Chapter III: Part 3

Through the regal quiet of the night Simon could hear, no great way off, the muffled sound of the tramping of many feet. Turning his watchful face to the white roadway, after a little while he beheld a number of gleaming specks scarcely bigger than so many glow-worms. Then came what seemed like a dark, rolling cloud starred with points of fire, and this presently resolved itself into a mass of armed men, some of them on horseback, some of them bearing torches whose light flowed ruddy over shields and helms and spears. With the help of these earthly lights and of the light of the moon in heaven he saw that the torch-bearers and the armed men formed two bodies, one preceding and one following a number of litters of which the most sumptuous was drawn by four small black horses.

As this procession moved beneath his wondering gaze along the highway, those who led the van suddenly halted and seemed to look in Simon's direction and hold conference together. Instantly Simon remembered that he stood conspicuous enough against the moonlight in the open, and that his presence in that lonely place had naturally attracted the attention of the travellers. But he did not know the meaning of fear, and, though he was ever of a prudent disposition, he felt no need for flight, easy though flight would have been into the concealment of the wood. For he was conscious that he was doing no harm, and he entertained no expectation of harm from a company so numerous, so well armed, and travelling with so many lights by night in a time of peace. In no such fashion did marauders go abroad, so Simon resolved with little self-discussion to stand where he would and see out the adventure.

The new-comers were such a little way off, and so plainly to be observed in the quavering pool of torch-light spilled on the white path, that he could see how first the leaders of van and rear left their ranks and consulted together, and how next the curtains of the leading litter were plucked aside and a woman's head thrust forth, while a woman's imperious voice said something in question which he could not catch. Then the curtains of the other litters were pulled aside and other women thrust their heads into the night, squealing out many questions with sleepy voices. Then he heard the same imperious voice speak again, and the speaker railed at the others, rating them roundly for silly fools, and telling them to hold their peace, at which the pages about the litters tittered, and the women's heads were swiftly withdrawn and their voices silent. Then she who spoke so haughtily gave a command, and immediately the pages who led the four black horses turned them from the roadway and guided them carefully across the grass in his direction. A few of the escort remained on the highway with the other litters, but most of the knights a-horseback, and the men-at-arms and the torch-bearers, accompanied the litter and formed a great circle of steel and flame around Simon, where he stood placidly guarding the sleeping body of the young Lord of Athens, and gazing into the set faces of the strangers, and wondering what was going to happen next.

What did happen was that the four black horses halted a few yards from him, that the silken curtains of the litter were sharply pulled apart, and that a very beautiful face revealed itself to him in the mingled moonlight and torch-light. It was a splendid, sensual face, of the kind that appealed to Simon's directness, skin the color of fine ivory, hair the color of smooth ebony, eyes that seemed to change with every change of light, with every mood of mind, with every phase of desire, like a cat's, and a mouth as ripely red as the berries of the rowan-tree. Such a face might Semiramis have shown nightly to her nightly changing lovers ere they glided into Tigris; such a face might Clytemnestra have shown to her impatient paramour when she had newly butchered the king of men. Simon's simple, straightforward thought was that he wished the lady were for instant sale, and that he possessed the opulence which might purchase her. Simon's reflections in such matters were always direct.

The woman's eyes were fixed on Simon's stalwart body with a cold commendation of its proportions, but she spoke not to Simon but to a page in cloth of gold who stood obedient by her litter side.

"What is the matter, Bohemond?" she asked, in a voice that was wont to govern those who heard it with the sensuous charm of strange music chanted at sunset. Her eyes were still fixed on Simon, and Simon, nothing daunted, gave her back her gaze as boldly as if she had been a staring kitchen-wench, while the knights and men-at-arms stood about as fixed and rigid as armored effigies in audience halls.

"Grace," the golden page answered, "here lies a man dead or sleeping on the grass, and here stands a sturdy fellow with a club that keeps watch over him."

The lady whom the page hailed as "Grace" pushed aside the curtains of her litter impatiently and stepped into the moonlight. She was no more than common tall, but she carried her head high and commandingly, and Simon, still eying her steadfastly, thought that she walked like some old-time empress. Swiftly she stepped to where Rainouart lay, bent over him, and recognized him as the gallant youth whose face and form had stirred her facile pulses when he rode victorious down the lists in Paris, and who denied her as decidedly as he denied all the ladies at the court of Philip the Fair. She swung on Simon like a cat about to scratch.

"This is the young Lord Rainouart of Athens," she cried. "How comes he here and in this case? Have you injured him, villain?"

"I have neither hurt him nor helped him," Simon answered, composedly, "nor, for the matter of that, am I a villain, nor other than an honest soldier; but I can tell you all there is to tell when I know to whom I speak."

The little gilded page stepped a pace forward and addressed Simon sharply.

"It is the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes, fellow, who honors you with her speech."

Simon shrugged his shoulders; the woman was a fine piece of flesh were she duchess or no duchess, and his gaze was blatant admiration. The duchess, appraising his bulk, did not resent his possessive gaze.

"Who are you, sir?" she asked, in a voice more amiable, while she motioned to her attendant to rein his zeal.

Simon made her a leg.

"Lady, I am a soldier of fortune voyaging to Athens to seek for service under the bully duke, but your concern is not with me but with his countship yonder."

The Duchess of Thebes looked down again upon the fair sleeping body on the sward.

"How did Sir Rainouart come here?" she demanded, and Simon answered:

"Being foolish enough to overstay sunset near these woods in the reading of silly verses, he was set upon by footpads who thought to kill and strip him, but a girl who lives in these woods scared them away. The rascals took her for a witch, tumbling plump on them from the thicket, and gave leg-bail. It was the devil take the hindermost, I promise you; you would have laughed to see them scamper. The maid tended his wounds, that were little enough save for an ugly clip on the crown, and what should my young gentleman do but fall in love with his sweet nurse and she with him. I think they have plighted their troth, for he has proffered her a ring, and this daughter of the forest bids fair to end her days as Duchess of Athens."

The red blood raged in the woman's face, staining its ivory. "That she shall never be," she said in her heart. "I love this youth, and will not yield him." For, indeed, she had loved him with what Esclaramonde called love, in those painted days in Paris, before in despite she had taken Nemours for her husband, the old Duke of Thebes, who had lately left her an eager widow. What she spoke aloud was:

"A likely tale that Duke Baldwin's son should woo to mate a peasant."

"She is no peasant, I promise you," Simon answered, doggedly. He did not choose to tell what the girl had told him, for he was very far from sure that he believed it himself, and he was very sure, indeed, that no one else would believe it. "She is no peasant, whatever she be. These ears heard him ask her in marriage, and here lies the ring he proffered her."

Simon held out the rosary ring on his brown palm. The duchess's white hand dived at it as a peregrine dives on his prey, and caught it before he could guess or prevent her purpose. He had ever been used to dealing with damsels ready to snatch any trifles they might spy from their chance companions, and, being of a business-like humor in such matters, he made now as if to clutch the ring back again, just as if he were toying with a Corinthian doxy. But the duchess gave a sidelong glance at her escort, and in an instant a dozen swords were naked and aimed at Simon's breast, and Simon, being a sensible man, gave up the idea of further argument or expostulation. The duchess moved nearer to one of the torch-bearers, and in the orange light she looked at the ring covetously, much for its own rich beauty, for she loved all costly toys, and more because it seemed to mean a man's love for another woman, a man's love that should be, might be, hers. For the sanctity of the symbolism of the ring she had no thought at all.

"I will take better care of it," she said, with a queer smile, as she came near again to Simon and the youth at Simon's feet. Her evil wits, shuttles in the loom of deadly sins, were nimbly weaving a web of guile. Rainouart stirred uneasily as she came near, for the sleep that the woodland creatures can give may be molested by the coming of a hostile presence. The duchess looked down into his twitching face.

"See, he begins to wake," she said. "Give place all of you, and keep the tall soldier in ward."

At her command the duchess's people, knights and men-at-arms and torch-bearers, taking Simon, very reluctant, with them, drew away a little distance to the edge of the forest. He could see how, on the high-road eager heads peeped again from between the curtains of the litters of the duchess's women, and he grinned to think how little they could see of the business. But he was heartily wishing himself well out of the whole bother, and was casting about for a means of escape from it.

Meanwhile the Duchess Esclaramonde kneeled down on the grass beside Rainouart, watching him with malign eyes. The ring that she had taken from Simon she placed deliberately on her left hand. Then she drew from her right a ring set with a royal ruby, and, taking Rainouart's limp hand in hers, thrust it onto the finger where the red mark showed her that he had been wont to wear the ring she now wore. At her touch the youth turned his head once or twice like a man who dreams bad dreams, and then opened his eyes heavily. He groped with his arms as if seeking some dear presence.

"Where are you, love?" he asked, faintly.

Instantly Esclaramonde answered him.

"Here, my dear lord," she whispered, passionately, and she bowed her dark head tenderly over him.

Rainouart, his senses hurriedly returning, gazed with wonder into her fair, familiar face, and for an instant deemed himself in France, in Paris, at the court of King Philip. He lifted himself a little on one arm, for he was stronger now with the strength given by deep sleep, and realized that he was in the forest, but that Esclaramonde was bending over him.

"I crave your pardon, lady," he said. "When came you here? I seek another, she who was here but now."

The dark eyes of the duchess swam in the sad waters of anxiety, and well-feigned amazement was painted on her face.

"Of what other do you speak, dear lord?" she asked. "I have been here by your side ever since those villains fell upon you."

Rainouart looked dully at her and overmuttered her words, trying to interpret their meaning.

"You have been by my side?" he asked.

The duchess wound her arms tightly about him and kissed his forehead hotly, and the kiss troubled him, for the woman was very beautiful and his flesh was strange to kisses. Esclaramonde spoke in his ear low and quick.

"I was journeying to Athens, travelling by night for my whim and pleasure, and by happy chance passed by here at the time when you were bested. The coming of my people frightened the knaves from you, and they fled, with some of mine in pursuit. We were alone together"--she lowered her eyelids for a moment, craftily modest--"and I tended your wounds."

The prince made to free himself bodily from those embracing arms, mentally from the net-work of those bewildering words. It was easy to free himself from her clasp, though he did so with all courtesy and rather as one unwilling and unworthy to be so greatly honored, but it was harder to free his spirit from the meshes of her lying tale.

"You speak strangely," he said, vaguely, wondering if this were parcel of a dream. "Surely you did not tend me? Where is she?"

His haggard eyes wandered over the moonlit space towards the darkling wood and marvelled at the solemn presence of the men-at-arms. Again Esclaramonde wound her arms around him, reluctant, and there was an agony of solicitude in the duchess's voice, an ecstasy of tenderness in her eyes, as she cried to him, clasping him tighter to her warm body:

"My lord, my dear lord, what trouble has come to you? It was but a few poor moments ago that you told me how you loved me."

The prince looked despairingly into that beautiful, sensual face, and he remembered how it had shone in its splendor over the festivals at Paris. It was very lovely to behold, alluring, commanding, yielding, insisting, but it was not the loveliness his white spirit had longed for then or the worshipped loveliness his memory longed for now.

"I told you that I loved you?" The sound of his voice was full of doubt, and yet it went hard with his knightly heart to doubt the word of a woman.

Esclaramonde's pale cheeks filled with flame.

"With words too flattering sweet for me to echo," she whispered, and she stooped, and her eager face was close to his and her dark hair brushed his forehead, and she kissed him on the mouth at once sharply and suavely, and the fire from her lips ran through his veins.

"You gave me a ring which I shall wear forever." She withdrew one clinging arm from about his neck and held a smooth hand before him, and he saw on her finger the ring that had been his own for so long, the ring that had been his mother's, that she had made him promise when she gave it to him never to part with save to the loveliest and the worthiest. "You took a ring from me." She lifted his hand a little and he stared stupidly at the great ruby.

"Have you forgotten?" Esclaramonde cried. "Can men forget so soon?" Her eyes swam in obedient tears.

The maze of the man's mind showed tragically in his eyes, and then he spoke, but rather to himself than to the woman by his side.

"Which is the dream?" he asked. "I thought when I fell that a white girl came from the woods and succored me, a divine child, the loveliest--"

Esclaramonde shifted her body a little away from him, though still she clasped him fast and he could not in courtesy release her clinging fingers.

"Dear my lord," she protested, pathetically, "my overvaunted beauty may be of little account; still it is not many seconds since you chose to call me passing fair."

The prince, looking at Esclaramonde, knew that she was very fair indeed. There was for the merely desirous no more desirable woman of all the French dames dwelling in Greece.

"You are very fair," he said, truly, "but you are not she whom I saw." And once again his anxious eyes looked longingly over the silver grass towards the implacable silence of the wood.

"She was some dream," Esclaramonde answered him, earnestly, her warm lips close to his flushed cheek, her soft breath fanning his troubled face. "She was a vision born of the quick fever of your wounds. You swooned again after our change of vows and change of rings, and in this swoon you must have dreamed this dream of another who was not I. Indeed, you murmured snatches of strange speech in your sleep which astounded me, but such delirium is common with men in your case. Will you stain your knightly faith and deny your honor for the sake of a sick dream?"

Great waves of doubt flooded the prince's struggling consciousness, overwhelming it, drowning it. Was she, in very fact, no more than a vision, that white child of the woods with her yellow hair and her haunting eyes and her perfect body? Did the help he had dreamed of really come to him from this splendid, voluptuous creature who had striven to allure him in France? Was it those insistent hands that had brought healing to his hurt? Was it those passionate lips that had soothed him to sleep? Was it those enticing eyes that had summoned love to take possession of his stainless soul? His thoughts were all a tangle, his fever burned bright as his eyes travelled vaguely from the unfamiliar ring upon his finger to his mother's ring upon the finger of Esclaramonde. One thing alone seemed plain to him where all was imbroglio. If in whatever bewildering way he had pledged his word to this lady, his word must be kept.

"If I gave you my knightly faith, lady," he said, faintly, "I may not take it again."

The eyes of the duchess were triumphant torches, success was throned in her smiling face. But the pallor of Rainouart's face grew greater, for the spiritual strife within him had weakened him more than his loss of blood, and Esclaramonde, watching him, believed he was about to swoon again. She turned and made a sign in the direction where her following stood, huddled together, a group of lances and flaring torches on the lip of the wood. The golden page quitted the little throng and ran to his mistress.

"Bring me some wine, Bohemond," she ordered.

The page sped back to the litter and returned to his mistress with a golden flagon and a golden cup. Esclaramonde took the cup and held it while Bohemond poured out red wine that glowed like dragon's blood in the moonlight. Then a gesture dismissed the page to his companions, and the duchess set the golden cup upon the grass. She was still supporting Rainouart with one arm, his eyes were closed, and his lips had lost their color. From the jewelled pouch that hung at her girdle the duchess drew with her free hand a tiny phial, and, cuddling it in her palm, drew the stopper with her finger and thumb. She poured the contents into the cup and thrust the empty phial back into her pouch. Then she lifted the cup and pressed it to the young man's pale lips.

"Drink, my lord, drink," she entreated, and her voice could implore and command with the same breath and charm the listener away from reason. She was eager that he should drink, for she knew that what he drank would make him sleep sound, and that when he woke he must needs think as she would have him think, and so she said again:

"Drink, my lord, drink."

Rainouart opened his eyes wearily and looked up. He had hoped that he might sleep, and, waking, find the coming of the duchess a fever's fantasy. But she was still with him, his imperial deliverer, and the white child only the picture of a dream. Esclaramonde tilted the cup a little at his lips, and he drank at it eagerly, sucking in surcease of memory, sucking in unconquerable sleep. It was delicious, that draught of dark and deep oblivion; the tired senses relaxed.

"I thank you, lady," he sighed, in relief, and then all knowledge slipped from him and he lay his length unconscious. The duchess called to her page, and Bohemond raced across the grass to her side. Him the duchess commanded:

"Let two of my people carry this lord to my litter. We will make sure of his safe convoy to Athens. I will ride for the rest of the journey."

Her orders were swiftly and instantly obeyed. Three tall fellows of her men-at-arms, picked by the knight who led the van of her escort, came to where Rainouart lay and carried him as easily and as gently as if he had been a sleeping child to their lady's litter. A servitor moved from the rear of the little army leading a white riding palfrey, valiantly caparisoned. As she made to mount she paused, missing something, and her quick eyes sought for Simon.

"Where is the braggart we talked with but now?" she asked, sharply, and her question proved hard to answer. The men-at-arms into whose charge Simon had been put looked at one another with dismay, for truly Simon had disappeared. The disappearance, very surprising to the soldiery, was not very surprising in itself. The fact of the matter was that Simon had decided some time back that it would be excellent well for him to be quite clear of the complication that the coming of the duchess had created. It was plain to the adventurer that the duchess had taken a fancy for the heir of Athens. It was also patent to his understanding that he himself existed an undesirable witness of that earlier passage between Rainouart and the woman of the wood, the story of which the duchess had so vehemently resented. Simon, who had something of the art of reading women's natures in their faces, imagined, not unwisely, that the Duchess of Thebes was not a woman to stick at much if the removal of a disagreeable witness might be convenient to her. Once Simon had made up his mind that it were well for him to go, he lost no time in making the experiment.

It was no very difficult enterprise. The men in whose custody he stood, occupied to their greater interest in watching the duchess's attentions to the wounded knight, though they could see little and hear less, paid scant heed to Simon, who, on his side, had done nothing to provoke watchfulness by any resistance to their guardianship. So, finding them thus indifferent, little by little he edged him away from their neighborhood, moving very cautiously and gradually as one who scarcely seemed to move at all till he backed against a tree, against which he leaned lazily for some seconds. Once in front of a tree it was but simple strategy to slip to the other side of its trunk, and this feat Simon, choosing his time wisely, accomplished dexterously and unnoticed. Had he been by misluck interrupted in his progress, he relied upon his mighty strength to overthrow any six who sought to restrain him, and to make a bolt for it into the thickness of the wood where he believed he might effectually evade pursuit. But he wished, if it might be, to glide away in quiet, and fortune favored the adventurer. A floating fleece of cloud, stray fragment of the shattered dragon that seemed to obey Argathona's incantation, had again muffled the moonlight. In the gloom Simon was on his hands and knees in the brushwood and threading his way on all-fours with amazing celerity among the trees into the deep of the forest. Thus it came to pass that when the duchess demanded Simon, Simon was not forthcoming.

"He was here a moment since," one man-at-arms asserted, lying hardily, as he stared into the vacant faces of his fellows.

"Belike he has slipped into the wood," another suggested, shading his eyes with his hands and peering into the impenetrable gloom behind him.

"Shall we search for him with torches?" Bohemond proposed, briskly, while the men-at-arms looked sheepish over their blunder and wished Simon at the devil. The duchess shook her head impatiently.

"No, it is no matter," she said.

She believed that she would recognize the man again if she saw him in Athens. She was confident, too, that the man could have little power, even if he had the inclination, to interfere with her plans. The immediate need was to carry Rainouart quickly to Athens and there to work her will upon his troubled wits. She mounted lightly into the saddle of her horse, her spirits were nimble, her heart gay, her brain elated. She had taken at last a prize that she had long desired, a prize that she would not lightly yield again. All was very well with her.

"Onward!" she commanded, "onward! Athens, ho!" So she and her company resumed their measured journey to Athens, a line of torches on the white highway, while the prince slept a dreamless sleep on the litter still warm with the pressure of the limbs of Esclaramonde.

X

SIMON BLOWS OUT HIS LANTERN

When Simon had made some little way into the wood he quitted the animal all-fours, irksome to one already stiff and weary, for the natural carriage of man, and made to think things over and to look about him. The latter was difficult to do, at least to any great advantage. More frequent clouds now scumbled the sky and huddled in dull clumps between moon and earth, wherefore in the dense wood the darkness was so thick that Simon felt as if he could pluck pieces out of it as out of a palpable pall or curtain. But Simon was not discomfited, Simon was not at a loss. "Here," he murmured, sagaciously, "comes in the wisdom of your philosophic lantern." Squatting cautiously in the darkness, after assuring himself by preliminary pattings of the absence of any hostile snags, he fumbled in his pouch till he found flint, steel, and tinder-box. Then after the habitual preliminary pains and failures that darkened the lives of those that sought illumination, he succeeded in getting a light and applying it gingerly to the candle in its iron house. When the wick began to burn freely he hasped the door and felt less lonely and astray. Through the thin plates of horn a pale yellow light flowed dimly, showing like some civic lamp of fish-oil seen through a fog. But it was at least bright enough to enable Simon to distinguish where he was for a few paces in any direction, and to protect himself when he started walking again from crashing with unnecessary vehemence into unexpected tree-trunks. What was less to the purpose was that the flickering wick seemed to stir from slumber all manner of moths and midges, which hustled in their myriads about lantern and lantern-carrier with a wholly unnecessary activity. But if their attentions called for a brave display of philosophy, this was all in the part of one who carried the lantern of Diogenes.

Having looked about him, Simon now proceeded to think things over. All the events that had followed upon the unexpected arrival of the duchess had passed so swiftly that he knew they had taken little time in the happening. He had not the least idea where he was or what he should do next. He wanted, in the second place, the road to Athens, but he did not know where to find it; also he wanted in the first place to see the woodland maid again, but he did not know where to find her. He was still more than three-quarters inclined to think her mad. A lonely life in the forest had no doubt unhinged her pretty wits, and led her to credit all sorts of gossamer nonsense about immortality and forgotten gods. But were she the maddest witch that ever straddled a broomstick she was as fair as fair, and it occurred to the lantern-carrier hopefully that perhaps now that her prince was thus beraped from her she might be more willing to let Master Simon from Corinth play lieutenant.

After a while he decided that the best thing for him to do was to try to find his way back to the glade whence young Athens had been carried, for thither the wood-maid was sure to come with the healing herbs for her lover, and Simon's strongest purpose was the wish to see her again. He groped his way slowly through the trees, oathing free at sundry awkward bumps and stumbles, and endeavoring painfully to retrace his steps over a soil that gave no indication of his passage. But he moved with fair confidence served by occasional glimpses of the moon, and sure that by this time the duchess would have vanished from the goal at which he aimed. Fortune rewarded him. He had not travelled very far when he caught a glimpse of a clearing through the trees, and hastening his speed he soon broke from the wood and found that he had, indeed, returned to the scene of the night's adventure. Here was the glade newly trampled with the coming and going of many feet, here were the marks of horses' hoofs on the grass, here was the slight hollow in the turf where the youth's body had lain. The place seemed strangely deserted now which had so short a while before been populous. Surely the girl would come soon, Simon thought. He lowered his lantern to the ground and humped himself beside it, resolved on waiting, and wishing he had a store of food and drink with him to cheer the waiting-time. He had not long to wait. There came a gleam of whiteness through the trees, the gleam of a white body garmented in white stuff. Another moment and Argathona emerged from the forest and came running across the grass towards him. She was holding the skirts of her smock in both hands to form a kind of sack, and in this sack she carried herbs. As she came near to Simon she shook what she carried in a heap upon the sward and leaped forward to where her lover had lain. Then she gave a great cry as she saw that Simon sat there alone.

"Where is he?" she asked, an agony in her voice.

Simon was glad to see the girl again, but sorely against his will he found himself a sharer in her sorrow, and could almost have wished young Athens back again between them to conjure away the pathos of her look. He rose up to answer her, honestly sorry for her flagrant sorrow, painfully conscious that it was not for him to bring her consolation.

"Gone," he said, simply. It was all he could find to say on the instant; it really seemed all there was to say.

"Gone!" she echoed, and it seemed to Simon as if the woes of all unhappy lovers in the world seemed to flow mournful through her lips. He nodded his head and spoke soberly, gently, weighing his words:

"In your absence there came a great lady riding by, the duchess she of Thebes, no less, with a large escort. She saw your young gentleman sprawling on his back in the moonlight, and, seeing him, seemed to know him and to show a fancy for his fair face. So when she had tickled him out of his swoon she persuaded him, as I take it, for her voice carried far and I could catch snatches of her speech in the stillness, that you were no more than the doll of a dream and that it was she, the duchess, who had tended him in his time of peril, she who had changed troth with him, she who had taken his ring which indeed lay on the grass for any chance-by to handle, she who had given him a ring in exchange, for indeed she did thrust a ring on his finger while he slumbered. I suppose in the end he gobbled her story, which seemed, on the face of it, plain and specious. Anyway, she gave him wine to drink which sent him to sleep like a baby, and so without more ado she bundled him off to Athens."

Simon paused after this patter of narrative. To his surprise the girl had mastered her instant grief, and her countenance carried its former air of sweet serenity. The tears had dried from her eyes; the fear had faded from her cheeks; only she seemed to regard Simon now with cold, accusing mien.

"Did you do nothing to stay her?" she asked, and there was that stroke of reproach in her voice which made Simon feel, he knew not exactly why, as if he had betrayed a friend. But he answered bluffly enough, putting a bold face on his conduct, for, after all, maugre her strength, she was only a slip of a she-wizard and he a bearded man little accountable to such jills.

"I am a soldier of fortune," he blustered, "and it is not the way of my trade to take sides in a squabble unless I be paid for it. But if I had been fool enough to thrust my nose into another's quarrel, there was nothing of any purpose to do, for my high-mighty lady the duchess had fifty or so stout fellows with her, more than I could tackle. I was in a kind my lady's prisoner, and if I had not contrived to slip aside into the wood while she was plying him with the wine it is like she would have carried me, too, to Athens, and indeed it was not part of my plans to travel thither in such fashion."

Argathona seemed to be listening to Simon, but in truth she was paying little heed to his surly speech. She was looking steadfastly at the white ribbon of road which skirted the glade and ran, a highway, to Athens, and her face showed only the composure of a noble hope.

"He does not love her," she murmured to herself, and her words flowed with the motion of some proud and ancient song. "It is I whom he loves, I who love him."

Simon hoisted his shoulders to his ears. These amatory flights were not to his mind, for he took himself to be in a free field, and he was mulishly set to push his own case.

"He may live content enough with his bargain," he asserted. "Lady Esclaramonde of Thebes is a great lady and a wealthy and a fair, with broad lands for her dower--a better match, saving your presence, for young Athens than a wood-wench in a wood."

Argathona looked at him now with the same air of triumphant patience.

"You do not understand us," she said. "If it were for his welfare to leave me I would not hinder him. If it made for his happiness, now and hereafter, to dwell with this woman I would not hurt his life. But I have looked into his eyes and I know that he loves me as I love him."

Simon resented sharply this harping on a single string. The Athenian prince was not the only man in the world, nor the only man in Greece. There was a stout fellow at that moment, hailing lately from Corinth and earlier from Rouen, well worthy of any maid's eye.

"Be wise," he counselled, jovially, slapping his broad chest. "The boy has gone and there is an end of the adventure. Let by-gones be by-gones, and look more favorably upon one whom war and the world have mellowed to a ripe prime. A green goose makes a sour sweetheart. Here is a trained hawk to your hand. I will abide with you in the woodland cheerfully if you give me the wink of a lid."

Simon felt that he was acting most handsomely, and he beamed. But Argathona surveyed him with very much that show of scorn which an armed and haughty amazon might have vouchsafed to some woosome, presuming satyr who dared to waylay her on a hunting morning.

"I am glad the world you serve is not all made up of men like you," she said, quietly, and then she turned her calm eyes again upon the white highway.

Simon laughed dryly, but he felt that he grinned on the wrong side of his visage, for it vexed him sorely to find the maid so stubborn.

"Alack the day, no," he answered, gruffly. "Believe me, pretty mistress, I show better than the bulk. I am but quarter bad, like a clipped coin, and such as I am it is no offence for me to cherish you."

Argathona answered him more gently.

"You are well enough when you do not fret me with foolish words. But you do not speak of a cheerful world."

Simon was perplexed.

"What a saint's name does it matter to you how the world is compassed?"

Argathona understood the drift of his question.

"I am going into the world," she said, with decision.

Simon stared into her fine face. If one of the trees round about him had taken unto itself a vegetable voice, and told him as much of its intended travels in speech familiar to his French ears, he could scarcely have been more gravelled.

"You are going into the world," he growled, and the growl in his voice was meant to make it very plain to the girl that he thought she was talking nonsense.

But the girl answered his growling with the same unchangeable voice flowing from the same unchangeable countenance.

"I am going into the world to save my lover."

Simon was now one part diverted and three parts vexed at the girl's pertinacity. It was aggressively plain to him that she made far too much of one man at the expense of another, with nothing that he could see to warrant the partisanship.

"How will you find your way?" he questioned, drolly, mocking with eyes and tongue, and he thought he had posed her. But the girl's blithe face remained untroubled in its tranquillity of resolve.

"I shall find my way to my lover," she cried, and her voice rang in his hearing like the hunter's horn at the find of the deer. "My lover needs me; my lover is in danger; wherever he is my lover is alone without me as I am alone without him. I know that it were better for both of us not to be than to exist apart."

Simon laughed lustily, venting his spleen so, and the false thunder in his lungs shook his bulk as a sudden breeze shakes the flag-iris in the sedges. When he had done crowing and could speak like a Christian again:

"I have never known any lad to speak so for the loss of a lass," he assured her.

The dryad turned her unfathomable eyes on her jeering companion, and somehow, all of a sudden, his jesting seemed to lose its savor.

"There cannot be many men like my lover," she said, with clean assurance. "You have tramped so much through a muddy world and taken such stain in your travels that you have lost the thoughts of the solitudes and the sacred places. But here is the greenwood way of it. We have changed loves, he and I; we have changed hearts, he and I; where one is the other must be, though all the seas and all the mountains lie between us. If he be kept from me by guile I must win my way to him by craft, for that I know is what he would have me do."

Simon nursed his nose thoughtfully with his finger and thumb, eying the valiant lass and pondering as to whether she really meant what she said or whether all this ecstasy were only plain proof of the madness he shrewdly suspected.

"I wish you were a more reasonable rusticity," he grumbled. "The Duchess of Thebes is a very great, dangerous lady. I heard tell of her in Corinth that she dabbled in sorcery and was so skilled in the distillation of philtres that if ever a man drank a draught of her brewing he became her slave soul and body. What can your country-side courage do against her?"

Argathona's eyes radiated pity on his ignorance.

"I am of kin with the gods," she reminded him, austerely proud.

Simon twisted his features with a whimsical grimace that meant compassion for her madness and mirth at her earnestness.

"The gods will be of no use to you in the world beyond this wood. I do not know where they have gone, and in this regard you seem no morsel wiser than I, for all your phrases; but we seem to be both agreed in this, that they have gone, and in my world men raise shrines and altars to unite other powers."

"I think I shall still find love honored in the world," the dryad replied, confidently.

Simon whistled softly the fag end of a friendly drinking-song before he spoke. He was thinking grimly of what he and others like him honored as love in the world below the wood.

"I doubt if you would know the God of Love in some of his changes," he said at last. Then he went on, remembering and correcting: "Yet, as I am told, they hold pretty parliaments of love in Athens where jolly lords and dainty ladies wrangle to infinity over touches and phrases and prove very finical in discrimination."

Argathona was not disturbed by his doubts; she sang the same song of Olympian assurance to his unwilling ears.

"My lover bears my heart in his body and I bear his in mine. I will follow him to Athens; if needs must, I will follow him to the ends of the earth."

Simon tickled at his beard, looking at her with a dismal pity while he strove to light love's candles in the windows of his eyes and to speak to her wooingly, for he still cherished a desperate, dwindling hope for himself in the venture. So he again hazarded discouragement.

"You will spare yourself many pains and aches if you stay in the forest. Why can you not listen to me?" Even as he entreated he read in her face that his wooing was vanity, and he ended angrily in a challenge.

"I believe you would listen to me if I wore a silk coat and carried a smooth face."

The dryad smiled, divinely patient of his peevish speech.

"I would not listen to you," she said, "if you wore the robe of Zeus or showed like Apollo."

She turned away from him and stretched out her white arms towards the dark wood.

"Dear forest, where I have lived so long, the time has come when we must part. Dear birds and beasts, I must say you farewell. For I follow the forest law and I go to seek my mate."

Simon looked at her with a new wonder and a new approbation in his eyes.

"You are resolved?" he asked, and the girl answered him irrevocably:

"I am resolved."

"Then," said Simon, "I think I may blow out my lantern," and on the word he swung his lantern to the height of his face and drew back its door. Pursing his lips he whistled a curfew call, and his breath puffed out the feeble light of the candle.

"Why do you do that?" Argathona asked, with the naïve curiosity of a child.

Simon turned his head to Argathona, and the look on his face was at once roguish and reverential.

"I carry this lantern," he said, "daytime and nighttime, like my old-time pattern, looking for an honest fellow-being, a thing I could not find in Corinth and doubted to find in Athens. But now I believe I have found a true woman, for I call you a woman, by your leave, though you choose to call yourself immortal. Wherefore, out goes my sceptical glimmer, and if you are willing I will go with you to Athens as your honest friend and true servant; and, indeed, I think I may prove of service, for I know something of the rough edge of the world."

"You may come if you choose," Argathona answered, "and you shall give me advice, for I am strange to men and cities."

"Faith," said Simon, bluntly, "to begin with, you cannot go as you now are. Women wear other gear in these years of grace. I cannot say that they look better than you do, but truly they look very different."

"I shall not go as a woman," Argathona answered. "I shall go as a man."

Then, seeing that Simon stared at her with the greatest amazement his face had yet worn, she went on:

"Is not a man's life a good life still to live in Greece, as it was in the ancient days?"

Had Simon been blessed with a graver temper he could not choose but laugh.

"By the rood," he swore, "a man's life is as round a dish and as full of meat as ever, but 'tis never a dish for a maid to nibble at. Why, a man's life is a bustling, brawling business, noisy and jocund. Your true man is ever eating, drinking, loving, fighting. When there be no real wars for him to break heads in, he betters the heavy peace with a tournament."

The dryad's eyes looked inquiry, and Simon, guessing what she would know, expanded his matter.

"Your tournament," he explained, "is a brave game by which knights who are weary of idleness and quiet times put on their armor and take up their arms, and bang each other lustily in an appointed place just as if they were enemies, though for the most part they are honest friends and bear no malice for thrustings and thwackings."

Argathona's eyes widened and brightened as if she desired to win a prize in such kind of diversion, and her words showed her thoughts.

"If there be such jolly sports to share yonder," she cried, "then I must play my part in them."

Simon really hardly knew whether he ought to laugh or to cry at the simplicity of the witch.

"What a devil should a slim maid, be she woman or warlock, do at a tourney?" he gaped.

Argathona laughed a little at his bewilderment, and her laughter was pleasant as the piping of summer wind among summer thickets.

"Friend," she said, "you have seen that I am no weakling. Truly I have the strength of the strongest amazon that ever drew bow, and the amazons were as strong as the companions of Theseus. And I doubt if the men of to-day have the strength of the fellowship of Theseus."

Simon was inclined to resent the imputation cast upon an age that he adorned, but, remembering betimes that the girl who faced him had made so little ado with his strength, he grinned weakly and held his peace on that matter. Argathona continued:

"While I play a man's part in Athens I will find a way to save my lover, if he be ensnared as you say. For if I go as a man this woman of Thebes will welcome me as a friend."

Simon wagged his red head approvingly.

"By my faith," he said, "you seem strong enough and wise enough to wander the world alone; but I will go with you and serve you, because I love you, and I can teach you something of the world's ways that may help you, a stranger. But you are wise to go as a man if you think you will look like one."

"Friend," replied Argathona, "we of the woodland can use the woodland glamour, and what we strongly wish men to see us and think us I believe you will find that they so see and think. To-night we will rest in the forest; to-morrow we will make for Athens."

"Where is your male attire?" Simon questioned, dubiously. "For my part I have nothing but the rags I stand in."

Argathona laughed blithely.

"Let not that vex you. There are shepherds in the valley, and you shall go to these shepherds and buy for me a sheepskin suit and a shepherd's pipe and crook." Seeing a frown on Simon's face, she went on: "It may be that you have no coin in your scrip." Simon nodded bashfully. "That need not trouble you neither, for this wood holds many hidden treasures whose lurking-places are known to me, so I will find you a piece of gold for the shepherds. Then as a shepherd I will pass to Athens."

"Nay," Simon commented, gravely, "it will never do for you and me to trip into Athens at all adventure, stout man and slim maid, with no tellable tale to back them. Here is my rede, that we rest a full day in the forest while I tell you so much of the ways of us who live at the end of time as will serve you to play your part with persuasion."

Argathona nodded, wise enough to read the wisdom in his words.

"It shall be as you say," she agreed. "We will abide a day in the woodland and you shall lesson me in the ways of men of the Iron Age."

So said, so done. From the dawn of the next day to the same day's dusk Argathona sat at the feet of the soldier of fortune and listened while he spoke. He told her of the world as he knew it, a fair world made for Frenchmen to rule. He told her of its kings and its captains, and of the names and lineages and lives of those who now lorded it in Greece. Because he had a shrewd wit, with caustic words to lackey it, he made his tongue's puppets live more human than they always showed in knightly histories and monkish scripts. He painted frank pictures of great ladies, too; told truths of the customs of men with women and of women with men, and little doubting that he was doing aught to distinguish with praise, proved himself an excellent chronicler. But of the great faith of the world he spoke scantly and dully, caring for it little, understanding it less, and taking it for granted tranquilly as him seemed a soldier should. On her side, Argathona, keen to learn much about the living things she had to play with and strive against, eager to teach her age-long ignorance the game of the gray world, she had very little curiosity about the faith that had banished the gods of her infancy. And so she listened and learned much and learned little, and one more Attic day of all her wealth of days waxed and waned and left her as it found her, divinely young.

XI

THE CATALAN GRAND COMPANY

From the days when the Christian faith was born in Galilee of Judea, from the days when Hellas became portion and parcel of the Roman empire, the glory of Athens dwindled and withered through the centuries for more than a thousand years. Paul preached. Nero plundered. Philopappus patronized. Hadrian adorned. Herodes commemorated the loved and lost Regilla. Neo-Platonism persuaded its followers that the lamp of the Academy was still alight. The terror of the north swept upon the city as Spartan and Persian had swept upon her, only more bloody and more merciless than both, to be beaten back for a season by the waning strength of the Roman arms. The gleaming image of Athena stayed the rage of the triumphant Alaric, but could not stay the envy of Constantinople. Byzantium stripped Athens of her riches; Byzantium silenced the voices of her philosophers. Gloom of night settled upon the sacred place for generations till, after the fourth crusade and the fall of Constantinople, Boniface of Montserrat came to turn the Parthenon from a Greek church to a Roman Catholic cathedral, and the city of Theseus into a Frankish duchy. In the dawn of the thirteenth century Otho of the Rock became grand sire of Athens, and he and the descendants of his house ruled for a century, till the time came for Baldwin to take the throne.