
leash, or bearing some message from lady to lord or from lord to lady.
It was all as pleasant to witness as a pageant or a play in the bright,
idle morning, and the babble of women's voices floated through the
pellucid air like the chatter of starlings.
In the quietest corner of the court-yard, and in that court-yard quiet
was indeed only a relative term, Sir Jaufre de Brabant, whose brown
curls the ladies had praised, sat apart picking at the strings of a
lute and humming to himself. Sir Jaufre considered himself, and was
considered by many, to be the handsomest man in the service of Duke
Baldwin. It was his wish, further, to be considered the gallantest,
a wish fulfilled in the consideration and complaisance of many, and
one of the jewels of his gallantry was his gift of song. He had been
turning words this way and that way in his brain for some time on that
spring morning, and at last it seemed from the smile on his face that
he had turned them to some purpose that pleased him. Now he began
to sing softly to himself, accompanying his song with little gentle
touches on the lutestrings that wakened a plaintive melody. As he sang
Sir Ambrose of Blois and Sir Raymond of Provence first paused in their
walk and talk, then came near and listened, and in a little while Sir
Guy de Hainault left his place and joined them. And this is what Sir
Jaufre sang:
"He is the wisest in the world
Who rides his road with flag unfurled,
With heart unfetter'd from the care
That love of ladies places there;
With sword that knows no master's laws,
But shines and strikes for any cause,
To highest bidder blithely sold;
Glory is good, but better gold,
And as for ladies, fair or brown
He finds who sacks a captured town."
As Sir Jaufre finished, Ambrose and Raymond beamed approval, but Guy
of Hainault, the young, fair-haired knight with a face that was partly
girlish and partly angelic, pierced the approbation with a sneer.
"I do not like your song, Jaufre," he said, and said it with as much
sweetness as if he had been crowning Sir Jaufre with a wreath of
golden laurel in the heart of hot Provence.
Sir Jaufre flushed and looked up angrily.