The dryad a novel
good-humored with the rogues, being tickled at the thought of their
possible plunder--the brace of onions in his bag.
"Well reasoned, lads," he laughed. "No logical doctor in Byzantium
could have come to a better conclusion. Are you very hot to pick
pockets?"
He who seemed the leader of the pair seemed surprised at the simplicity
of the question.
"Every honest man is anxious to push his trade," he affirmed,
sagaciously.
Simon grinned.
"Is this forest your playground?" he pursued.
The robber shook his head.
"No, no," he said; "we come from Corinth, where we have plied our craft
blithely this many a day. Among the light-fingered of that bright city
I am Captain Fox, at your service," and the lean, leather-faced rascal
made Simon a bow; "and this my comrade goes as Captain Gander," and he
pointed to the fat rogue, his companion, who had seated himself on a
tree-trunk to await the result of the negotiations.
Simon nodded, and queried:
"Where are you going, good Captain Fox and good Captain Gander?"
"We make for Athens," Captain Fox replied. "There are great doings
in Athens--jousts, feasts, dances, banquets, pageants. We should do
famously in Athens."
The other ruffian took up the tale.
"Every knight's purse will leak gold pieces, and the lovely ladies will
rain pearls from their petticoats. 'Twill be but stooping to pick them
up."
Simon leered at the pair maliciously, and his misanthropy hatched a
plan.
"Though you take no toll of me, yet the devil is your friend to-night,
for yonder on the highway at my heels comes, by-and-by, a young
gentleman riding all alone, and one that is sure to carry gold in poke."
Captain Gander rubbed his plump hands.
"St. Nicholas be praised for sending us game," he chuckled.
Simon, in malice, dashed the rascals' hopes with a grin.
"It may be," he suggested, "that it will prove too proud a quarry for
two such gibbet-kites as you to pike at. The featherhead in the fine
clothes may be a fool, but I do not think such a brace of barn-filchers
would show very fearsome even in a fool's eyes."
He that called himself Captain Fox snarled with lips that were as
leathern and teeth that were as yellow as his jerkin.
"Do not vex your liver for that," he answered. "We have comrades
otherwhere in the wood that we will call to our comfort: Captain
Rat and Captain Badger, Captain Bat and Captain Chanticleer, no
less--valiant captains all."
Simon laughed heartily as the fantastic catalogue swelled.
"Here is an army out of Noah's ark," he applauded, "with as many
generals to it as ever followed Alexander. Ye lack only the leader and
the led. Well, go your ways. I give you Golden Jacket for a guerdon."
Again Captain Gander chuckled, but Captain Fox looked at Simon with
some show of suspicion.
"Why do you tell us this?" he asked.
Simon answered him in the honesty of his malevolence.
"To help you to the gallows and him to his hurt, for he is a
book-reading noodle. Go your ways, I am tired of you," and he pointed
with his staff in the direction in which he knew the highway ran,
though he could see no sign of it through the clustering trees. "You
cannot miss him, for I have seen no other rider this eve, and he
shines like a star, for his coat is of cloth of gold and he has jewels
in his cap."
The rogues licked their lips. Captain Fox saw himself already in the
coat of cloth of gold. Captain Gander, in imagination, pocketed some of
those jewels.
"We thank you," Fox cried; and--
"Good-night," cried his fellow. And the pair made off at a pace between
a walk and a trot in the direction indicated. Simon looked after them
till they disappeared in the deepening dusk.
"I misdoubt me much," he meditated, "if reading of romances of roses
will help that lad to tackle these grab-alls." Then he dismissed the
matter from his mind and resumed his journey.
A little way farther he came upon a quiet glade which seemed very
reposeful in the dying light, and here, in default of water, he decided
to rest and munch his onions dryly. He sprawled at his ease on the
soft grass and bit thoughtfully at his vegetable, pricking his wits
for verses. This ballad was to be his biography, but so far it had not
travelled beyond the nursery. The sharpness of his root stimulated
fancy:
When I was no more than a span,
Honey and gingerbread pleased me highly;
When I came to the height of a man,
Women and vintages used me vilely.
This quick flow of inspiration fascinated him. The rhymes were as true
as they were beautiful. He must needs try again while the fit was on
him:
When I went to lovemonger school,
Poppets and fopperies killed my credit;
All my sweethearts thought me a fool
While I had pence; but when poor they said it.
He was hugely amused at this fruition. A man might read verses and
yet prove no fool, if the verses were of such stuff as this ballad he
fashioned. Here was no nonsense about a rose, but a plain tale of a
brave man's life, bravely told, meat for heroes. Thinking it over, he
felt that it had gone far enough. It said with a noble simplicity all
that he wanted to say; there lay his life by and large. Love of women,
love of wine; and for result, your penniless misanthrope yawning in a
forest. For Simon was yawning noisily. The unwonted intellectual effort
had overmastered his activity; he ought to be up and doing, but sloth
pawed at his eyelids and the dusk was all a-humming with lullabies.
"Well, thanks be," he murmured, as he chewed on the last bite of his
onion, "there is no woman-thing in this wood to worry me if I choose to
slumber."
Even as he spoke he closed his eyes, and, as it seemed to him, had
scarcely closed them when he opened them again, suddenly conscious that
a woman was standing before him and staring at him.
II
RAINOUART
The studious young knight lay for some little while in the pleasing
shadow where Simon had left him, busy with his book. In the enchantment
of its pages he had soon forgotten Simon and his lantern and his angry
face. In that warm May evening it was very agreeable to lie stretched
at his ease there in the green shade and to read the wonderful story of
the _Romance of the Rose_. The little volume was very neatly written
on vellum in a clear, clerkly hand, and a hand that was more than
clerkly had enriched it with many agreeable pictures in which wonderful
attenuated youths and slender maidens with yellow hair, all in garments
of vivid green and blue and red and yellow, wandered over enamelled
fields that were studded with daisies, and in pleasances of fantastic
trees. The book was not new to Europe, but it was always new to the
youth. He had brought it with him from the court of Philip the Fair,
who had given it to the young knight on the occasion of his departure
from Greece. Now because Philip the Fair, a shrewd discerner of
humanity, knew his man, his gift contained only that early part, which
was written by William of Lorris, and which exalted love and ladies,
and not that later part, from the hand of John of Meung, which treated
ladies with scant ceremony and would have spelled love after another
fashion. For the youth who lay in the shadow and read the _Romance of
the Rose_ was, in the first place, a youth of a high mind and gentle
heart, whose spirit swam in the clearest ether of chivalry; and, in the
second place, he was son and heir of the reigning Duke of Athens, Duke
Baldwin of the Rock.
In all the stormy stories of the conquest of Greece by the Frankish
princes, few histories were more stormy or more splendid than those
of the Princes of the Rock and of their connection with the city of
the Violet Crown. For long enough the Princes of the Rock had ruled in
Athens in the direct line, but in the year 1308 the torch was blown out
by the death of Guy II., who died childless, and the title swerved off
to a cousin of the dead duke, Count Baldwin of the Rock, who at that
time was living a brisk, piratical, and filibustering life in the East,
much to the discomfort of those with whom his turbulent, truculent
nature brought him at loggerheads. Baldwin was a whole-hearted soldier
of fortune who loved the bustle of battle, the sacking of cities, the
filling of his pockets with other people's money, and the cheering of
his occasional solitude with other people's wives. Baldwin had been
married himself years before in France to the Lady Isabeau of Hainault.
She had loved him much, having been deceived, as sweet women sometimes
will be deceived, into the belief that the manners of a savage were
truly the manners of a man. He had loved her a little just because her
pale graces were new to him, and of her and her pale graces he soon
heartily wearied. It was not Count Baldwin's way to trouble himself
long about anything that wearied him, and he flung himself headlong
into a life of fierce adventure in the scrimmage-ground of the East,
leaving his lady, who by that time was not broken-hearted to lose him,
in France, with his infant son to take care of.
It was not unnatural that Isabeau of Hainault, having known what it
meant to be companion for a season to Duke Baldwin, was honestly and
honorably determined to bring up her son to be as unlike his father
as, God willing, might be accomplished. Melancholy, heart-sick Isabeau
worked out her purpose well. For all her pale grace and fragile person,
the Lady Isabeau of Hainault was a strong woman with strong thoughts.
She recognized very frankly and very fully from the first how she had
been deceived in Count Baldwin, and she made it her whole purpose and
endeavor that no other woman should be so deceived by Count Baldwin's
son. She had a kind of clear seeing that many such women have, and as
she rocked the cradle of the sleeping boy she believed that his days
and his ways might prove beautiful. Over the child she prayed one
strange prayer morning and night--"I pray that you may never love till
you find the loveliest, nor woo till you find the worthiest," and
because she knew in her soul that the child would be strong of limb,
and because she loved all the old tales of chivalry, she named the
child Rainouart, after the noble youth with the giant's strength in the
ancient tale of Aliscans.
As the new Rainouart grew from infancy to boyhood, day by day he
redeemed his mother's prayers and fulfilled his mother's wishes. He
showed from the first an extraordinary strength of body. His physical
frame had in it nothing of the bull-bulk of Count Baldwin, but inside
his slender form and smooth skin he seemed to be compact with steel.
The Lady Isabeau was too brave a lady to forget that a man's first
business is to be a man, wherefore the young prince was well trained
in arms and skilled in all bodily exercises. As he grew into years
and proficiency in martial arts, the contrast between his slender
juvenility and his extraordinary vigor and power grew more remarkable.
It was curious to find this amazing heritance of the paternal strength
so intimately allied with, and subject to, the spirituality of his
mother. Rainouart was never quarrelsome, and could scarcely be provoked
into a brawl save by some deed of injustice or dishonor; but if ever
he were forced to fisticuffs it always went hard with his adversaries,
though the odds were heavy against him, as they always were in such
cases. Youths of his own age, but youths of greater breadth of body
and show of muscle, taken unawares by his appearance, would often
challenge him to feats of strength, confident of easy victory, only to
be amazed and discomfited by the gentle serenity with which he overcame
their sturdiest efforts.