The dryad a novel
"That makes me no bad minstrel," he retorted, "but it argues you a
fool."
Sir Guy de Hainault's face was imperturbable, his voice was placid as
he answered, smoothly:
"Your music and your manners would mend with your health if I let you
some fretful blood."
Sir Jaufre shrugged his shoulders.
"You talk like a barber," he said--"white and red nonsense."
Guy smiled on a gradually increasing audience, for Demetrius of Epirus
and Andronicus Palæologus had quitted their dice to hear the argument.
"You sing like a screech-owl," commented Sir Guy. Stooping swiftly, he
caught the lute from Sir Jaufre's hands, ran his fingers skilfully over
the strings, and awakened a tender tune. Fernand Ximenes, stately as
a cat in his Spanish gravity, leisurely added himself to the circle,
watching the rivals sardonically. His coming seemed to stimulate Sir
Guy's ambition to sing.
"Listen to me, friends," he challenged, and began:
"All lovely ladies everywhere,
Whose eyes are blue or brown or gray,
Whose manes of black or yellow hair
Lead your poor lovers' hearts astray,
Here on this mirthful morn of May,
I turn to ye and make salute;
And I would kiss you all to-day,
Were all your lips one crimson fruit."
Every man of the little group applauded except Sir Jaufre, who yawned
affectedly behind a languidly lifted hand.
"You mew too lewdly to be true," he asserted, contemptuously. "Your
sincere kiss-winner has no leisure to sing of it."
Sir Guy made him an extravagant bow.
"Suave Sir Jaufre," he said; "smooth Sir Jaufre, by that count you
should write red ballads of battles."
There came a faint laugh from some of the hearers, others raised their
eyebrows and drew nearer. The war of wits promised to quicken. Count
Ernault, coming from the palace and conference with Duke Baldwin, spied
the excited group and drew nigh. As he came near he heard Sir Jaufre
interrogate his critic.
"Your meaning?"
Sir Guy, still with the same air of extravagant respect, explained,
syllabling, with laborious slowness:
"I mean that if I am no lucky lover you are no famous fighter."
Sir Jaufre propped his hand on his chin for a moment as one drowned in
deep thought. Then his eyes travelled slowly along the little line of
listeners.
"Who can tell me the Latin for 'braggart'?" he asked, meditatively.
There was a little silence. Scholarship was not a strong point of
Duke Baldwin's companions. Then Fernand Ximenes, to end or extend the
embarrassment, asked:
"Why the Latin?"
Sir Jaufre made a deprecating gesture.
"That it may serve for Guy's epitaph to-night," he interpreted.
Sir Guy laughed again very softly, swaying a little backward and
forward, as one exceedingly amused.
"Do you think," he asked, "that any one will kill me to-night for
killing you this morning?"
Sir Jaufre spoke again, not to Guy, but still to the constrained,
attentive circle:
"I do not know the Latin for 'braggart,'" he said, thoughtfully, "but I
know the French for 'fool.'"
"Why, so do I," Sir Guy agreed, instantly; "it is Jaufre de Brabant."
Every one of the hearers laughed at this, coming so crisp and pat, but
Sir Jaufre sprang to his feet.
"Up sword, and out!" he cried, and drew his weapon.
Sir Guy as swiftly bared his blade, and it seemed for a moment as if
to the many images of life the court-yard presented that of a battle
to the death was to be added. Only for a moment, for instantly Count
Ernault thrust his white staff of marshalship between the combatants.
"House your swords, gentlemen," he insisted, peremptorily. "Do you
not know the day's law? There shall be no challenge taken, no quarrel
honored in arms, save in the tourney and under the eye of Duke Baldwin.
For to-day the duke's son marries the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes,
and on such a day there may be no brawling; wherefore, close hands in
amity."
Sir Jaufre sulkily calm, Sir Guy seraphically affable, extended each a
hand, and clasped in sign of formal peace. The somewhat awkward silence
that followed on this stifled brawl and seeming reconciliation was
strangely interrupted. Outside the great gate came the clear sound of
the note of a horn, which immediately attracted the attention of every
man in the court-yard and every woman at the palace windows.
"What belated knight is this?" cried Ambrose of Blois, pleased at the
interruption, for he liked both the disputants.
The lord-marshal shook his head.
"I thought that every expected knight was in the castle," he answered,
and had hardly finished speaking when the horn was wound a second time.
"It is a baron's summons," Ximenes exclaimed, pleased to air his
intimacy with Frankish etiquette, and on the heels of his exclamation
came a third time, louder and clearer, the note of the great horn.
"By the Lord!" cried Count Ernault, "this is a prince's parley," and he
turned to the giants at the gate.
XIII
THE KNIGHT OF ELEUSIS
"Open the gates," Count Ernault ordered, and the guardian giants
obeyed. The great bolts were drawn, the great key turned in the lock,
the great gates were flung apart. Every eye was turned towards the
opening; every gazer expected to behold some splendid personage,
some great prince in golden armor with his glittering retinue of
men-at-arms. What the gazers saw was a tall, fair-haired youth with a
shepherd's straw upon his head, with a shepherd's sheepskin bound about
his body, with a shepherd's staff in his hand and a shepherd's pipe at
his girdle. The knights stared in amazement as the shepherd advanced
towards them confidently, with head held high and easy carriage. Behind
the shepherd strode a burly, travel-stained soldier, with a huge sword
at his thigh, a mighty cudgel in his fist, and a rusty lantern on his
belt.
The first astonishment of the knights now translated itself into
vehement laughter, which brought a faint flush to the shepherd's cheek
and a deeper scarlet to the tanned face of the soldier. The amazement
of the knights was as great as their entertainment, but both would
have been a thousandfold greater if they could have guessed that the
slender shepherd whose coming had so diverted them was in sooth a
slender she-creature, a daughter of the forest. But the glamour of
the woodland shone from Argathona's eyes, and the knights in the yard
and the ladies on the gallery saw nothing but the simple shepherd.
Argathona advanced towards Count Ernault where he stood resting on his
white staff of office, and easily saluted him and his companions.
"Good-morrow, lords," she said, and the French lords marvelled,
understanding her, and yet wondered vaguely how it came to pass that
they did understand.
"A most sweet-voiced shepherd," Guy said to the knight Ambrose of
Blois, who stood next to him.
Count Ernault answered the shepherd.
"Hail, young rustical; but we thought one of royal blood came to the
tournament!"
"You thought rightly," Argathona answered. "I come to the tournament,
and I am of royal blood."
Ernault looked earnestly into the beautiful face of the youth before
him. Sir Jaufre de Brabant edged forward.
"Do you wrap your royal flesh in sheepskin?" he asked, with a ring of
derision in his voice which did not escape Argathona.
"There be some lords," she answered, "whose best coat were the hide
of a donkey; but for myself, though I walk in wool, I am of the
ancientest, rarest race in Greece."
At this confident assertion, made with all the daring of youth, murmurs
of surprise, amusement, and even of protest came from the listening
knights. Sir Jaufre de Brabant shrugged his shoulders. Guy de Hainault
moved a little nearer to the new-comer, studying the fair, unfamiliar
face with whimsical good-humor. Andronicus Palæologus frowned, as it
was his way to frown at any assertion of dignity which could by any
means be twisted into a challenge of his supremacy. Fernand Ximenes
narrowed his dark eyelids, scrutinizing the slender figure of the
audacious youth, and estimating his possible value as a fighting-man
to the Catalan Grand Company. The Prince of Epirus, whose vassaldom to
Athens always galled him, gave something like a smile of greeting to
the stranger who came at least unbidden to the court, and might in so
far be taken as an enemy to Duke Baldwin. The French knights were, for
the most part, frankly diverted by the defiance of a shepherd boy, but
Count Ernault, always courteous and debonair in dealing with any man,
king, captain, or shepherd boy who spoke him fair, addressed the youth
with civility.
"Young sir," said Ernault, seriously, "that is a grave assertion.
Within the walls of this palace are assembled all the high nobility of
Greece. What claim have you to set your shield--if, indeed, you have a
shield--among us?"
Argathona flung back her head, and her fair hair shone in the sunlight.
"You are great lords in a strange land," she said, proudly; "but my
race have ruled in yonder woodland since the dawn of time, and Athens
was built but yesterday in the history of our race. We keep apart, we
princely foresters, but we are none the less proud. You may call me the
Prince of Eleusis."
The courtly marshal was puzzled. Proud of his French descent, and
indifferent to the ways of the people his master and his master's peers
had come to govern, he knew nothing of the Grecian folk, and it very
well might be that some lines lingered in those mountains which had, in
their own estimation, the right to call themselves noble. Anyway, it
mattered very little in so general a jousting, and there was no harm in
flattering the vanities of a conquered people.
"The Prince of Eleusis? It is a sounding title. Do you come as a
knight-challenger?" he questioned, urbanely.
Argathona nodded.
"Even so. I heard of your purposes from this valiant." She pointed
to Simon, where he stood apart weighing with appreciative eyes the
chivalry of France against the mercenaries of Spain, and appraising the
giants at the gate. "Liking your purposes, I trudged to tussle."
Jaufre de Brabant pushed a little way ahead of the knight-marshal.
"Sans arms, sans armor," he drolled. "Will you batter us with your bare
fists, shepherd?"
"Or conquer us with your pipe," Guy insinuated, "as Joshua's trumpets
tumbled Jericho?"
The dryad smiled back into the smiling faces of the jesting knights,
and held out her hands in an appeal of comradeship.
"I come unarmed, it is true, for my race have known no need of arms for
ages, but I fling myself on your chivalry. Will you not make me up an
equipment among you?"
It was a curious sight for the ladies on the balcony, this sight of the
white shepherd standing thus alone and fearless in the midst of a ring
of knights, while around them the capacity of the court-yard was filled
by the curious of all kinds, free companions, pages, men-at-arms, all
keenly interested in the audacious new-comer. The lord-marshal glanced
with a smile round the circle of faces.
"Most magical modesty," he said, "that invites us to arm him against
ourselves."
All who heard him laughed as at an exceeding good joke. It seemed
prettily preposterous that this stripling from a Greek wood should come
to Duke Baldwin's tournament and demand, not merely the privilege of
tilting against glorious shields, but also an outfit of arms and armor.
Argathona understood the laughter, and answered, swiftly:
"Nay, I ask nothing for nothing. I know it is the world's way to
bargain in this iron age, and that none will give save for value.
But I am wise in the earliest wisdom--I can tell you tales, sing you
songs, read the secrets of the stars, the signs in your hands. I will