Chapter VII: Part 7

Yet prudence still whispered in his ear that he meditated a foolish thing; they were looking for him–even the half-witted peasants on the farm where he had worked had suspected him–and at an inn where some one of better intelligence might any moment enter, surely he was not safe.

Then he considered his appearance; certainly the Marquis de Condorcet was well disguised now; his clothes had been at best poor, for he had passed as a servant in his friend’s house, and now there was not one sign or mark of anything save the most abject poverty and want about his person; he thought he could defy recognition.

He watched the sun mounting above the hawthorn trees that were clouded with white blossoms, and there seemed to be two orbs of gold fire changing and mingling and slipping giddily about the heavens.

He staggered to his feet and walked stiffly and slowly down the long dusty road, each step an agony, for his feet were chafed raw in his rough hard boots.

He passed a poor cottage standing in an untidy garden; it was the beginning of the village of Clamars.

The winding street led to the inn; though it was still so early the place was open; a boy was whistling while he rubbed down a horse, his plump aspect had something grotesque in it to the famished man.

A woman came out of the inn and threw a pail of dirty water across the street; the Marquis stupidly noticed the long dark trails of wet across the dust that were trickling slowly to his feet. The boy looked up and saw him as he stood hesitating.

“Good morning, citizen.”

“Good morning, citizen,” answered the Marquis in a voice feeble from weakness and long silence. “Can I get some food here?”

“If you can pay for it, citizen.”

“Yes, I can pay.”

The boy straightened himself and looked at the wild and miserable figure advancing towards him.

“Who are you, citizen?” he asked, and the Marquis saw suspicion creep into his common dull face.

“I am a servant looking for a place; my last was in Paris–I have walked a long way–I mean to get to Bourg-la-Reine to-night.”

“Well, it is not far,” answered the peasant with an instant insolence of the poor towards the ragged.

“I must have breakfast first,” said the Marquis, putting a great restraint on himself to speak gently and humbly; it was natural to him to be brief and cold with his inferiors.

The youth jerked his head towards the open door.

The Marquis entered the low dark passage and stepped into the common parlour in the front, which was roughly furnished but filled with beauty by the chestnut tree that pressed its load of young clear green leaves against the panes of the small low window.

The Marquis sank on to a chair by this window, with his back to the light and rested his elbows on the stained table in front of him.

The woman whom he had seen with the pail entered, wiping her hands on her rough blue apron; she did not appear to notice his desperate appearance; the light was not good and probably she was used enough to wild and haggard figures stopping here for a moment’s respite on some bitter journey.

He asked her briefly for food; she nodded and looked at him, not unkindly. Few indeed could have looked at him unmoved, so obviously had everything left him save mere fainting humanity that cried for succour.

“You are hungry?” she said.

He answered her with an effort; repeated his story of a servant out of place.

“What became of your master?” she asked.

“Dead,” he replied, hardly knowing what he said. “The guillotine—”

“Ah, the guillotine–he was, then, an aristocrat?” She put bread, cheese and a bottle of wine on the table, having taken them from a cupboard in the wall.

“Do aristocrats only go to the guillotine?” he replied, while his hand went out to the bread. “No, there are no longer any aristocrats, and now we execute the good republicans, citizeness.”

“Yes,” she answered; “but you spoke as if you had lived with aristocrats, citizen.”

The Marquis shuddered: so she had noticed it, this stupid woman; his speech stamped him, he could not disguise that.

“I was in a good place,” he said.

She left him, and he began eating and drinking, not thinking for the moment of anything but that, the gratification of his necessity.

He ate all the bread and cheese she had brought him before he dare touch the wine; when he did drink it, poor and thin as it was, it restored his blood to nearer its normal beat and heat; his brain began to work more clearly and sanely, his strong intelligence reasserted its sway; he began to form plans, to make resolves.

The woman came in and brought him meat and more bread; he asked her if he could rest there till noon, and she answered that he could stay in the room till then, he would not trouble her, and she was not likely to have more customers before the evening.

Again he was alone; the peace of the dark parlour, the delicious green of the softly-waving leaves outside, the silence and a certain homely perfume from the herbs hanging in bunches from the dark raftered ceiling affected him like a spell.

It was probably foolish to remain here; it would probably be wise to take advantage of his luck and slip away while the inn was quiet, but he could not. The pain of hunger ceased, his great fatigue asserted itself; if they had been galloping red-hot from Paris after him with certain news that he was at this very spot, he must still have done as he did; drop on to the worn chintz settle and sleep.

The gratification of his utter bodily weariness was more exquisite than the gratification of his hunger had been; the humble couch was like down pillows after stones and hedges, and the pursued and hunted man abandoned himself without resistance to the helplessness of sleep.

When he awoke it was about three hours later; he was racked with pain and still exhausted, but he made a violent effort to rouse himself; his mind was quite clear; he knew what he was risking and he would risk it no longer; he forced back the desire to again fall into a stupor of sleep and sat up on the couch.

There was a great noise outside; some one was arriving with loud and angry commands, jingle of harness, clatter of horses’ hoofs.

The Marquis guessed that this noise was what had roused him; he rose softly, went to the window and peeped through the screen of leaves.

A well-dressed man was dismounting and another was ordering about the stable-boy with an air of great importance.

The Marquis dropped into his former seat with his back to the light–had he stayed too long?–was there some possible way of immediate escape?

Only by the common passage through which he had come; and it was too late for that, for he could hear the two men already there calling for wine.

Who were they? Was he caught? Could he play his part through and cheat the accursed of their prey?

He asked himself these questions in swift succession, and every nerve in his being braced itself to avoid the final misery of facing the humiliation of falling into his enemies’ hands after undergoing every other humiliation of flight, concealment and degradation. He could not have put into words the hatred he felt towards the tyrants with whom for a while he had in his blindness joined, forsaking his own order, believing in his folly that he was leaguing with the right, that he was to be one of the prophets of a new era of liberty and light and hope.

Believing, too, that he and they could forget his gentle blood, that they could forgive it and he ignore it; but it had been the strongest of all strong things; now, when everything else was stripped away it remained: his birth, his blood, his traditions, and the great hate between him and the plebeian that had been for a while cloaked and disguised, now sprang actively to life.

He could not repent too bitterly of his mistaken ideals of patriotism and the general good, his unfortunate ambitions of governing his country, of doing some service to his kind that had led him to this pass of despair, that had made him another figure of tragedy to blend in the bloody carnival being daily enacted; and in this moment of anguish he would rather have died as others of his class had died–at once hating the people and by them hated, tyrants perhaps and men who had done nothing with their lives, but to be envied by men like Marie Jean Caritat who had forsaken his order only to come to this.

The two new-comers entered the room; which was now so light by reason of the level rays of the sun piercing the chestnut leaves that but little part of it was in shadow, and the Marquis, even with his back to the light was clear enough in every detail, as he well felt.

He sat upright, with nothing of the pose of the character he was assuming in his bearing, and looked at the new-comers.

He could see at once that they were of a type particularly hateful to him: the small official of no birth or culture whom chance had thrown to the surface in the turmoil of the revolution, and whom chance might, and probably would, throw to-morrow to the guillotine; but while their power lasted they used it brutally, these men, and enjoyed to deal fiercely with those of the old _régime_.

One wore the tricolour sash round his rusty black cloth coat, and the tricolour in his cockade; he was perhaps president of the Committee of Public Safety in Bourg-la-Reine, or perhaps the Public Prosecutor; it was obvious that he considered himself a great man; in his native town he was probably bowed down to, being no doubt for the moment a potent instrument for death and terror. His companion seemed a kind of secretary or attendant, subservient and truckling to the more important man; both of them had the loose ungraceful air of low breed in a position of authority.

On their entry both glanced instantly at the Marquis; it was no more than a glance from either of them; he drew a broken breath of relief to think that they passed his appearance.

The woman came hurrying in to wait on them; they ordered wine lavishly and began talking noisily together about local politics.

The Marquis foresaw no difficulty in making an easy escape, but he waited, considering what to do.

He dare not go back to Paris, he dare not go on to Bourg-la-Reine; there was nothing but to creep back to the disused quarries and hide there till perhaps the Robespierre tyranny fell; he had hoped at first to find means to fly to England, but without money that had proved impossible.

Still, the idea returned to him now; it would be better to risk all on that than to return to the quarries; he resolved to push on to the coast; there were several people on the way who would help him could he but reach them; the food and rest had put new daring into him; under the very eyes of two of the men who would deliver him to instant and horrible death if they knew him did he plan calmly his future means of escape.

It occurred to him that this might be the last chance of food for some while and he was again hungry.

When the woman re-entered, attending to the wants of the citizens of Bourg-la-Reine, he beckoned to her and asked her in a low tone to prepare him an omelette before he set out on his journey.

Then, fearful that she might deny him, under the impression that he could not pay, he took one of his silver pieces out of his pocket and laid it on the table.

The woman looked at the money and at him.

“You can stay the night, if you wish, for that,” she said.

“No, citizeness,” he answered. “I must get on.”

“Lodging is dearer in Bourg-la-Reine,” she said. “And what is your need to hasten?”

“I was told of a possible place,” he said.

“Likely they will take you!” she glanced at him pityingly.

Looking beyond her he saw that the two men had stopped their conversation and were watching him. The woman moved away and one of the men (he of the tricolour) stopped her.

“The citizen over there is not very prosperous looking,” he remarked. “Who is he?”

“A servant looking for a place, citizen.”

“He speaks,” was the answer, “like an aristocrat.”

“He has lived with them, I believe, citizen.”

“Has he?” The important man glanced at his companion, who struck his knee softly and cried–

“‘Suspect!’–on the face of it! What did he order–an omelette?”

The other stroked his rough chin and spoke to the woman.

“Ask the citizen-servant how many eggs go to his omelette!”

She stared. “_I_ know, citizen.”

“Certainly, citizeness, but does he? Ask him.”

Condorcet had not heard this conversation which was spoken very low and in the patois of the neighbourhood; he feared, however, that it might be about him, and was therefore relieved to hear the simple question the woman put to him when she returned to his little table by the window.

“How many eggs will you have to your omelette, citizen?”

“A dozen,” answered the Marquis.

He saw instantly by the expression of the woman’s face that he had said the wrong thing.

“A dozen eggs!” she echoed.

“Is not that the right number, citizeness?”

She retreated from him and went to the other two men with amazement and suspicion in her face.

“He said–a dozen eggs,” she repeated.

The official smiled.

“He is clearly of the people, this citizen, since he has been able to be so lavish with his omelettes!”

He rose and crossed over to where the Marquis sat.

“So you want a dozen eggs for your breakfast, eh?” he said.

Condorcet looked at him and hated him; he was furious with himself for the slip that had brought this attention on himself, but he answered calmly.

“I have seen omelettes made with as many, I thought, citizen.”

The other eyed him closely.

“You are a servant looking for a place?”

“Yes, citizen.”

His questioner stood over him in the attitude, of a judge and thrust his thumbs into his tricolour sash; he was noticing the make and look of this haggard, ragged figure, the shape of his hands, the pose of the head, the steady gaze of the eyes unknown in one born in servitude.

“Where have you come from?”

“Paris.”

“You are very tattered, citizen, to have come such a short way.”

Condorcet moved his arms on the table, and put up the right hand to rest his chin in; this attitude, so unconscious, so easy, so coolly reflective and authoritative betrayed him utterly; the fact that he had not risen when spoken to had in itself been almost sufficient to confirm the official’s suspicion.

“I have been out of a place,” said the Marquis, “some time. I have hopes of another at Bourg-la-Reine.”

The other laughed.

“You are a ‘suspect,’” he said. “And you lie very badly.”

Condorcet’s eyes flashed hell-fire for an instant: thereby he further betrayed himself. “Who do you think I am?” he asked.

“An aristocrat.”

“You flatter me, citizen.” Condorcet’s face was dark and violent; he could not keep his tone humble; he could not forget that this man might have been his servant a few years ago–a creature who would never have presumed to address him; all the lessons of the Revolution had not killed his heritage of aristocratic pride.

“Stand up,” said the man from Bourg-la-Reine.

The Marquis kept his seat.

“I stand up when I rise to leave the inn, citizen,” he answered.

The other man was standing watchfully by the door; the woman had summoned others; they might be seen in the passage, a rough hovering group.

Condorcet knew that he was trapped; his nostrils dilated and his thin lips compressed; he eyed his enemy steadily.

“Now I will go on my way,” he said, and rose–a gaunt, ragged figure against the background of sunny chestnut leaves tapping at the thick glass window-panes. He came round the table and he walked easily despite his bleeding feet and the rough boots that galled them. The heavy person of the official barred his way.

“Will you not wait for your dozen eggs?” he sneered and put out a thick hand to seize the Marquis’ shoulder, but Condorcet moved swiftly aside.

“Your insolence—” he breathed. “You have no right to detain me.”

The people round the door began laughing; Condorcet gave them a bitter look, and in that instant when his eyes were directed his opponent seized him and thrust him backwards against the wall, while he plunged a hand into his torn pocket.

Condorcet shuddered and the blood surged up into his hollow face while the official pulled out a small old book with a discoloured calf cover.

“A foreign language!” he cried, fluttering over the leaves. “I smell treason!”

“Is it treason to read Horace?” asked the Marquis fiercely.

“Do you–a servant–_read_ this?” was the triumphant counter question. “Eh, do you _read_ this, then?”

The people at the door began to crowd into the room; the Marquis took a step forward; there was no possible supposing that he would escape the malice and fury fronting him; he did not for an instant hope it; instinctively, his right hand went round to his left hip where his sword should have been.

The unmistakable gesture was instantly noticed and excited murmurs went up from the gathered peasants.

“By God, you are an aristocrat!” cried the man from Bourg-la-Reine, seizing him roughly.

“By God I am!” answered Condorcet, and struck him across the face.…

They fell on him with quick and hideous noises; he felt himself seized, struck, shaken, pushed, dragged, insulted; he kept his head high and was silent.

They found a rope and tied his arms behind him, and with the ends of this rope struck him across the shoulders. The important official, nursing a smarting face, was incoherent in the coarse violence of his abuse.

The woman trembled at the edge of the group, stupidly afraid.

“Who is he?” she asked again and again.

They took the question up.

“Who are you? _Scélérat!_”

“One who has served the Republic,” he replied, white with the pain of his close-bound arms.

They pushed him into the centre of the room while they paused to consider what they should do with their prize, and as he stood there, swaying a little, but upright, the light was full on his face, which had once been so famous in Paris.

The stern outlines, the dark colouring, the fiery expression were the same; unwashed, unshaven, starved as he was, the little timid man, who had lived in Paris, recognised him.

“Deauville! Deauville!” he shrieked to his master, dancing in his excitement, “it is Condorcet! Condorcet!”

The Marquis made no denial; his silence was confirmation and he meant it to be; he knew that he was face to face with the end and he was for no further subterfuge; he had tasted already of the depths of humiliation, he was enduring the extreme of bitterness; there was nothing further to lose or gain in this world for Marie Jean Nicolas de Caritat.

Presently, while some were arguing about his identity, he said in his rough broken voice, with the clear accent that they hated–

“I am Condorcet. Make an end of it.”

They had no more doubts; his face and his voice had betrayed him more completely even than his twelve eggs and his Latin Horace; they were elated at the capture of a man so long unsuccessfully searched for; they drank together, congratulating each other.

Only the woman serving them noticed the prisoner–noticed the cords cutting his wrists, the drop of pain on his brow, the effort he was making to keep upright on his feet.

In a dim, vague way she was aware of the mental torture he was enduring, compared to which the torture of cord and bleeding feet was slight; she felt that this was a proud man enduring the extremity of humiliation and that no more awful bitterness could be imagined in this world.

“He suffers,” she said under her breath, “he suffers.”

Presently they started; four men and the two from Bourg-la-Reine, towards which town’s prison they turned.

Condorcet was in the middle; the four with the prisoner went on foot, the others on horseback.

Strange thoughts came to the Marquis de Condorcet as he walked bound between his four rude guards, as he walked painfully, dragging his fatigued body on bleeding feet along the hot dusty high-road that led to his prison.

Thoughts strange because they were so incongruous to his present situation, and because it was curious that in his misery he should be filled with all the old burning pangs of ambition and desire for power and glory.

And yet he could not even die gloriously; no man could have a more ignominious end than he would have, he knew that. He cursed the body that had failed him, that had broken like any peasant’s body, that was dragging him down–demeaning him, bringing all his philosophy to mockery. His mind flew back over the salient points of his life; yet there was no need for him to consider his past years: one word covered them all–that word was failure.

Failure–had any failure ever been more bitter, more complete?

For he had conceived loftily and dared greatly, and his fall was terrible and his end abject.

Intolerable became the heat of the sun, intolerable the dust on his dry lips, on his hot lids; intolerable the chafing of his feet, caked with blood and dirt; intolerable the deep pain of his elbows and the cutting of the rope round his wrists; intolerable the agony of fatigue in his weak body, already worn to the last endurance.…

He concentrated all his mental powers on self-control; the man whose mind had flown out into the widest realms of thought now brought that same mind to bear on the terrible effort of holding himself upright, so that he might not, before those whom he despised, fall face downwards in the dust.

He dare not think how far it was to Bourg-la-Reine; he looked ahead of him and could see nothing–no house, no sign of a town; only the dusty hedges, the dusty road.…

“Let me keep upright,” he muttered to himself, “let me keep upright—”

The sky seemed to be burning–blue it was, but not gentle–he had never understood before that the sky can be both blue and flaming, as bitter and fierce as scarlet.

The grass, too, and the trees, they were not soothing nor peaceful but harsh and glaring.

“How long can I keep upright? How long can I walk?”

He tried to snatch at old mathematical problems, to soothe and calm and distract himself with that; he saw the figures range themselves before him–but they were of fire, gigantic and flaming.

He thought that the trees had caught fire from the unsupportable sky, that the hedgerows were singeing and smoking, that the road was rising up before him in a column of white fire; that all this fiery world was advancing on him; everything was scarlet, and there was a sound in his ears like the beating of many drums.

“He will fall,” said the official on horseback, fanning himself with his hat.

Condorcet heard the words, he saw them written before him in the same acrid scarlet that was colouring the world. He tried to protest, to draw himself erect, for he had heard them laughing; but he felt his strength breaking like brittle dry straws; he fell head first as they had meant him to fall, as he had dreaded to fall, and his mouth filled with dust.

When they saw that he was indeed unconscious and that no blows nor kicks could induce him to rise, they lifted him up and dragged him between them to Bourg-la-Reine. As they entered the town he recovered consciousness enough to know that his martyrdom was complete and that he was the object of all the town idlers’ ridicule as he was drawn along, ragged, bloody, with a distorted face, between two of his peasant guards.

They brought him to the prison, an old building in bad repair; his head hung down on his breast, shaking from side to side. The soldiers and jailers greeted him and his escort with amusement.

“What have we here?”

“A philosopher citizen–an aristocrat citizen. In here, citizen, and consider this same philosophy of yours!”

They thrust him into a cell several feet below the ground; the foul damp of it hung close round walls and roof.

“The citizen is a little weak in the legs–he will have a little business to transact in Paris; supper and a bed for the citizen.”

“Who is he?”

“Condorcet, citizen.”

“Ah, at last–manifestly for the guillotine–without a trial.”

“Without a trial, surely, citizen.”

The heavy door closed on him; the key turned; they went away and drank, and in their drink forgot him.

For a while he lay face downwards on the cold mud floor; the rope had been loosened from his hands; presently he shook them free and sat up.

The cell was half underground and almost entirely dark; the high-placed window was heavily barred across and evidently looked out on some close courtyard, for the light that came from it was pale and uncertain.

Condorcet rose, shuddering strongly; the damp of the place was bitter and insistent, after the heat without the chill was horrible.

He staggered against the door and flung his weight against it.

“You! You!” he whispered. “You think you have me?–No, for I have one friend left.”

He slipped down by the door and lay there, thinking.

Often had he wondered quite how the end might come, and speculated how he would meet it; in these days a man would naturally consider a violent death as possible, especially if he meddled with affairs of government; but he had never considered that he would first be so cruelly broken and humbled.

He regretted that he had fled when Robespierre proscribed him; far better to have died then than like this.… But he closed his mind to the past, over which he wrote that one word–failure.

The hard bright philosophy of Voltaire, scorning mystery, cynical of any future state, was of little comfort now; his own book on the human spirit seemed very shallow in the recollection; these things were for life, not for death. Nothing helped now but courage. Just that one quality that would bring him safely into the unknown, the harbour to which he was now so swiftly bound.

He felt very weak and ill; he shivered continually, yet his blood was burning with fever; he dragged himself into a sitting posture, put his hand inside his miserable shirt and took from a cord round his heart–his one friend. A little package containing a phial–poison, bought in a cold dawn at a little druggist’s in Paris on that day when he had left the city for ever.

“I have suffered enough,” he said. “Enough.”

But he put the package back, for he thought that they meant to bring him food and a bed, and he would rather die on a bed, and he would rather ease the horrible burning of his cracked throat by a draught of water however stale and vile, before he composed himself to death.

But the time crept on and no one came; there was not a sound without; it was obvious that they had forgotten him; the little light began to fade into Condorcet’s endless night.

He rose to his full thin height and a huge disdain enveloped him; a quiet silence fell on his soul; he knew that he would never speak again; there was nothing left now that he could put into words.

He went to the wall under the window where the damp oozed in a thin trickle and put his lips to it, moistening them.

A little longer he waited, but no one came; his disdain grew; his disdain of all things as they were, as they must be, as they would always be; disdain of the world that had seized him, crushed him, reduced him with all that was fine and noble and far-reaching and splendid in him, to this ugly sordid end.

He stooped and pulled up his stockings, fastening them as neatly as he could under the straps of his breeches; then he moved back and tried to see a star through the window; but darkness of masonry blocked his view; there was no sky visible.

He opened the phial and drank.

“Some one bungled when the world was made,” he thought.

He lay down along the floor and closed his eyes; and presently he spread his arms out in the form of a cross. And presently it grew completely dark in the cell.

* * * * *

In the morning they remembered him and came to take him to Paris.

A terrible figure with a sealed face was lying on the damp prison floor, and the people were spoiled of some sport.

THE BETROTHED OF PEDRO EL JUSTICAR

JEHANNE PLANTAGENET

“Joan, contracted to Pedro the Cruel, but died.”–_History of
England._

“Haro! Mettes moi une emplastre
Sus le coer, car, quant m’en souvient,
Cette souspirer me couvient
Tant sui plains de melancolie–
Elle mouret jone et jolie,
Environ de vingt et deux ans.”

_Jean Froissart._

I, Abbess of the Nunnery of St. Bertha, which lieth quietly among the Surrey holmes, am much given to this art of writing, new to women. Sith in my time I have written of dogs, hawks and forestry and tricked out the same with broad and good emblazons of colour, to the glory of God and England.

Now, on fair new parchments scented with the herbs which grow in the convent garden I will write of Jehanne Plantagenet, who was the daughter of our late Lord, Edward, King of England and France.

This King had eight sons and four daughters–Isabeau, Duchess of Bedford; Mary, Duchess of Bretagne; Margaret, Countess of Pembroke, and Jehanne, who died unmarried and whom I loved exceedingly.

She was even more goodly to look upon than her sisters and of a great debonnair gentleness in her manners, tall with eyen gray as glass and hair of a rippling gold.

She was very learned in her devotions and charitable to the poor, having learnt these virtues from her mother, Philippa.

And she was able with her loom to form noble pictures of hunts and jousts and saints in fair colours of blue and red and green, with flowers on the grass and birds in the trees so that they were the wonder of all who beheld them; and her brother, the Prince Johan, had a saddle-cloth she had woven with his armories, Richmond, Lancastre, Aquitaine and Lincoln, mingled with the Leopards of England, which was the marvel of the Spanish Knights when he went with Edward of Wales and Counciell into Spain to fight the Free Companies under the Sire Du Guesclin for the sake of Don Pedro, called Justicar by his people.

It is about this time I would write; this Don Pedro was cast from his throne by Don Enrique of Trastamare, his half-brother, who was aided by the French Free Companies that were lured out of France, where they did much mischief, by the King of that country, Charles, to plunder and despoil Spain.

Now, Pedro and his two daughters, Constantia and Isabeau, fled to Bordeaux, where our Princes were, and besought their protection, which was given right gladly.

And the English made march through Spain with thirty thousand men, and there was a cruel skirmish at Nafara in the spring season, 1367, and it ended in the discomfiture of Enrique and the French, and a right evil day for them, for the English went a-chasing of them and slew them to a goodly number and set on the throne again Sir Pedro of Burgundy.

This was a well foughten battle, and one that gave great renown to our valiant English Knights, who did acquit themselves with much hardiness and caused the Knights of Spain to recule before them in such wise that there was no getting them to another battle.

* * * * *

And this was the conquest of Spayne; now I will tell you of London and of Jehanne Plantagenet whose dame I was.

When came the news of the victory she was very joyous, and took me out with her on to the ramparts beyond the Chepe and the Church of the blessed Saint Paul, where the hawthorn and the eglantine that hath such a sharp sweet smell was burgeoning.

And with her were other maidens who had Knights at the wars, either in Spayne or Almaine or with King Wencelaus, and she questioned them of their lovers and spoke of Sir Johan Chandos in pleasant seeming, and of Sir Bertram Du Guesclin, who was made prisoner, and she spoke of her brother’s banners and how all had fallen back before them, and she gave their cry, “St. George, Gayonne!” in a laughing voice, across the fields.

Presently she made wreaths of daisies and cast them down a swift-running stream and watched them go, joyously; and still she spoke of the English and how they had held their Easter in the city of Burgos.

So I had great marvel to find her the day after, pensive in the window, with a sad air, and I asked her ailment, but with no manner of success; she put me by courteously and kept her counsel.

And I who held her in such worship could in no wise pleasure her, even by speaking of the adventures in Spayne and her dear brothers, Edward, Lyon, Edmund and Johan, for she saddened from day to day, and in the night made lamentable sorrows which she would give no reason for, and so from the blithest damosel of the court she was like to become the saddest.

And it fortuned that I discovered the cause, for I heard that our lord the King was to conclude a marriage between this princess and King Don Pedro of Castile, so to make sure the pact between them; certainly I believed this was why she was so downcast, for she would not leave England; yet I had marvel at it, for he of Spayne was a gentle knight and well renouned then, though afterwards dishonoured.

Then the King bid her to him, and in the name of love and lineage commanded her to this match, and she durst not deny him, but afterwards she came to me and drew me into a window above the river and spoke to me.

“Dame,” she said, “I am to wed the King of Spayne.”

And she took her face in her two hands right mournfully.

Then I advised me well and answered–

“He is a very mighty King and companion at war to your two noble brothers.”

“Dame,” she said, “I shall not go to Spayne.” And with great gentleness she sighed.

Now, it was Sunday evening and a great press of clouds about the sun, all red and violet, and in the water also these colours and the bridge white in the glowing brightness, and I looked out on these things as I answered–

“Ye must do your devoir to your father.” And Jehanne Plantagenet made reply–

“Yea, I will do my devoir, please God, but I shall not go to Spayne.”

And she lifted her head to aview the sunset, and we heard the sowning of the trumpets as the companies of the King’s archers came into the yard.

Then she took my hands and said–

“Dame Alys, give me leave and I will this day tell you something–and something heavy withal.”

I had great joy and honour in her amours, and I answered her–

“Behold my heart is as your own.”

Whereat she kissed me and said, “Ye shall hear.” And her eyes were troublous of grief as she spoke.

“Truly,” she said, “when I go to bed right doleful and weary of heart, one comes and parts the curtains and stands looking at me, and it is a lady in a gown of samite with a crown on her hair and rings on her hands, and she looks at me mournfully and as one who would give me warning.”

Then I was amazed, and made reply: “I desire you by the love of God to tell me who this lady is.”

Then said Jehanne Plantagenet–

“I think it is Blaunche of France, who was first wife to this Don Pedro, and is now in Heaven.”

“Surely,” I said, “this cannot be. Wherefor should she give you warning?”

“Sith you ask me,” said Jehanne Plantagenet, “I believe she gives me warning that I am to marry a right dishonourable and ungentle Knight and one that would slay me even as he slew her.”

Thereon I, right affrighted, bade her speak words of good cheer, for this was a grievous thing she said, and one not for credence that the King Don Pedro had slain Queen Blaunche.

But the Princess was sure of it, for she vowed the vision came as a warning.

“And I,” she said, “sith I would rather die in Westminster than live in Spayne, will not have this marriage.”

Then was I blithe to tell her of the great feastings there would be for her wedding, both in this realm and in Spayne, and how she would be a Queen and have her own court; howbeit, she put it all by.

“Dame Alys,” she said, “say no more, for I have such a love for another man that I may not bear to leave the place where he is.” Then a two times she gave a little sigh, and I was sore amazed.

“Dear lady,” I said, “Who is he?”

She answered me. “A man of war, one of the divers captains of the King’s archers, and I have such a puissant affection for him that I could not turn to any other.”

There was a while stillness and one without touched the dulcimere, and I heard the bells ringing from the Abbey of St. Peter, and the sun was almost set.

Then Jehanne Plantagenet kneeled down to me.

“Peradventure you will be good to me,” and she laid hold of my hands. “This Knight’s name is Sir Paon de Brambre, and I have never spoken to him all my life, though every day I see him and he loves me well. Now I have prayed Christ and Mary to save my soul alive, and I think to-night I shall go with my lady Blaunche, but first I would speak to this Knight I love so well.”

All this she said right graciously, but I wept for ruth while she spoke again.

“Dame Alys, get me this knight here into my chamber after supper that I may take leave of him, let him come in full armour with his shield.”

And though I broke my devoir I let it be established between us that I would bring this captain, and afterwards I found him in a study in the garden and gave him my message, whereat he went right pale.

Now, when I returned to the chamber of Jehanne I found she had lit it full of fair wax candles and was seated on the dais clad in a red gown of Damascus richly besewn; and she looked pale and thin, yet joyous, and bade me beside her until I was to let in secretly the Knight Sir Paon, which I did presently.

And he was all armed save he carried his bassenet; on his arm was a long-pointed shield painted with his armory, and his face was wasted and sad and his eyen blue as Thames water.

Right within the door he went on his knees and folded his hands with never a word.

And from the dais at the other end of the chamber Jehanne Plantagenet looked at him and said a-high–

“Sir, in God’s name, tell me if you have a great love for me?”

And he a little changed countenance and bent his head very slowly.

“God hath holpen me to this moment,” he said, “but He cannot put it into my mouth to say how much I love you.”

“Sir,” she answered him, “ye may always have me for your lady, and though ye are not rich in goods or heritage ye shall be rich in this that she, who was a King’s daughter, loved you exceedingly, and I think you will be a worthy Knight and one full of honours, and when you have a wife I pray you tell her of me and let her be a fair woman, but as for me I am contracted to a villain knight in the name of love and lineage, and yet will not marry him and yet will do my devoir.”

Then Sir Paon shook in his harness, and I had great pity of his dolours.

“Fair sir, recomfort yourself,” said Jehanne, “I have lived gaily and shall die loyal. See you these candles, ten for the ten commandments whole and unbroken, seven for the seven works of charity and the seven deadly sins, five for the Five Wounds and the five senses, three for the Trinity. Now when I am dead and ye see these burning about my tomb and the poor people saying prayers for my soul, I beseech that you shall add a taper to my memory.”

And the water washed his eyen and he could not speak.

“As I so greatly loved this goodly town of London,” said Jehanne, “ye, living here, shall think of me, even at the time of the jousts and the great feasts, Easter, Christmas and the Holy Trinity, and remember I ever loved you the alder-beste of all in the world.”

And Sir Paon was sore discomfited that she should talk of death, and she came down from the dais.

“Truly,” she said, “this world is nothing and love is a great deal, and it matters not at all if we be dead or alive if we love–one another.”

Then fair and softly she bent a little towards him and held out her hand, and he took it as if it had been God His robe and pressed his tears upon it, but she the while was smiling.

And so they parted, and he went his way and Jehanne kissed me on the brow and said prayers before the candles, and then to bed silently.

And I had great ruth of all I had seen that night and for the dolorous sorrows of these two, and I wished that two that so loved might have been mated.

So I lay awake listening to the bells and the throstle that now and again moved in the orchard boughs as it came to the dawning. And presently I heard sweet words that came from the chamber of Jehanne Plantagenet.

“Lady Blaunche, Lady Blaunche, have you come for me?”

Then I advised with myself well and was very afraid and sat up in bed, but could by no means speak.

For a long while it was silent, and I rose at last and went into the inner chamber, and it was cool with an Eastern light.

And Jehanne Plantagenet was lying out with the chequered curtains of blue and white withdrawn from her visage and the clothes of the bed straight over her and no breath at all in her body.

Round her were burning the candles of fair and pure wax, and she was surely dead.

And because I felt there were Heavenly Spirits in the room I kneeled me down, and these two princesses, Jehanne Plantagenet and Blaunche of France, went hand in hand across the orchards to Paradise.

* * * * *

She was carried through the city she loved with her visage open and her head on a white cushion and buried in a painted tomb behind the High Altar of St. Paul’s Church, and Don Pedro was slain by Don Enrique not long after, and I kept my peace.

Now Sir Paon de Brambre went to Almaine and died fighting.…

THE MACEDONIAN GROOM

THE EMPEROR MICHAEL III

How shall I care that I am blind when I have seen enough colour in my days to fill the rest of meagre time?

Here in the Monastery in Armenia I have a little boy to read to me–sometimes Photias, sometimes John Damascenus the Syrian, sometimes the Fathers of the Church.

This I buy with the much money saved when I was in the train of the Emperor Michael now wailing in Hell.

I am very old and repentant, and soon I shall swing censers in Heaven, and my eyes shall be replaced with rubies from God’s own throne; the scent of crushed roses and ambergris shall soothe my nostrils and I shall sit close to the gate that I may look from the gold bars on to the flames of Hell and see the Emperors there, Michaels, Constantines, and Leos and presently the Emperor Basil the Macedonian, being thrust into the deepest pit of all.

It is Christmas eve, and I hear them singing in the choir … such patient men, these monks, but then very few of them have seen Constantinople. I am richer than they, though blind, for I have memories.

I do not miss my sight, for what is there to see here? They have no gold nor silver nor mosaic in their church nor painted curtains or curious robes.

I shall be glad to gain Heaven that I may see the shoes of God, crystal, gilt and pointed and His girdle of great blue stones and the attire of the angels, fine cambric worked with silks from Persia, purple of a live blood colour and green like a split jade.

So I talk and the little boy writes while they sing in the chapel; they humour me because I am so very old and I despise them all.

To-night I have a loosened tongue; I could tell secrets now.…

Write, write, write the last scene I saw before I was blind–how the Sclaronion gained the throne and how the Amorian died.

Come nearer, for my voice is very weak. What if this was the last night of all for me and I should wake to see the banners of God blowing about His throne?

So write, for I know more than I have ever told.

It was the year 866 that the Emperor Michael surnamed the Drunkard, took for his fellow Emperor Basil the Macedonian groom. This was reward for what Basil had done at Kepos, where he had stabbed the Cæsar through the back. This Cæsar Bardas was a clever man, but Basil was more cunning; this Bardas the Cæsar was uncle to the Emperor, and had in his time slain Theoktistos, so he, too, is in Hell, for he died without a prayer. But I have prayed before the images and given them robes of silk pleasant to handle. Basil the groom had come to Constantinople on foot with a wallet on his back and become a stable boy to an officer of the court, and once when the Emperor was driving his own white horses in the Hippodrome, he saw this Basil wrestle with a Bulgarian and overthrow him; the Macedonian had great credit for this, and Michael took him into his service, for he was a man of wonderful strength.

I never saw one taller; his hair was very thick bright brown and curling, his face had a look of hideous power and his neck was massive as the trunk of a young tree.

He had a great gift with horses, for there was never one whom he could not subdue with a touch and a whisper; soon, it seemed, he had this power with the Emperor, too, for Michael made him Chamberlain and cast money into his lap as gifts are cast before the Images.

Who knew what went on outside the mighty palace? I tell you none could guess.… But you have heard of Eudocia Ingerina; she was a daughter of the Martinakes, and the Emperor would have married her, but because her family was so mighty his mother, Theodora, prevented this, and he married Eudocia, the daughter of Dekapolitas.…

Then there was Thekla, the sister of Michael, and she loved Basil, but the Emperor married him to Eudocia, who would be Empress some way; she never forgave it, for he had resigned her for fear of his mother, vanished now to Gastria, afterwards to Anthimos.

It was their women behind it all.… Those were great golden days. Eudocia Ingerina, with the Emperor for her lover and the groom for her husband, kept the splendid revels gorgeously, but in her heart she waited for vengeance on Michael and his mother, on all of them who had debarred her from the throne–I knew it always.

At one time I was her chamberlain. She was a woman beautiful and vain; in my perpetual darkness I can see her features, her black hair clinging to her white shoulders, the plates of gold and clanging metal, of wine-red and serpent-green stones about her brow, her long, long eyes and small mouth, expressionless–her perfumed linen and her mantles of furs and silver.…

It was worth living then; it is worth living now to think of it. Write, write the colour, the glitter, the glory and the power of it, the days burning into the nights with the lights of a thousand jewelled lamps glowing behind screens of silk, the marble halls strewn with flowers, the slaves with bands of scarlet on their foreheads, the chariot races, the shouting crowds, the taste of wine and fruit, the perfect women with heavy hair, the churches shining with burnished bronze and gold.… Sometimes I dread that Heaven cannot be so delicious.…

In May, then, Michael made Basil Emperor with him, joint ruler of the Eastern Empire, sharer of the throne of the Cæsars, and in the winter of that year he gave the imperial title to a third, Basiliskian.

Now there were glorious orgies and splendid riotings of feasts and games; and each wondered which Emperor would first slay the other; and Michael was grown to be afraid of Basil, who was changed from a drunken groom into an Emperor and a graver man.

With this terror on him, he came to Eudocia Ingerina.…

Do you think I hear the monks chanting and see darkness?

No, I hear the trumpets; I see the Emperor Michael with his black hair unbound and his whip in his hand as he has returned from the Hippodrome standing against the leopard cat couch, while the sun embraces the snakes on his buskins. And she, Eudocia Ingerina, seated on a stool inset with opal holding lilies in her hand.

“So,” he said, “I am afraid of this Basil whom I took from the kennels; he must go swiftly as he came, Eudocia.”

“You made him my husband,” she answered, and threw the lilies down.

The fine silk curtains were lifting in an Eastern wind; the sun slipped under them and gilded the sloping orange walls of Numidian marble and the girdle of turkis round her waist.

“I am afraid of him,” repeated the Emperor, and he shook.

She looked away and he went on his knees and laid his head on her lap, dropping the whip stained with the blood and foam of his horses. Neither of them had any heed of me standing in the outer peristyle where the bronze pots of roses were, nor of the two slaves in tiger skins.

“Do you weep?” she asked, and lifted his thick hair in her small round fingers.

He looked up with red eyes.

“Basil is dangerous,” he muttered.

She leant towards him delicately.

“Why did you not make me Empress?” she questioned, and rose up, repulsing him.

He got to his feet and went swaying down the corridors with clattering African slaves and Persian guards after him.