The dryad a novel
vanished into the sea of human beings, might console himself with the
reflection that he had moved, as it were, for a season in a kind of
intimacy with the great, and that this pleasure, like all others, had
to be paid for.
The place which Duke Baldwin had appointed for the holding of the
tournament was excellently well chosen. One of the greenest meadows
of the Athenian plain facing the sea, with the Acropolis for a
background, had been enclosed with great hoardings of painted wood, red
and white, the duke's own colors. Under the shadow of the Acropolis a
great gallery had been erected, glittering with gilding and brilliant
with silk, to form a bower from which the Duchess of Thebes and the
fair ladies of Baldwin's court might witness the encounters. Behind
these, still within the enclosures, were two pavilions set apart, one
for the use of the Duchess of Thebes and the other for Duke Baldwin,
who took no part in that day's sport save as on-looker and arbiter.
The pavilions of the knights were ranged inside the lists, and at the
door of each a page in some fantastic habit stood holding his master's
shield. Here and there in the wooden barrier encircling the lists were
apertures guarded by mighty men-at-arms, brothers in size and strength
to those that wardered the door of the ducal court-yard. At each of
these doorways a herald was stationed to make sure that none entered
the lists unprivileged.
The Duke Baldwin was a great stickler for custom, past-master of
punctilio. He knew all that there was to know of the laws that had
hitherto governed the gentle art of tourney, and thinking that nothing
in the world exists so good that it could not be bettered, especially
by Duke Baldwin of Athens, he had devised many novel regulations in
gracious methods for mimic combat, which pleased him highly the more
they rendered complicated and intricate the laws of the royal sport.
He rejoiced to invent some new rule for the disqualification of a
combatant who might to the unconcerned eye of the actual spectator
appear to be the victor. His opponent might, indeed, lie sprawling on
the grass, fairly pushed from his horse by the heavy impact of the
blunt-headed spear, but if that spear had not struck in precisely the
right place permissible at that very moment of the play, according to
the laws of Duke Baldwin, or had struck in some place not permissible,
again according to the laws of Duke Baldwin, it was the sprawler on
the ground who received the laurel and not he who rode his horse
victoriously amid the cheers of the multitude. It followed, naturally
enough, that Duke Baldwin's regulations were not always and altogether
popular with the knights who encountered under his eyes. But the duke
was so deeply versed in the whole history of his sport, and always so
readily recited precedents from this great tournament here and that
noble jousting there, that it would have been difficult, even had it
been profitable or even advisable, to argue a point with him, and as he
was autocrat of Athens, strong of hand and choleric of nature, few ever
did venture to argue with him.
On this occasion Duke Baldwin had taken special pains over the whole
paraphernalia of the tournament. He had examined with his own hands and
eyes the great barrier that ran down the middle of the lists to divide
the encountering knights and prevent their horses from colliding. He
had made sure by personal interrogation that each of the heralds was
well acquainted with the arms, titles, lineage, and deeds of each of
the nobles who offered themselves to take part in the combat. He saw
to the pitching of the pavilions, the comfort of their furniture, the
lodgings of the squires. He visited the stables where the horses were
to dwell, the stithies where swarthy smiths were to wait ready with
bellows working and fires burning for the mending of shattered mail,
and he was at pains to see that the pavilion of the Duchess of Thebes
was adorned with all the luxury that even a lovely woman could desire.
Duke Baldwin was so well satisfied with himself and with the world
in general that he allowed himself the relaxation of idleness in one
particular. He left to his lord-marshal, Count Ernault, all that
belonged to the personal arrangement of the tourney, to the order of
the encounters, and to the degree of those who might be permitted to
take part in them. Thus it came about that when the hour struck, and
the trumpets sounded for the beginning of battle, he knew nothing of
the existence of a Prince of Eleusis to whom Count Ernault had given
promise to ride in the fight.
All the meadow-land round the lists was thronged with a fantastic
congregation of folk. Every square inch of standing room a-nigh the
red and white palings was occupied by eager spectators hotly arguing
the merits of their favorites, and when they could afford it going so
far as to stake silver piece against silver piece on the issue of the
conflicts. On the fringe of this multitude the speculative had erected
a veritable village of wooden booths, wherein all kinds of foods and
drinks, gross and dainty, were to be had for the asking and the paying
by those whom the thoughts of martial prowess made hungry and the
spring sunlight stung to thirst. Travelling glee-men, penniless enough,
pushed their bold, sunburned faces hither and thither, ready at any
moment for coin or cup to sing to the interested some song of the deeds
of heroes--Charlemagne and his twelve peers, Arthur of Brittany and
his knights of the Table Round, or the fortunes of the lord of Orange.
Every tree in the meadow bore its load of human fruit; scarce any bough
seemed too high or too slender for some adventurous spirit to assail,
obtaining thereby a view of the tournament at greater peril to life and
limb than any run by the knightly combatants.
In the delicate air of Athens, where sound travels far, the chattering
of all this swarm of human beings came to the ears of those in the
pavilions like the humming of a hive of monstrous bees, or the
chattering of an incredible army of starlings, or the slappings of an
angry sea. Inside the sacred enclosure the scene was less crowded, but
more brilliant and many-colored. On the silk-swathed galleries which
had been set up for the benefit of non-combatant courtiers and the
ladies of the palace, the gallantest gentlemen vied with the loveliest
women in the magnificence of their apparel. Cloth of gold and cloth of
silver, all the dyes and jewels of the East, all the plumage of the
brightest-hued birds, glittered and twinkled in the strong sunlight
in a manner dazzling to the eye. Outside the lists the common folk
chattered and gabbled. Inside the lists the noble lords and ladies
chattered and gabbled, too, until, as Simon said to himself, it seemed
as if the world might very well fear to be talked out of existence. But
when the great trumpets sounded which told to every eager ear of all
those thousands that the time had come and that the game was afoot,
there fell upon the plain a silence as deep and still as the clamor had
before been plangent. In that awful silence Duke Baldwin lifted his
mighty bulk in the golden throne which groaned under his weight, and,
raising his sceptre in his right hand, gave order, in a voice which
would have honored a bull, to the lord-marshal that the sport might
now begin. The lord-marshal in his turn spoke to the heralds. Again
there came a blare of trumpets, and then again a silence pierced by the
voices of the heralds calling upon the earliest combatants to begin the
fray.
The first part of the tournament consisted of a series of single
combats on horse between the allotted pairs of knights. Sir Jaufre de
Brabant and Sir Raymond of Provence were the first to ride, and the
episode was brief, for in the first encounter Sir Jaufre unhorsed his
adversary and cantered to the end of the lists triumphant, while Sir
Raymond of Provence scrambled to his feet and regained his tent with
as much dignity as he could master under the pitying eyes of the
ladies who liked him, the smiles of such lords as misliked him, and the
grinning faces of the diverted multitude. Sir Guy de Hainault rode next
against Sir Ambrose of Blois, and though Sir Guy looked as slender as
a girl in armor and Sir Ambrose a thing of bulk, Sir Ambrose went down
at the first push before the well-planted thrust of his adversary's
lance. Fernand Ximenes rode against Demetrius of Epirus and overcame
him. Andronicus Palæologus overcame Sir Gaston of Nîmes. Many knights
rode, gaining good fortune or bad, and the praise or pity of ladies.
The inquisitive may seek for their names and their bearings, and their
share of that day's fame and shame, in the painted chronicle made later
at Count Ernault's cost, from Count Ernault's memory, and now preserved
in the University of Madrid, to which Fernand Ximenes presented it.
Those who beheld the jousting averred loudly that it was the best and
bravest that had ever been seen. In their hearts they were well aware
that it was patently like all other tournaments that had ever been
held under the laws of honor, and that all the tourneys that would
follow through the years would be of like pattern for chance and valor,
strength and skill, success or failure--ay, and would be witnessed by
eyes as lovely, whether shining with the pride of triumph or shining
through the mist of tears.
When a certain number of these courses had been run, then came the
great business of the day, the general challenge of the Prince of
Athens to all and sundry that were true knights to contend in arms
against his declaration that his lady, the Duchess Esclaramonde of
Thebes, was the rose of the world. As the prize of this contest he
offered a wreath of golden violets, a glory of the goldsmith's art,
which the victor was to offer to his queen of beauty, and which
Esclaramonde was very confident to receive from the hands of her
betrothed.
XVII
THE ROSE OF THE WORLD
A tumult of applause went up as Rainouart entered the lists, riding a
black charger given him by Esclaramonde, and glittering in arms, while
his handsome head, still unhelmeted, inclined to right and left in
recognition of his greeting. For though Rainouart was too newly come to
Athens to be very generally known of the populace, and though report,
ever busy with tale-bearing from great places, had whispered something
sneering of his bookish ways and his distaste for light ladies, he
had endeared himself with the fickle Athenian public by his deeds on
the preceding day of the tourney, when he had ridden from victory to
victory. At the close of the first day there had been a general assault
or mêlée between five-and-twenty Frankish knights, champions chosen
by Duke Baldwin, and five-and-twenty of the picked chieftains of the
Catalan Grand Company. The struggle was as fierce as brief. It seemed
at first as if the Moorish-looking warriors from Spain were destined
to gain the day under the angry eyes of Duke Baldwin, but Rainouart's
individual deeds of prowess and the gallant manner in which he rallied
the French force at the last redeemed the honor of Athens, and forced
the Catalans from the field. Duke Baldwin's joy had been unbounded, and
he had expressed it as exuberantly as he could to the young man who
always listened so gravely when he spoke, and while he listened thought
upon his mother's wrongs.
Now the heralds cried the challenge of the Prince of Athens, and as
they did so, Rainouart, gripping his horse with limbs of steel, felt
as if the brisk wind of battle blowing in his face drove from his
senses something of that lethargy under which they had lain supine. His
tormenting, denying, mysterious memories troubled him for the moment