Chapter IV: Part 4

The French nobles who throned in Hellas in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of Christendom knew nothing, or next to nothing, of the old-time glories of their home. The lions of Mycenæ told the occupants of Peloponnesus nothing of the king of men and his murderous queen, and the vengeance of Orestes leaping like a bright star to his aim. The chiefs in Attica viewed with indifferent eyes the masterpieces of antiquity still standing intact or almost blank of ravage upon the Attic plain and on the Attic hill. But the French lords of Peloponnesus and the French lords of Athens had a very liberal and deep affection for the civilization which they carried with them from their sweet land of France, and for those chivalrous institutions which made life one high delight to them. The best dream of the French gentlemen was to make the land of Greece as like the land of France as might be in all the grace and all the gayeties of life. To this end they lived in Attica as they lived in Languedoc, in Lacedæmon as in Limousin, and their greatest pleasure in their Hellenic empery was to make believe that they were in Paris or Provence. In the land where the Grecian gods had been hymned by Pindar, moulded by Phidias, painted by Apelles, and caricatured by Aristophanes, the adventurous French knights, who tricked themselves out with the titles of cities of Sparta and cities of Attica, bore to the golden land they governed all the pride and pomp and color that made their France so lovely in their eyes. They strove to make their lives as luxurious and as sumptuous as if they were kings of France and not lords of Grecian duchies, and they succeeded greatly in their purpose. French of Paris, French of Provence, French of Picardy, sang of love or commanded for battle in places where Socrates had died yesterday and Atreus the day before yesterday. All the parament of chivalry paraded, a riot of color and luxury, where Lycurgus had fed a strenuous people on bitter bread and brackish water, or played its games of mimic war and held its tribunals of fantastic love in the pale presence of the theatre of Dionysos.

The narrowness of the environment made these efforts after magnificence more conspicuous than they would have been in the country they had quitted. Gorgeous garments and splendid armor adorned and defended bodies cherished with pompous banquets and royal wines. But the ease of their condition did not weaken the limbs or the spirit of the French lords. Their passion for the tournament kept them hardy for their wars with each other, stiffening their voluptuousness with that desire to shine in strife which forbade pleasure to degenerate into effeminacy. Their passion for ballads and the ballad-maker's arts refined their wild, bright life with tales of ancient days and heroic ideals. Their passion for women, growing apace in the magical atmosphere of that enchanted land where the winds seemed to whisper the songs and lisp the names of old-time lovers, was saved by their persistent chivalry, artificial perhaps in form, but with a heart behind its artificiality, from lowering into the Oriental grossness that was the weakness of Byzantium. The history of the ages has no stranger as it has no more bravely painted page than that which records the rule of the French dukes in Athens and Peloponnesus.

If Athens in the dawn of the fourteenth century was strangely unlike the Athens of the Periclean age, the contrast was rather of one kind of splendor against another than of a present squalor with a splendid past. The capital of the French dukes of Athens surpassed in luxury and comfort any European capital of the time. Their commerce flourished, their port was populous with ships, their influence was felt, and their strength unquestioned all along the Greek littoral. Many of the other French princes in Greece had pomp and power, but Baldwin, Duke of Athens, overcrowned them all for wealth and power and magnificence. He delighted to beautify after the fashion of his time the spot that once had been the loveliest in the world, and if the shade of some great Athenian could have returned for an hour to the city of Cecrops, he must have regretted, indeed, the glories of the past; but, at the same time, he must have recognized that the barbarian who held by a strong hand the land of Deucalion was not denied some measure of the intelligence that goes to the making of a fair town and a great state. Duke Baldwin was always hospitable to strangers visiting Athens, and delighted to send them away brimmed with admiration of the civilization of Athens and the generosity of Athens's duke. If he did not set a kingly crown upon his helmet, he lived like a king, and could have entertained the monarch of France or the sovereign of England with an opulence not to be outdone in Paris or in London.

There was a policy in all this opulence and hospitality to strangers. Duke Baldwin owed much of his first supremacy in Athens to the presence in Thessaly of a band of free lances. When he arrived, hissing hot with haste, in his new duchy he found that his hold over his dominion was not to be unthreatened nor his rule untroubled. A prince of Epirus here, a prince of Vlachia there, menaced his unsteady empire. Even Duke Baldwin's bull-dog courage recognized that he was not strong enough to compete with his enemies single-handed. But Duke Baldwin was a man of resource, and he saw that there was a valuable alliance at hand. The Catalan Grand Company, having fought its fierce way through Macedonia, had planted itself upon the soil of Thessaly eager for more conquests. The Catalan Grand Company was a remarkable association of rascals, assassins, ragamuffins, blackguards, and admirable captains. It was originally formed in Spain with the avowed purpose of selling the arms and the bodies of the brotherhood to any one needing them and willing to pay the price. The Catalans had gone hither and thither serving this master and that, till at last their baleful star had led them, maugre the teeth of the Byzantine tyrant, to the land of Greece.

A new-comer to a throne who is not in the direct line and is not upon the spot when the succession falls due is never too sure of his seat, even if his authority be unchallenged, and Duke Baldwin, with enemies ready to take the field against him, deemed it prudent to enter into negotiations for the services of the Catalan Grand Company. The Catalans, already weary of acting for their own hand, were very ready to take Duke Baldwin's pay and to play Duke Baldwin's game. Their terms were large, but Duke Baldwin's need was keen and Duke Baldwin's tongue was glib. He promised them what they asked with a cheerful spirit, albeit the company asked a good deal. Baldwin agreed to pay each full-armored horseman four gold ounces a month, each light-armed horseman two gold ounces a month, and each foot-soldier one gold ounce a month. When Duke Baldwin made, or rather accepted, these terms, the strength of the Catalan Grand Company totalled three thousand five hundred horsemen and three thousand men on foot, so that Duke Baldwin found himself pledged to a pretty penny. But with Duke Baldwin the present was very emphatically the present. The immediate important thing was to tighten his grip on the pleasant Duchy of Athens, to tweak the noses of Epirus here and Vlachia there, and he genially agreed to the terms of the Catalans, prepared no less genially hereafter to bamboozle them, but in the mean time making what might have been a dubious dominion indubitable with the strength of their support.

Yet Baldwin knew too much of the world of fighting-men to think that throne stable which was mainly defended by an army of mercenaries. So he made it his business to woo and welcome to his court all gentlemen-adventurers from France, and from the neighboring little principalities of Greece, who were willing to take chivalrous service under his standard. His fame as a warrior, his open-handed generosity where open-handed generosity was expedient, and especially the beauty of the open-hearted women with whom he took care that his court was always a-quiver, attracted to Athens a great number of knights and gentlemen-at-arms, who swelled his immediate following very rapidly. He further strengthened his hand by enrolling and equipping so many soldiers that in a short while he had more than doubled the strength of his solid little standing army. He had not been many months upon his throne before he had made his duchy the most formidable state in Greece and his duchy and himself very patently independent of the Catalan Grand Company. Feeling little need for the further services of the Catalan Grand Company, he felt little gratitude for their services in the past. Duke Baldwin was not a man burdened with a too lively sense of duty to others, and though in the early days of his dukedom he had paid the Grand Company month by month their promised wage, that payment had now been suffered to fall into arrears for a very considerable period.

For the time being this mattered very little to the Catalan Grand Company. Its members were quartered comfortably enough in the pleasant plain of Attica; they amused themselves from time to time with little marauding expeditions to the north, and they had, or affected to have, every confidence that sooner or later Duke Baldwin would pay up all the moneys that were due to them. The principal leaders of this company dwelt in Athens, and mingled on equal terms with the chivalry of Duke Baldwin's court. It could not truly be said that there was much love lost between the Spanish mercenaries and the French knights, for the latter looked down upon the Catalan companions as unchivalrous freebooters, and the Spaniards knew of this feeling, and it rankled in their hearts though they betrayed no trace of resentment in their faces. But between the two parties there was all outward show of amity, all outward interchange of knightly courtesies, and the Spanish leaders shared in all the festivals, drank at all the banquets, and jousted in all the tourneys of Duke Baldwin's court. If the Spaniards themselves were to be believed, they found no such hostility nestling in the white breasts of the fair French ladies of Athens as they were conscious that the mailed bosoms of the French gentlemen sheltered. But if the policy of the duke was regarded by the Catalan Grand Company for the most part with indifferent eyes, it was not so regarded by one of their number.

Fernand Ximenes was captain of the Catalan Grand Company, so far as the Catalan Grand Company could be said to have any single captain. That turbulent, mercenary army, though strongly bound together by common love of gold, common instinct for plunder, common lust for the gratification of all greeds, and common readiness for warfare under the service of any prince who chose to pay them, was not a community over which it was easy for any single man to extend an uncontested sovereignty. Since the Grand Company marched out on its career of rapine from Spain, leader after leader had fallen victim to the heady quarrels and bloody passions of his subordinates. Chieftains old in battle, and young chieftains eager to prove themselves peers of their predecessors, had in turn swayed for their moon the angry tides of the company, and in their turn had fallen victims to the weapons of those they were supposed to head.

For a time it seemed as if to accept any leadership over the Catalan Grand Company was not merely to court but to assure a violent death. Strong as were the links of common interest which bound the savage Spaniards into a depredatory army, it looked at one hour of their wild fortunes as if their forces must needs dissolve into anarchy from the reluctance of superior spirits to entertain or from the incapacity of inferior spirits to maintain control over the body. At length it became plain, even to the most ungovernable ruffian of that lawless brotherhood, that the promiscuous slaughter of superiors, however diverting in itself, was not the surest means of attaining the ends for which the free companions had been called together. A kind of compromise was arrived at: a form of parliamentary discussion instituted resulting in the evolution of a little cluster of captains, nominally each of equal authority, and only directing the action of the company when they spoke with a common voice and struck the drum-head of council with a common hand.

Of this little body of captains Fernand Ximenes owned indubitably the ablest mind, as he owned no less indubitably the strongest body. Of a smooth and grave exterior, with something of an ecclesiastic suavity blended with the urbanity of a scholar, this outward serenity masked a spirit as ingenious in forming schemes for self-aggrandizement as relentless in their execution. Greatly gifted as a practical soldier, greatly gifted as a possible statesman, Ximenes was most graced of all in this, that he knew how to wait. He was never in a hurry; he had never been known in a life that had now well come to middle age to speak a word there was no need to speak or strike a stroke there was no need to strike. His ambition was unlimited, but he never allowed it to lead him farther than he could safely see his clear way, and he had often let some apparently bright occasion go by when to his shrewd eyes the brightness seemed fallacious. He loved all desirable things--women, kingdoms, gold, images, pictures, jewels, costly habits, costly fare. He even--and this seemed a strange thing in a leader of the Catalan Grand Company--was not indifferent to books. But he could deny himself as vigorously as the most rigid ascetic to any of these fleshly temptations if his crafty mind were convinced that the denial of a moment meant a fuller gratification later, and he had never yet found that such wise denial had gone unrewarded.

It was through the influence and advice of Ximenes--so subtly exercised and so subtly offered that it seemed to each of his colleagues as if the course of action resolved upon had been decided as a result of his individual will--that the Catalan Grand Company entered into the service of Duke Baldwin of Athens. There were some, indeed, in the little cluster of captains who had talked none too vaguely of the possibility of the Grand Company making itself the master rather than the servant of the Duke of Athens. But with infinite patience and with infinite pains Fernand Ximenes made it plain to his co-captains that they had not at their command anything approaching to the necessary strength that would entitle them to enter upon a struggle with a fairly powerful prince of Greece, who had at his command a following little inferior to their own. "So long as we are well paid," he pleaded, "we shall do very well in Attica. The duke is generous; the duke is a free liver. He will be courteous to us captains, and our comrades will grow fat. The women of Greece are fair, if less radiant than the women of Spain, and the wines of Greece are very cheerful drinking." With these and other arguments he succeeded in carrying his point, and the forces of the Catalan Grand Company pledged their allegiance to Duke Baldwin in return for the stipulated sum.

From the moment that Ximenes had entered Greece with the company his mind had been filled with the desire--and with him to desire was almost invariably to attain--to become himself a prince in Greece. The most obvious way, and also the most difficult, was to seize some principality by the sword. An easier method suggested itself to him when the old Duke of Thebes died and left his duchy in charge of his young wife. Ximenes seemed here to perceive a chance of aggrandizement. He knew that the duchess was fair; he knew very well that the duchess was faithless, for he had visited Thebes ere he entered Baldwin's service and had found favor in the eyes of Esclaramonde. Indeed, so greatly did the handsome Spaniard gain the graces of the lady that when Ximenes heard of the death of the old dotard duke he was confident that the duchess would be likely soon to wed, and he was very ready to entertain the hope that the Duchess of Thebes would be willing to take for consort a certain valiant captain of the Catalan Grand Company. He began at once to work with his usual patience towards his goal. It was the result of his suggestions that Duke Baldwin welcomed the idea of holding a tournament, to which tournament the principal potentates in Greece should be bidden. Ximenes counted on his skill at arms to distinguish himself in the tourney; he counted on his way with women to ingratiate himself anew with the supple duchess--all seemed pleasantly and feasibly mapped out, and he thought of the project as much as he allowed himself to think of anything that lay ahead closed in the folded fingers of fate. And then, lo and behold! one moony May evening the Duchess of Thebes comes riding into Athens with Duke Baldwin's son and heir dozing on a litter, and in less than no time it is buzzed abroad through all the babblesome city that Rainouart, heir of Athens, is infatuated with the lovely Duchess of Thebes, that she is nothing unwilling to unwidow herself for his sake, that Duke Baldwin is hugely delighted at this union of Athens and Thebes, and that the marriage is decided and to take place with a celerity only excusable through the ungovernable passion of the prince. All of which is galling to an ambitious captain of Catalans, who shows, however, no sign of anger, but imperturbably waits on events.

XII

THE WINDING OF THE HORN

The palace of Duke Baldwin on the Acropolis was the stateliest of the many stately buildings which the French lords had made for their pleasure in Athens. All that the lessons of Western civilization could teach, all that the experience of Eastern luxury could suggest, to embellish the ducal dwelling had been accepted, and the daily state of Baldwin's existence was little, if at all, less regal than that of the monarch of France. The living-rooms were richly furnished and hung with costly tapestries. The walls of the great banqueting-hall were painted with vivid representations of the deeds of the Crusaders in the Holy Land. Vessels of gold and vessels of silver were in common use, and the jewelled pride of Byzantine mosaic filled every corridor with coloring as lustrous as the dawn and as glowing as the sunset. Whatever the arts could do to enrich and to adorn had been generously welcomed, and the people of Duke Baldwin's household moved familiarly, while the guests of Duke Baldwin's hospitality walked in wonder, amid surroundings as lovely as the liberal creation of a dream. Never had an abode been known more worthy of the presence of beautiful women, and the fair faces and shapely forms that made the home of Baldwin a wanton paradise in the minds of his knights found in every part of the great mansion a background worthy of their favor and their grace.

Duke Baldwin's palace, look at it one way, hummed like a human hive. It was full of sounds from dawn till night--servants going and coming, minstrels bowing and thrumming, the rustle of women's dresses, the flutter of women's fans, the patter of pages' footsteps running on delectable errands, merry messengers of love, the ring of noble voices, the clink of noble swords. Here, there, and everywhere Duke Baldwin's presence loomed, jovial, ferocious, vehemently alive and blithe, making love to a dozen ladies with a whole heart, drinking a dozen wines with a clear head, voluble, jocular, a brawny image of the lusts of the flesh. He was very well content with the world, and would not have it other than it was. To indulge all appetites furiously without hurt or satiety, to play the prodigal host and to read the reward of his opulence in the admiring eyes of easy women, this was Duke Baldwin's simple ideal of existence. It was the ideal of many others, but few attained it as completely as the genial, truculent duke, for few had his length of purse and fewer his strength of body.

But just now Duke Baldwin had other causes for complacency and content than gluttonizing in all the passions. The presence of the Duchess of Thebes in his palace he had at first looked forward to as an experiment in the affections, and it had never occurred to him that he might have his own son as a rival. But now this was so, as it seemed, and yet Duke Baldwin was plainly satisfied and limber of spirit over the business. For when the Duchess Esclaramonde came riding up to his gates on that memorable evening and told him her strange tale, Baldwin was well content with the way of affairs. Here was his son's life saved by this great lady and neighbor, and here was his son's heart given to, and taken by, this same great lady, which meant the welding of Thebes and Athens in a common strength and a common splendor. Baldwin thought better of his son for a sensible choice, and was quite willing to forego dalliance with the duchess in consequence, the more readily, indeed, that a number of lovely, affable ladies had newly landed from Byzantium.

The duchess was all for a speedy wedding. Her brief term of widowhood was expired; she needed, she said, the prop of a man's arm, and the duke, grinning in his sleeve, was delighted to meet her wishes. As for Rainouart, he took his good-fortune with a curious apathy, which might have puzzled his parent if that parent ever troubled his mind about people's motives so long as their actions conformed to his idea of the precisely right. Whatever the duchess said Rainouart echoed. Recovered from his hurt, thanks to the deep sleep and easeful rest on the duchess's litter, he squired her pertinaciously, patently in love to all beholders, patently under the spell of her beauty: under the spell also of her ministrations, for she must needs continue to be his leech who had begun by being his rescuer, and she slyly plied him with philtres in his drink. So it was settled out of hand that the heir to the Duchy of Athens and the dame of the Duchy of Thebes should be married on the second day following the evening of their arrival in the city, and that all the pomp and ceremony of the joustings should be regarded as incidental and obsequious to the hurried nuptials.

Fernand Ximenes was sorely displeased at the news, but he protested pleasure with the best, persistently patient. Everybody else was hugely delighted, for this sudden marriage put the perfect top to all the jollity--it was the cream on the milk of mirth, the finest feather in the cap of happiness. Of course the opinions of the gentlefolk were the only opinions that counted, but in their obscurity the citizens of Athens made merry with the rest, for the waves of great folk's pleasure always carried some flotsam and jetsam to their humble thresholds. As for those dark subalterns of St. Nicholas, Captain Fox and Captain Gander, Captain Bat and Captain Chanticleer, Captain Rat and Captain Badger, they were neck-high in delights, and drank of the best daily and nightly in popular taverns, toasting bride and groom mellifluously, and thanking their saint and their stars that they by a storm and a strange voice were stayed from slitting the weasand of the son of Duke Baldwin the Beneficent.

On the morning of the marriage-day the great court-yard of Duke Baldwin's palace was a little world of many types and many nationalities. From the gallery of the palace the loveliest ladies of the court looked down upon the flower of the French chivalry below and named their names to new-arrived beauties, and told tales of them, not always without malice. The slender fellow with the yellow hair was Sir Guy de Hainault. The gallant with the brown curls who sat apart and nursed a lute upon his knee was Sir Jaufre de Brabant. That lean, dark, strenuous figure, his visage bronzed by Spanish suns, the man with something Moorish in his garb and accoutrements, was Fernand Ximenes, chief among the leaders of the Catalan Grand Company. The portly, florid man, no longer young but comely in his prime, who carried a white staff in his hand and moved hither and thither among the knights with cheerful greeting for each, was Count Ernault of Toulouse, Duke Baldwin's right-hand man and lord-marshal of the lists. The two who walked and talked together in the shade, talking very surely of women and deeds of war, were Sir Ambrose of Blois and Sir Raymond of Provence. The two who sat and diced upon a drum-head, with faces as grave as if every cast gave or took great slices of empire, were Demetrius, the vassal prince of Epirus, and Andronicus Palæologus, the great noble from Constantinople.

So the fair told their tale to the fair, and pointed out for admiration of the strangers the two huge soldiers who stood at guard inside the great gates of the court-yard. They were veritable giants, chosen by Baldwin--feeding his greed for the monstrous and excessive in all--for their extraordinary size and strength. They leaned upon such mighty battle-axes as were the familiar weapons of the Varangian Guard at Constantinople, and their duties were to open the great gates to every summons. Outside the gate a huge horn hung for any comer to wind who desired admittance. An ordinary knight was to sound the horn once; a baron was to wind it twice; a triple summons was the privilege of princes. Such was Duke Baldwin's etiquette, familiar to all his world. So the ladies laughed and chattered, eying the bright throng through which every now and then little shimmering pages or servants in heraldic colors picked their way, carrying hawks on wrist or hounds in leash, or bearing some message from lady to lord or from lord to lady. It was all as pleasant to witness as a pageant or a play in the bright, idle morning, and the babble of women's voices floated through the pellucid air like the chatter of starlings.

In the quietest corner of the court-yard, and in that court-yard quiet was indeed only a relative term, Sir Jaufre de Brabant, whose brown curls the ladies had praised, sat apart picking at the strings of a lute and humming to himself. Sir Jaufre considered himself, and was considered by many, to be the handsomest man in the service of Duke Baldwin. It was his wish, further, to be considered the gallantest, a wish fulfilled in the consideration and complaisance of many, and one of the jewels of his gallantry was his gift of song. He had been turning words this way and that way in his brain for some time on that spring morning, and at last it seemed from the smile on his face that he had turned them to some purpose that pleased him. Now he began to sing softly to himself, accompanying his song with little gentle touches on the lutestrings that wakened a plaintive melody. As he sang Sir Ambrose of Blois and Sir Raymond of Provence first paused in their walk and talk, then came near and listened, and in a little while Sir Guy de Hainault left his place and joined them. And this is what Sir Jaufre sang:

"He is the wisest in the world
Who rides his road with flag unfurled,
With heart unfetter'd from the care
That love of ladies places there;
With sword that knows no master's laws,
But shines and strikes for any cause,
To highest bidder blithely sold;
Glory is good, but better gold,
And as for ladies, fair or brown
He finds who sacks a captured town."

As Sir Jaufre finished, Ambrose and Raymond beamed approval, but Guy of Hainault, the young, fair-haired knight with a face that was partly girlish and partly angelic, pierced the approbation with a sneer.

"I do not like your song, Jaufre," he said, and said it with as much sweetness as if he had been crowning Sir Jaufre with a wreath of golden laurel in the heart of hot Provence.

Sir Jaufre flushed and looked up angrily.

"That makes me no bad minstrel," he retorted, "but it argues you a fool."

Sir Guy de Hainault's face was imperturbable, his voice was placid as he answered, smoothly:

"Your music and your manners would mend with your health if I let you some fretful blood."

Sir Jaufre shrugged his shoulders.

"You talk like a barber," he said--"white and red nonsense."

Guy smiled on a gradually increasing audience, for Demetrius of Epirus and Andronicus Palæologus had quitted their dice to hear the argument.

"You sing like a screech-owl," commented Sir Guy. Stooping swiftly, he caught the lute from Sir Jaufre's hands, ran his fingers skilfully over the strings, and awakened a tender tune. Fernand Ximenes, stately as a cat in his Spanish gravity, leisurely added himself to the circle, watching the rivals sardonically. His coming seemed to stimulate Sir Guy's ambition to sing.

"Listen to me, friends," he challenged, and began:

"All lovely ladies everywhere,
Whose eyes are blue or brown or gray,
Whose manes of black or yellow hair
Lead your poor lovers' hearts astray,
Here on this mirthful morn of May,
I turn to ye and make salute;
And I would kiss you all to-day,
Were all your lips one crimson fruit."

Every man of the little group applauded except Sir Jaufre, who yawned affectedly behind a languidly lifted hand.

"You mew too lewdly to be true," he asserted, contemptuously. "Your sincere kiss-winner has no leisure to sing of it."

Sir Guy made him an extravagant bow.

"Suave Sir Jaufre," he said; "smooth Sir Jaufre, by that count you should write red ballads of battles."

There came a faint laugh from some of the hearers, others raised their eyebrows and drew nearer. The war of wits promised to quicken. Count Ernault, coming from the palace and conference with Duke Baldwin, spied the excited group and drew nigh. As he came near he heard Sir Jaufre interrogate his critic.

"Your meaning?"

Sir Guy, still with the same air of extravagant respect, explained, syllabling, with laborious slowness:

"I mean that if I am no lucky lover you are no famous fighter."

Sir Jaufre propped his hand on his chin for a moment as one drowned in deep thought. Then his eyes travelled slowly along the little line of listeners.

"Who can tell me the Latin for 'braggart'?" he asked, meditatively.

There was a little silence. Scholarship was not a strong point of Duke Baldwin's companions. Then Fernand Ximenes, to end or extend the embarrassment, asked:

"Why the Latin?"

Sir Jaufre made a deprecating gesture.

"That it may serve for Guy's epitaph to-night," he interpreted.

Sir Guy laughed again very softly, swaying a little backward and forward, as one exceedingly amused.

"Do you think," he asked, "that any one will kill me to-night for killing you this morning?"

Sir Jaufre spoke again, not to Guy, but still to the constrained, attentive circle:

"I do not know the Latin for 'braggart,'" he said, thoughtfully, "but I know the French for 'fool.'"

"Why, so do I," Sir Guy agreed, instantly; "it is Jaufre de Brabant."

Every one of the hearers laughed at this, coming so crisp and pat, but Sir Jaufre sprang to his feet.

"Up sword, and out!" he cried, and drew his weapon.

Sir Guy as swiftly bared his blade, and it seemed for a moment as if to the many images of life the court-yard presented that of a battle to the death was to be added. Only for a moment, for instantly Count Ernault thrust his white staff of marshalship between the combatants.

"House your swords, gentlemen," he insisted, peremptorily. "Do you not know the day's law? There shall be no challenge taken, no quarrel honored in arms, save in the tourney and under the eye of Duke Baldwin. For to-day the duke's son marries the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes, and on such a day there may be no brawling; wherefore, close hands in amity."

Sir Jaufre sulkily calm, Sir Guy seraphically affable, extended each a hand, and clasped in sign of formal peace. The somewhat awkward silence that followed on this stifled brawl and seeming reconciliation was strangely interrupted. Outside the great gate came the clear sound of the note of a horn, which immediately attracted the attention of every man in the court-yard and every woman at the palace windows.

"What belated knight is this?" cried Ambrose of Blois, pleased at the interruption, for he liked both the disputants.

The lord-marshal shook his head.

"I thought that every expected knight was in the castle," he answered, and had hardly finished speaking when the horn was wound a second time.

"It is a baron's summons," Ximenes exclaimed, pleased to air his intimacy with Frankish etiquette, and on the heels of his exclamation came a third time, louder and clearer, the note of the great horn.

"By the Lord!" cried Count Ernault, "this is a prince's parley," and he turned to the giants at the gate.

XIII

THE KNIGHT OF ELEUSIS

"Open the gates," Count Ernault ordered, and the guardian giants obeyed. The great bolts were drawn, the great key turned in the lock, the great gates were flung apart. Every eye was turned towards the opening; every gazer expected to behold some splendid personage, some great prince in golden armor with his glittering retinue of men-at-arms. What the gazers saw was a tall, fair-haired youth with a shepherd's straw upon his head, with a shepherd's sheepskin bound about his body, with a shepherd's staff in his hand and a shepherd's pipe at his girdle. The knights stared in amazement as the shepherd advanced towards them confidently, with head held high and easy carriage. Behind the shepherd strode a burly, travel-stained soldier, with a huge sword at his thigh, a mighty cudgel in his fist, and a rusty lantern on his belt.

The first astonishment of the knights now translated itself into vehement laughter, which brought a faint flush to the shepherd's cheek and a deeper scarlet to the tanned face of the soldier. The amazement of the knights was as great as their entertainment, but both would have been a thousandfold greater if they could have guessed that the slender shepherd whose coming had so diverted them was in sooth a slender she-creature, a daughter of the forest. But the glamour of the woodland shone from Argathona's eyes, and the knights in the yard and the ladies on the gallery saw nothing but the simple shepherd. Argathona advanced towards Count Ernault where he stood resting on his white staff of office, and easily saluted him and his companions.

"Good-morrow, lords," she said, and the French lords marvelled, understanding her, and yet wondered vaguely how it came to pass that they did understand.

"A most sweet-voiced shepherd," Guy said to the knight Ambrose of Blois, who stood next to him.

Count Ernault answered the shepherd.

"Hail, young rustical; but we thought one of royal blood came to the tournament!"

"You thought rightly," Argathona answered. "I come to the tournament, and I am of royal blood."

Ernault looked earnestly into the beautiful face of the youth before him. Sir Jaufre de Brabant edged forward.

"Do you wrap your royal flesh in sheepskin?" he asked, with a ring of derision in his voice which did not escape Argathona.

"There be some lords," she answered, "whose best coat were the hide of a donkey; but for myself, though I walk in wool, I am of the ancientest, rarest race in Greece."

At this confident assertion, made with all the daring of youth, murmurs of surprise, amusement, and even of protest came from the listening knights. Sir Jaufre de Brabant shrugged his shoulders. Guy de Hainault moved a little nearer to the new-comer, studying the fair, unfamiliar face with whimsical good-humor. Andronicus Palæologus frowned, as it was his way to frown at any assertion of dignity which could by any means be twisted into a challenge of his supremacy. Fernand Ximenes narrowed his dark eyelids, scrutinizing the slender figure of the audacious youth, and estimating his possible value as a fighting-man to the Catalan Grand Company. The Prince of Epirus, whose vassaldom to Athens always galled him, gave something like a smile of greeting to the stranger who came at least unbidden to the court, and might in so far be taken as an enemy to Duke Baldwin. The French knights were, for the most part, frankly diverted by the defiance of a shepherd boy, but Count Ernault, always courteous and debonair in dealing with any man, king, captain, or shepherd boy who spoke him fair, addressed the youth with civility.

"Young sir," said Ernault, seriously, "that is a grave assertion. Within the walls of this palace are assembled all the high nobility of Greece. What claim have you to set your shield--if, indeed, you have a shield--among us?"

Argathona flung back her head, and her fair hair shone in the sunlight.

"You are great lords in a strange land," she said, proudly; "but my race have ruled in yonder woodland since the dawn of time, and Athens was built but yesterday in the history of our race. We keep apart, we princely foresters, but we are none the less proud. You may call me the Prince of Eleusis."

The courtly marshal was puzzled. Proud of his French descent, and indifferent to the ways of the people his master and his master's peers had come to govern, he knew nothing of the Grecian folk, and it very well might be that some lines lingered in those mountains which had, in their own estimation, the right to call themselves noble. Anyway, it mattered very little in so general a jousting, and there was no harm in flattering the vanities of a conquered people.

"The Prince of Eleusis? It is a sounding title. Do you come as a knight-challenger?" he questioned, urbanely.

Argathona nodded.

"Even so. I heard of your purposes from this valiant." She pointed to Simon, where he stood apart weighing with appreciative eyes the chivalry of France against the mercenaries of Spain, and appraising the giants at the gate. "Liking your purposes, I trudged to tussle."

Jaufre de Brabant pushed a little way ahead of the knight-marshal.

"Sans arms, sans armor," he drolled. "Will you batter us with your bare fists, shepherd?"

"Or conquer us with your pipe," Guy insinuated, "as Joshua's trumpets tumbled Jericho?"

The dryad smiled back into the smiling faces of the jesting knights, and held out her hands in an appeal of comradeship.

"I come unarmed, it is true, for my race have known no need of arms for ages, but I fling myself on your chivalry. Will you not make me up an equipment among you?"

It was a curious sight for the ladies on the balcony, this sight of the white shepherd standing thus alone and fearless in the midst of a ring of knights, while around them the capacity of the court-yard was filled by the curious of all kinds, free companions, pages, men-at-arms, all keenly interested in the audacious new-comer. The lord-marshal glanced with a smile round the circle of faces.

"Most magical modesty," he said, "that invites us to arm him against ourselves."

All who heard him laughed as at an exceeding good joke. It seemed prettily preposterous that this stripling from a Greek wood should come to Duke Baldwin's tournament and demand, not merely the privilege of tilting against glorious shields, but also an outfit of arms and armor. Argathona understood the laughter, and answered, swiftly:

"Nay, I ask nothing for nothing. I know it is the world's way to bargain in this iron age, and that none will give save for value. But I am wise in the earliest wisdom--I can tell you tales, sing you songs, read the secrets of the stars, the signs in your hands. I will tell any man here his fortune if he will pay for fate with a part of my armament."

A buzz of interest hummed among her hearers, and Jaufre de Brabant sprang eagerly forward.

"Can you do this?" he asked. "What are the signs in my palms?" and he thrust his strong hands out to the shepherd.

The dryad turned to the lord-marshal.

"Lord," she said, "I pray you to beg of these gentlemen that they give me a little space. A man's fortune is for his own ears."

"The lad is right," said Ernault. "Room, friends, room," and with a sweep of his marshal's wand he widened the circle about him to the evident discomfort of the crowd outside, who were thus forced rudely against the wall or uncomfortably out of ear-shot and eye-witness. Argathona, thus left in a sense alone with Jaufre, though many eyes were curiously fixed upon the pair, took the hands of the knight in hers and peered into his palms.

"Glory," she began, "glory, glory; a lifetime shining like a star."

"I will give you a sword for this glory," he said, and paused; then he asked again, quickly, "And what of my death-time?"

Argathona looked no more into his hands; she looked steadfastly into his wild eyes.

"I think you will sink like a star in the peace of old age."

The face of Jaufre clouded.

"I would have picked a fiercer finish," he sighed; "but you shall have the sword."

"I thank your valiancy," Argathona said; and Jaufre, turning from her, rejoined his companions. Before Count Ernault could signify which knight should next have speech with the shepherd, Sir Guy de Hainault had sprung from the marshal's side and approached her.

"Read the page of my palm," he cried, pushing out his fine, white hands impatiently.

Argathona held them for a moment, glanced at their smooth surface, and let them fall with a sigh, looking gravely at the girlish face of the knight.

"Speak!" cried Sir Guy. "Why do you hesitate?"

Argathona spoke in a low voice.

"Death is near at hand," she said.

No change came over the delicate face of the knight.

"How?" he asked, as quietly as he might have asked the hour for supper.

"Bravely--in battle," Argathona answered.

Sir Guy struck his hands together exultingly.

"You merit a princely gift for that promise. What will you have of me?"

"Will you give me a helmet?" asked the shepherd.

"You shall have a golden helmet," Sir Guy promised. "What is your crest?"

And the shepherd answered, remembering with a smile the heraldic wisdom of Simon:

"An oak-tree with acorns."

Sir Guy saluted Eleusis and turned and joined his fellows.

Others were eager to take his place, but this time the staff of the lord-marshal restrained impetuosity.

"My turn, I pray you," Count Ernault said, and, advancing, faced the seeming shepherd with extended hands.

"Don't tell me of battles," he said, "or how I shall come to my death; death is the handman of Heaven. To-day I live, and to live is to love. Read my love-riddle."

Argathona looked steadfastly at the hands that many women had held with passion, for Count Ernault was the well-beloved in every land where he had wandered.

"Many women will love you," she said, slowly, and Ernault gave a sigh of joy, for he was no longer in the hot of his youth and he dreaded love's twilight. She went on--"but never the one woman."

Ernault's passionate eyes clouded for an instant, for all the world knew of his passion for the lovely Duchess of Corinth and the implacable chastity of the lady. Wherefore she and her husband came not as guests to Athens. Then his eyes widened again and he smiled. "Well," he said, half sadly and half laughing, "I must make the best of the many, if I show the worst with the one. I will give you a blank shield, brother-in-arms. Tell me your device for my squire to paint."

"A golden acorn on a green field," Argathona answered, again profiting shrewdly by the lessons in heraldry that Simon had given her during the long day in the forest.

"A golden acorn on a green field," Count Ernault repeated, committing the new device to his courtly memory. He turned away from the shepherd and addressed the expectant knights.

"Come, friends," he said, "our knight-challenger has now sword, helmet, and shield; he still needs body armor and battle-axe, horse and lance. Who is for having his fortune told that will pay this price for the tale?"

A multitude of hands were lifted, and Count Ernault contemplated with assumed dismay a forest of waving fingers. Then he shook his head in depreciation.

"There is no time for all," he said. "The sun climbs high, and our guest needs no more than a single equipment, wherefore I will trust to the ordeal by chance."

He lowered his lids till his eyes seemed closed, and then struck lightly, and apparently at random, with his white staff among the knights nearest to him three times in succession. But it was characteristic of the courtly and politic marshal that the touch of his white wand fell on the shoulders of those whom, for one reason or another, it was expedient to please. Fernand Ximenes, maleficent captain of free companions; the vassal Prince of Epirus, always a thorn in the Baldwin flesh; and Andronicus Palæologus, eminent, pompous exile with an eye to a great succession, were the chosen three. Fernand Ximenes, on whom the first lot fell, advanced to the shepherd and tendered his steady, lean, brown hand. Argathona regarded it for a breathing space in silence, then she said:

"You dream strange dreams suspected of none. It is well for you that none suspect. Your dreams will come true."

No change stirred the impassive face of the Spaniard as he listened to what seemed, indeed, the speech of a seer. With untroubled voice he spoke.

"I had a suit of armor wrought in Toledo, steel and gold; it were a privilege for any prince to wear it. I have it no longer; it is yours."

He saluted the prophetic shepherd with the dignity inherent in his race, and rejoined the circle of knights. His place was promptly taken by Demetrius of Epirus, the prince with the furtive eyes and the fine, false voice. Argathona looked at his hand and whispered:

"Faith and treason quarrel in the cup of your fingers. If faith win, faith must fall soon in honor; if treason triumph, treason will flourish long in dishonor to end on a high place."

The pale lips of the Prince of Epirus twitched.

"I will give you a battle-axe," he said, thickly, for he knew what path he would choose when the chance came, and he had grace enough to feel some shame at his knowledge. He turned and pushed his way through the circle of knights into the crowd beyond, as a man might who wished to hide his face from keen eyes.

Andronicus Palæologus moved forward, ostentatious of port, gorgeous of apparel, and extended his beringed hand in arrogant condescension to the stranger. Argathona gave a quick glance at the plump, sensual palm.

"You will wear the crown of Cæsar," she promised.

Andronicus flushed the imperial red in spite of himself, then he said, urbanely, for, indeed, he was very pleased with the oracle:

"I will give you a horse as white as the moon and as fleet as the wind. I will give you a spear as sharp as desire and as tough as hope," and so he turned and joined his brother knights. Even as he did so the air was stirred by the sweet sound of a silver trumpet, and there was immediately a sign of great bustle and commotion among the ladies who thronged the gallery. The lord-marshal lifted his hand.

"Friends all," he said, "the sun of beauty shines upon us in the pride of noontime, for her grace the Duchess of Thebes is coming on the great gallery to take the air. Let those that are her slaves attend upon her."

Immediately the fixed circle of knights dissolved into its units, and the crowd around them parted to give passage as the cavaliers made eagerly for the stately stairway that led to the great gallery. Argathona caught Count Ernault by the arm as he turned away with the others.

"Pray you, tell me the laws of this day's tourney?" she said.

Count Ernault, looking with much approbation at the shepherd knight, answered:

"To-day our lord's son, Sir Rainouart of Athens, will proclaim to all and sundry that the Lady Esclaramonde of Thebes is the fairest she in Christendom. Those that challenge him set the fame of their lovers in jeopardy, for Duke Baldwin's son is an unconquerable jouster."

"What would happen," Argathona asked, "if he were to be overthrown?"

Count Ernault laughed gently.

"It could scarcely happen," he asserted.

"But if it did happen?" the shepherd persisted.

Count Ernault looked about him and saw that he and the shepherd stood alone, for the press of knights was thronging the great stairway.

"I think," he said, softly, "that the lady of Thebes would never forgive him."

"Is she so imperious a queen of beauty?" the shepherd questioned.

Count Ernault laughed compassionately, as the well-informed laugh that instruct a stranger in a strange land.

"She will suffer no man to wilt from allegiance to her will. She is the most insatiable fair, and would have all men for her lovers."

The shepherd looked at the courtly marshal with a strange smile.

"Would she condescend to a shepherd?" Argathona asked.

Count Ernault distorted his smooth face with a grimace.

"'Tis very likely," he answered, "none better being by; but when you ride radiant in coat-armor in the lists we shall see if she will pick you out. Till then, farewell, Knight of Eleusis."

He turned from the shepherd and joined the mounting crowd to pay his respects to the Lady Esclaramonde where she stood patent in beauty upon the gallery. Argathona looked about her for a place where she might see unseen. In the court-yard stood an ancient image of a god, headless and armless, which had been set up there in indifference, if not in derision, by those who had dug it up when the court-yard was a-making. Behind this image Argathona stationed herself, and Simon, who had kept apart in the crowd outside the knights, now came to her side. Argathona looked up at the gallery, where, above the bowed heads of obsequious lords, she could distinguish the dark, imperious loveliness of the Duchess Esclaramonde. Simon whispered confidentially in her ear, behind his big hand:

"There stands your fair foewoman."

Argathona still looked at the duchess with unchanged face.

"If I were a man," she said, slowly, "I would not be her lover."

Simon grunted.

"Many have loved her, and all have sorrowed in the loving. While I stood in the throng but now I heard strange tales of her from some of those Spanish rascals and some of the duke's people. They say that when the Duke of Thebes lived, whose unweeping widow she now is, she would send him to sleep at nights with a drugged draught, and then"--he coughed a little behind his hand, as if apologetically, and resumed--"and then entertain company."

Argathona's eyes were still set steadfast upon Esclaramonde where she smiled upon her flatterers.

"It is blasphemous to wear a fair face and hide a foul heart; but if she be as base as you say, she may help me well if I win in the tournament."

Simon whistled.

"Pray God you may win," he said; "but if you thrust your body where hard knocks are going you must not pule at bruises."

"I do not think I shall come to hurt," Argathona answered. "But I shall fight fair, trusting to my strength as the others trust, and using no more woodland work than this, that my spear is invincible against all false lovers."

XIV

THE TRIUMPH OF THEBES

The Lady Esclaramonde held a little court upon the gallery. Leaning against a pillar and playing with her fan, she summoned this lord and that from the throng of knights now mingled with the brilliant swarm of women, and gave each a few gracious moments of her sunshine ere she dismissed him from her side. Count Ernault had his turn, and the flash of their glances was always alive with intimate memories. Jaufre de Brabant came and Guy de Hainault, and pompous Andronicus Palæologus and the others; none was forgotten; each beamed with the conviction that the duchess preferred him above his fellows. The last that Esclaramonde called to her was Fernand Ximenes, and when the Spaniard was by her side she turned to look into the court-yard, and he following her example, none could hear their speech.