Chapter V: Part 5

"You have not been brisk to wish me felicity," the duchess complained.

Ximenes shrugged his shoulders.

"I do not think you have made a good shot for fortune," he answered, frankly. "The boy is a fool, and you might have had a man for a master."

The duchess's eyes mocked him under lowered lids, and she patted his hands with her fan.

"Such an one as a certain soldier of fortune?" questioned Esclaramonde. "But I believe I do not desire a master, and, besides, this boy-fool will be Duke of Athens, whereas--"

She left her sentence unfinished, provocatively. Ximenes stared impassive into her defiant face.

"I say you have made a bad shot," he replied, firmly. "You might have chosen better; but I dare say you will be content enough, and, indeed, I hope so."

And with that he bowed very stately and left her, knowing well that his words would rankle uncomfortably. Which indeed they did, for the duchess bit her lip and picked at her fan, brooding over troublous fancies. She thought as well of Ximenes as it was possible for her to think well of any one, and she knew that she held her betrothed by lies and guile. But she had always desired to win him since the first time that her eyes had entreated and his eyes had denied, and it seemed to her a great thing to conquer his scorn. While she stood thus moody there was a flutter among the women a-nigh, and then knights and ladies made a lane down which came the burly Duke Baldwin arm in arm with his son.

Duke Baldwin, sturdy soldier of fortune, with bright eyes ever fixed on the main chance, was all for keeping the young couple together. Enthusiastic about the match, he had confided to his intimates that he thought it the most sensible act his son had ever undertaken, far more sensible than he could have hoped for from a youth who wasted precious living-time in the reading of foolish books. But if Duke Baldwin understood and approved of the alliance, he did not altogether understand or approve of the conduct of his son on the preceding day. In the duchess's company Rainouart appeared to be the very proper image of a perfect knightly worshipper; he had no eyes but for his lady, and his voice echoed with a fair show of passion the endearments of which the duchess was amiably prodigal. But apart from her the youth seemed, in his father's words, to mope. He walked apart with head bent like a scholar pursuing some tangled thread of thought rather than like a soldierly lover hugging his heart at the capture of a fair prize.

This was not an attitude Duke Baldwin admired. Love-making with him was a brisk business, alien from melancholy, sunning itself lustily in the company of the beloved; and as Rainouart seemed to stand in shadow when alone, Duke Baldwin made it his business to see that he should sun himself as much as possible in the duchess's company until the marriage ceremony was over and Thebes and Athens indissolubly linked. So it was that but now having found his son walking apart in a quiet colonnade, Duke Baldwin had rated him for a sluggard lover, had thrust a strong arm within his, and haled him neither willing nor unwilling to the great gallery where he knew that he should find the duchess.

That conduct in the son which had so perplexed the father had not escaped the notice of those knights who were the nearest companions of the prince. These thought him changed, thought his meditative moods strange; but for the most part they set it down playfully to moon-calfishness. "It is the young candle burning overhotly with its first love, and guttering with every draught of fancy," was the comment of Jaufre de Brabant. Guy de Hainault, more sympathetic, if not less cynical, had his doubts, and tried to answer them with friendly questions to which he got no satisfactory answers. Certainly he saw that the prince when in her presence seemed devoted to his imperious mistress, walked loyally by her side, listened reverently to her speech, and seemed to thrill at her frequent caresses. Yet Guy de Hainault said to Count Ernault, who bade him keep his thoughts to himself, that to his eyes the young prince seemed more like a man in a dream than a man in love, and Guy de Hainault had dreamed enough and loved enough to speak with authority.

On one point there was no quarrel: there certainly was no doubt of the duchess's free and full devotion to her lover. She had not even for form's sake made any diffident protest against so swift a wedding, the swiftness whereof came so largely from her own suggestion. Indeed, it seemed as if with shining eyes and sugared tongue she spurred her young lord to protestations and entreaties. The court, for the most part, however, entered into no niceties of discrimination between the conduct of the youth and the lady. It sufficed for those jolly spirits, male and female, that there was to be a wedding, for a wedding meant festivals, and the sight of a wedding, too, had a way of spurring laggard gentlemen into proposals and prompting ladies that would be coy to come to directer terms. Wedding calls for wedding, as blood is said to call for blood.

The genial duke made his way with his son through the rapidly formed alley of retiring lords and ladies to the place where Esclaramonde leaned against a pillar of the gallery and fanned herself languidly, watching their advance with bright eyes.

"Here," said the duke, cheerfully, "is one who would not be denied to come to your presence for all that I could do to occupy him with other matters."

He gently urged Rainouart forward as he spoke, and Rainouart, under the influence of the eyes of Esclaramonde, moved with what seemed to the spectators a lover's eagerness to greet her. The duke smiled a vast smile on all around him.

"I was like that once," he said, with a leer, pinching the chin of the nearest pretty woman and clipping another round the waist. "Come, friends, come; let us leave the young people to themselves. They have little time for courting and must make the most of it." And so with a laughing baggage under each arm Baldwin led the way from the gallery followed obediently by a merry retinue of knights and ladies. The place was swiftly quiet that had been so lively, and for the moment Esclaramonde and Rainouart were left alone. It was, indeed, to be their last occasion for wooing in solitude. The day was all laid out: first the tournament, then the wedding ceremony, then the banquet; the next time this pair were to meet alone it was to be as man and wife. The youth and the woman leaned over the balcony looking down into the almost deserted court-yard. Neither heeded how in a corner, wellnigh concealed from view by an ancient image, a shepherd was standing with a sturdy fellow by his side. Indeed, there was little need to heed, for but a moment after the princely pair were left together the shepherd lad had touched the soldier on the arm, and the two passed quietly out of the court-yard and went their way together in the direction of the tilting-field. When they were gone, Rainouart, who had neither noticed their presence nor their departure, still kept silence for a while, but it was with a strained silence of one who seeks to remember what it was that brought him to the place where he stands. The duchess was silent for a while, with the serenity of one who triumphs and wears her triumph with delight. So a few seconds sped, and then Esclaramonde placed her hand on the hand of her companion where it rested on the marble, and Rainouart's flesh and blood tingled in response to the warm clasp.

"Dear lord," she said, with that caressing voice which always ran like kindly fire over the nerves of those she sought to conquer--"dear lord, your father reminds us that we stand alone as lovers for the last time. You are happy, dear lord?"

Though her words had the form of a question, something in their utterance seemed to sound like a command. The prince turned to her as if he obeyed a summons, and fixed his eyes upon her face--eyes at first indifferent, but which began to glow ardent from the moment that they met her gaze. He put his hand to his forehead and brushed away his hair as a man does who seeks to dissipate perplexing thoughts. It seemed to him as if he had lost his way in the rose-garden; as if, though his heart were still the quivering target for the shafts of love, the living presence of the god were veiled and his voice obscure; as if the noble rose were still afar. He sought in vain to frame the face of Esclaramonde with the mystic petals. But her words sounded imperious and sweet in the halls of his ears, and he took them for the behests of love.

"Surely I am happy," he answered, and the duchess smiled at his speech.

"You love me very much?" she said again, and again her voice was blended with the two notes of interrogation and command.

"Surely I love you very much," he answered again, still in the same smooth, measured manner. It was not very ardent, but it seemed to satisfy the duchess that she could make him say what she pleased.

"When we meet again," she murmured, "you will be the hero of the tournament, yet I think you peril your fame and jeopardize your judgment to proclaim me most fair."

Her words and her eyes stimulated him to the measure of her intention.

"Are you not most fair?" he asked, wonderingly, and his look was compelled admiration and his voice paid the demanded homage.

The duchess smiled provocatively.

"Some have said so, and I smiled at their little wit, but when you assert it my fond heart leaps to believe what my honest mirror denies."

She held out both her hands as she spoke, and Rainouart caught them in his own obediently. It seemed rather that she drew him nearer to her than that he drew her nearer to him.

"The mirror were wicked crystal that showed you other than most fair," he declared, "but there is no such lying glass in the world."

The duchess shook her head, and a cherub wind that was playing along the gallery caught a free lock of her dark hair and blew the tresses against his cheeks, and his cheeks burned.

"I should be proud," she said, "to count myself fair for your sake, for you are the fairest of men and the bravest."

Even while she spoke her spirit seemed to laugh within her, for she remembered to whom she had last said those words, and she wondered to whom she would say them next. But the prince's eyes glowed as if with the exaltation of strong wine.

"Your words are sweet to hear," he vowed. "I will do my best endeavor to merit some little of their grace."

She bent her head forward as if to kiss him on the lips. There was no one to see her--at least no one that counted; no page or servant loitering in the court-yard mattered, and even before a larger audience the duchess would scarcely have denied herself. But even as Rainouart waited for her kiss the quiet of the noontime was broken by the shrill call of a clarion, the call that warned all knights to hasten to the lists and make them ready for the tournament. Rainouart stooped and kissed the white hand of the duchess.

"Farewell, fair lady," he said; "I must go to my tent."

"I will watch your triumph from the gallery," Esclaramonde said, and he turned and left her with no other word, and went down the stairway into the court-yard.

Esclaramonde waited a little while, watching him depart and thinking Thessalian thoughts. He was under her spell; he had forgotten what she willed him to forget; he should never remember while she was by his side. That he was only her lover through the make-believe of her philtres and her will troubled her nothing. He was her lover, comely and young, and she saw herself Duchess of Athens, and her heart leaped and she laughed at times. When Rainouart was out of sight and she was tired of her thoughts, she turned to the far end of the gallery, where her immediate women waited, and summoned them with a gesture to follow her to her appointed pavilion by the lists.

XV

THE CHALLENGE OF RAINOUART

Rainouart walked slowly down the sacred mound through the long lines of soldiers that made a lane for the gentry all along the winding road and at the foot of the hill. He went as he always went after parting with Esclaramonde in these few fantastic hours--like one in a feverish day-dream who found himself unfamiliar amid familiar surroundings. The realities of life distorted themselves into unrealities; your simple soldier standing on guard in his rank loomed monstrous as a giant; your habitual building chose to enlarge and radiate door upon door and gallery upon gallery into infinite, meaningless space. Rainouart walked airily, for his physical condition seemed strangely light; he walked warily, because his mental condition seemed strangely heavy. He was troubled at he knew not what; he wondered, he knew not why; he thought ceaselessly of Esclaramonde, and yet the thought of her seemed always to tease his drugged memory with a desire for some face, some voice, that were not the face and voice of the Duchess of Thebes. So, like a man that walks in sleep, he came from the Acropolis to the meadow at its foot, heedless of the mass of folk, heedless of the clamor and the flapping banners, the eager mien of knights and the radiant faces of ladies, only conscious that his duty in life was that day to sustain in arms the fame of the Lady Esclaramonde.

As he passed through the wicket into the lists and found himself in the vacant space behind the galleries, he was accosted by a young knight, partly armored, whose words and gesture invited him to a halt. The young knight was Argathona, daintily boyish in her man's armor. When she and Simon had made their way to the tilting-field they found that a pavilion had been allotted to the Prince of Eleusis by order of Count Ernault, wherein were placed the arms and armor promised by the different knights, while the white horse of Andronicus Palæologus waited in the stables to carry its new burden. Simon of Rouen, as the strange prince's esquire, helped his seeming master to arm swiftly, and thus Argathona was ready to meet Rainouart as he entered the enclosed meadow. Rainouart did not recognize her face, for it was the woodland will of the dryad that she should seem unfamiliar to him. The aura of the immortals was about her, and mortal eyes must see her as she pleased. But there is a power higher even than the wills of such immortals, and the young prince, looking into the face of the youth who stopped him, found his strange stupor troubled with new torments of striving to remember the unrememberable. He could not assure himself that he had ever seen the stranger's face before, and yet the sight of that strange face, with its gleam of golden hair beneath the silken cap, with its haunting suggestions of sea wave and lake water and forest fountain in its blue eyes, troubled him with an aching desire and the yet more aching knowledge that he knew not what he desired. If he had loved some woman in his boyhood, some woman long dead, this might have been her brother come upon him unawares, at all adventure, with some trick of the old love's look in his eyes, of the old love's carriage in his gait. But he shook himself impatiently, for there was no such memory in his life, and he was vexed with the blind, maimed memories that would never take shape and color. Through the dull hum of his confused thoughts he was conscious that the stranger knight addressed him.

"Rainouart of Athens, are not you to-day the general challenger?"

Rainouart saluted him mechanically, looking into his eyes and only finding there unanswerable mysteries.

"At your service, sir knight," he answered, and the sound of his own voice seemed as meaningless to him as the thin sighs of spirits heard in dreams, and yet he knew that he had spoken and that his hearer had heard and understood. Through all the entanglement of his senses he was conscious dimly of a curious surprise at his own ability to understand the stranger's speech, and his wonderment seemed to hark back to some other time, some other age, perhaps some other existence, when in some way he had heard one speak to him whom he understood and yet marvelled to understand.

"What are the terms of your challenge?" the stranger knight asked him. The prince answered, slowly:

"That my Lady Esclaramonde of Thebes is the rose of the world."

There was a moment's pause, and the prince made to resume his journey, but again the stranger stopped him with a question:

"You love this lady?"

The prince looked wonderingly at the fair, perplexing face.

"I wed her to-night," he answered, and still the stripling persisted:

"You are very sure you love this lady?"

The prince hesitated, then said, sharply:

"You question somewhat rustically. I wed her to-night."

Again the strange knight interrogated, pertinacious:

"You have left no other love for her sake?"

The prince drew back and set his hand to his sword.

"Sir," he said, angrily, "if you question my honor I will answer you to your hurt!"

The bearer of the name of Prince of Eleusis came a little nearer to Rainouart, and her voice was as plaintive as summer rain on forest leaves.

"No maid weeps for you in the greenwood?"

The prince shifted his hand from his sword-hilt to his brow, for his head ached with confusing, formless memories; but the troubling thoughts fled elusive through his brain, leaving no more behind them than the blackened spaces left by a forest fire.

"The greenwood!" he echoed. "The greenwood! It was in the greenwood my lady found me." He paused again, ever seeking to remember the unrememberable, then ended, rapidly, "The Lady Esclaramonde, whom I love, and whose love makes me invincible."

Infinitely sad the eyes of Argathona shone upon her lost lover's sadness. Against the spells of the subtle sorceress her simple immortality seemed compelled to surrender. Were she to declare herself now, she might fail to quicken the wit that was crippled by the incantations of Esclaramonde. Only Esclaramonde could undo what Esclaramonde had done, and to bring this about Argathona must trust to herself--she, the immortal, alone in an unfriendly world. Argathona had lived but a few hours in the company of men, yet she had lived with them long enough to pity all, to mistrust most, to love one with a love as abiding as her gift of ceaseless life. But her unstained spirit read clearly and swiftly the lessons of the world's law, and she hoped to overthrow the guile of a woman with the guile of a girl.

"You are very proud of your love and your lover," she said, gently, for her heart ached to see him so astray. Rainouart answered her with a kind of resentful defiance, as one that sought to convince himself, and he echoed her words:

"I am very proud of my love," and so far his voice rang clear and bright as a battle-call; then he ended, more heavily, "and of my lover."

He turned from her with a courteous salutation and went towards his tent, and Argathona went her way to her own pavilion and made an end of her arming, thinking upon many things.

XVI

THE TOURNAMENT

Captain Fox and Captain Gander, Captain Bat and Captain Chanticleer, Captain Rat and Captain Badger had thoroughly enjoyed their visit to Athens. The first day of the tournament had come and gone and left them very substantially the better in paunch and pocket. On this, the second day, they hoped, and with reason, for still fairer fortune, and severally, and as a corporation, made liberal vows of wax candles to St. Nicholas if their hopes should come true. They moved at ease through the assemblage outside the lists, clad in the disguises that time had taught them to be best suited to each man's individuality. Captain Fox, who had a persuasive tongue, went as a mendicant friar and vended relics. Captain Gander, because he could sing a catch at random with some volume of voice, jigged and whistled, minced and ambled as a wandering minstrel. Captain Bat was a lame beggar, arm in sling, patch on eye, a maimed hero, victim of wars, voluble of sorrows, and eloquent in appeal. Captain Chanticleer skipped hither and thither as a glib-lipped fortune-teller, and fumbled dirty pieces of wood that were painted with pips and points and dots of mystical meanings. Captain Rat and Captain Badger, who had each some skill in tumbling, clowned to the crowd as itinerant mountebanks, and paraded alternately one on the other's shoulders inviting the world to see wonders.

So dexterous were all these gentry in their assumed occupations that their legitimate receipts represented a very fair proportion of the day's earnings. Therefore, as Captain Fox pithily observed, they did very well both as honest folk and as rogues. But while their hands were busy in emptying the pouches of others to fill their own, their eyes were not idle or indifferent to the pleasures which Duke Baldwin provided for knave as well as for knight. Experience of camps had made the gang of rascals acquainted with the bearings of many warlike lords, and they were able to blazon with confidence to a gaping crowd about them most of the coats displayed upon the shields that hung before the pavilions in the lists.

Thus said Captain Fox to his audience: "The black pale on a silver field proclaims the Prince of Epirus. The red bend on the gold enriched with three laurel wreaths on the field is the bearing of Andronicus Palæologus, who longs to wear the imperial laurels of Constantinople. The six gold lozenges on purple are the arms of Sir Jaufre de Brabant. The three boars' heads of silver on the black field assert Sir Ambrose of Blois. The golden stag at gaze on a green field stands for Sir Raymond of Provence. The golden dolphin on the orange field represents Sir Guy de Hainault. The shield divided per pale green and silver and charged with a scarlet castle, from whose summit emerges a black dragon, belongs to Fernand Ximenes, the aspiring Spaniard." Only one cognizance baffled the garrulity of Captain Fox that day. There was a shield bearing a golden acorn on a green field that was as unfamiliar to him as to his hearers. So he looked mighty wise, gabbled some patter about mysteries that might not be revealed, and went on to explain, what every one of course knew, that Prince Rainouart carried a golden shield with no charge upon it, and that the lord-marshal, Count Ernault, carried potent blue and silver. Of many another knight that day, of many more armorial bearings, Captain Fox discoursed learnedly enough to such as would listen to him, and generally succeeded while his tongue wagged in impoverishing his hearers of some jewel, purse, or button, dexterously nipped by his thievish fingers. But at least the plundered person, when he discovered his loss and Captain Fox had vanished into the sea of human beings, might console himself with the reflection that he had moved, as it were, for a season in a kind of intimacy with the great, and that this pleasure, like all others, had to be paid for.

The place which Duke Baldwin had appointed for the holding of the tournament was excellently well chosen. One of the greenest meadows of the Athenian plain facing the sea, with the Acropolis for a background, had been enclosed with great hoardings of painted wood, red and white, the duke's own colors. Under the shadow of the Acropolis a great gallery had been erected, glittering with gilding and brilliant with silk, to form a bower from which the Duchess of Thebes and the fair ladies of Baldwin's court might witness the encounters. Behind these, still within the enclosures, were two pavilions set apart, one for the use of the Duchess of Thebes and the other for Duke Baldwin, who took no part in that day's sport save as on-looker and arbiter. The pavilions of the knights were ranged inside the lists, and at the door of each a page in some fantastic habit stood holding his master's shield. Here and there in the wooden barrier encircling the lists were apertures guarded by mighty men-at-arms, brothers in size and strength to those that wardered the door of the ducal court-yard. At each of these doorways a herald was stationed to make sure that none entered the lists unprivileged.

The Duke Baldwin was a great stickler for custom, past-master of punctilio. He knew all that there was to know of the laws that had hitherto governed the gentle art of tourney, and thinking that nothing in the world exists so good that it could not be bettered, especially by Duke Baldwin of Athens, he had devised many novel regulations in gracious methods for mimic combat, which pleased him highly the more they rendered complicated and intricate the laws of the royal sport. He rejoiced to invent some new rule for the disqualification of a combatant who might to the unconcerned eye of the actual spectator appear to be the victor. His opponent might, indeed, lie sprawling on the grass, fairly pushed from his horse by the heavy impact of the blunt-headed spear, but if that spear had not struck in precisely the right place permissible at that very moment of the play, according to the laws of Duke Baldwin, or had struck in some place not permissible, again according to the laws of Duke Baldwin, it was the sprawler on the ground who received the laurel and not he who rode his horse victoriously amid the cheers of the multitude. It followed, naturally enough, that Duke Baldwin's regulations were not always and altogether popular with the knights who encountered under his eyes. But the duke was so deeply versed in the whole history of his sport, and always so readily recited precedents from this great tournament here and that noble jousting there, that it would have been difficult, even had it been profitable or even advisable, to argue a point with him, and as he was autocrat of Athens, strong of hand and choleric of nature, few ever did venture to argue with him.

On this occasion Duke Baldwin had taken special pains over the whole paraphernalia of the tournament. He had examined with his own hands and eyes the great barrier that ran down the middle of the lists to divide the encountering knights and prevent their horses from colliding. He had made sure by personal interrogation that each of the heralds was well acquainted with the arms, titles, lineage, and deeds of each of the nobles who offered themselves to take part in the combat. He saw to the pitching of the pavilions, the comfort of their furniture, the lodgings of the squires. He visited the stables where the horses were to dwell, the stithies where swarthy smiths were to wait ready with bellows working and fires burning for the mending of shattered mail, and he was at pains to see that the pavilion of the Duchess of Thebes was adorned with all the luxury that even a lovely woman could desire.

Duke Baldwin was so well satisfied with himself and with the world in general that he allowed himself the relaxation of idleness in one particular. He left to his lord-marshal, Count Ernault, all that belonged to the personal arrangement of the tourney, to the order of the encounters, and to the degree of those who might be permitted to take part in them. Thus it came about that when the hour struck, and the trumpets sounded for the beginning of battle, he knew nothing of the existence of a Prince of Eleusis to whom Count Ernault had given promise to ride in the fight.

All the meadow-land round the lists was thronged with a fantastic congregation of folk. Every square inch of standing room a-nigh the red and white palings was occupied by eager spectators hotly arguing the merits of their favorites, and when they could afford it going so far as to stake silver piece against silver piece on the issue of the conflicts. On the fringe of this multitude the speculative had erected a veritable village of wooden booths, wherein all kinds of foods and drinks, gross and dainty, were to be had for the asking and the paying by those whom the thoughts of martial prowess made hungry and the spring sunlight stung to thirst. Travelling glee-men, penniless enough, pushed their bold, sunburned faces hither and thither, ready at any moment for coin or cup to sing to the interested some song of the deeds of heroes--Charlemagne and his twelve peers, Arthur of Brittany and his knights of the Table Round, or the fortunes of the lord of Orange. Every tree in the meadow bore its load of human fruit; scarce any bough seemed too high or too slender for some adventurous spirit to assail, obtaining thereby a view of the tournament at greater peril to life and limb than any run by the knightly combatants.

In the delicate air of Athens, where sound travels far, the chattering of all this swarm of human beings came to the ears of those in the pavilions like the humming of a hive of monstrous bees, or the chattering of an incredible army of starlings, or the slappings of an angry sea. Inside the sacred enclosure the scene was less crowded, but more brilliant and many-colored. On the silk-swathed galleries which had been set up for the benefit of non-combatant courtiers and the ladies of the palace, the gallantest gentlemen vied with the loveliest women in the magnificence of their apparel. Cloth of gold and cloth of silver, all the dyes and jewels of the East, all the plumage of the brightest-hued birds, glittered and twinkled in the strong sunlight in a manner dazzling to the eye. Outside the lists the common folk chattered and gabbled. Inside the lists the noble lords and ladies chattered and gabbled, too, until, as Simon said to himself, it seemed as if the world might very well fear to be talked out of existence. But when the great trumpets sounded which told to every eager ear of all those thousands that the time had come and that the game was afoot, there fell upon the plain a silence as deep and still as the clamor had before been plangent. In that awful silence Duke Baldwin lifted his mighty bulk in the golden throne which groaned under his weight, and, raising his sceptre in his right hand, gave order, in a voice which would have honored a bull, to the lord-marshal that the sport might now begin. The lord-marshal in his turn spoke to the heralds. Again there came a blare of trumpets, and then again a silence pierced by the voices of the heralds calling upon the earliest combatants to begin the fray.

The first part of the tournament consisted of a series of single combats on horse between the allotted pairs of knights. Sir Jaufre de Brabant and Sir Raymond of Provence were the first to ride, and the episode was brief, for in the first encounter Sir Jaufre unhorsed his adversary and cantered to the end of the lists triumphant, while Sir Raymond of Provence scrambled to his feet and regained his tent with as much dignity as he could master under the pitying eyes of the ladies who liked him, the smiles of such lords as misliked him, and the grinning faces of the diverted multitude. Sir Guy de Hainault rode next against Sir Ambrose of Blois, and though Sir Guy looked as slender as a girl in armor and Sir Ambrose a thing of bulk, Sir Ambrose went down at the first push before the well-planted thrust of his adversary's lance. Fernand Ximenes rode against Demetrius of Epirus and overcame him. Andronicus Palæologus overcame Sir Gaston of Nîmes. Many knights rode, gaining good fortune or bad, and the praise or pity of ladies. The inquisitive may seek for their names and their bearings, and their share of that day's fame and shame, in the painted chronicle made later at Count Ernault's cost, from Count Ernault's memory, and now preserved in the University of Madrid, to which Fernand Ximenes presented it. Those who beheld the jousting averred loudly that it was the best and bravest that had ever been seen. In their hearts they were well aware that it was patently like all other tournaments that had ever been held under the laws of honor, and that all the tourneys that would follow through the years would be of like pattern for chance and valor, strength and skill, success or failure--ay, and would be witnessed by eyes as lovely, whether shining with the pride of triumph or shining through the mist of tears.

When a certain number of these courses had been run, then came the great business of the day, the general challenge of the Prince of Athens to all and sundry that were true knights to contend in arms against his declaration that his lady, the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes, was the rose of the world. As the prize of this contest he offered a wreath of golden violets, a glory of the goldsmith's art, which the victor was to offer to his queen of beauty, and which Esclaramonde was very confident to receive from the hands of her betrothed.

XVII

THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

A tumult of applause went up as Rainouart entered the lists, riding a black charger given him by Esclaramonde, and glittering in arms, while his handsome head, still unhelmeted, inclined to right and left in recognition of his greeting. For though Rainouart was too newly come to Athens to be very generally known of the populace, and though report, ever busy with tale-bearing from great places, had whispered something sneering of his bookish ways and his distaste for light ladies, he had endeared himself with the fickle Athenian public by his deeds on the preceding day of the tourney, when he had ridden from victory to victory. At the close of the first day there had been a general assault or mêlée between five-and-twenty Frankish knights, champions chosen by Duke Baldwin, and five-and-twenty of the picked chieftains of the Catalan Grand Company. The struggle was as fierce as brief. It seemed at first as if the Moorish-looking warriors from Spain were destined to gain the day under the angry eyes of Duke Baldwin, but Rainouart's individual deeds of prowess and the gallant manner in which he rallied the French force at the last redeemed the honor of Athens, and forced the Catalans from the field. Duke Baldwin's joy had been unbounded, and he had expressed it as exuberantly as he could to the young man who always listened so gravely when he spoke, and while he listened thought upon his mother's wrongs.

Now the heralds cried the challenge of the Prince of Athens, and as they did so, Rainouart, gripping his horse with limbs of steel, felt as if the brisk wind of battle blowing in his face drove from his senses something of that lethargy under which they had lain supine. His tormenting, denying, mysterious memories troubled him for the moment no more; he was just for that moment a good knight on a good horse, with a good lance in hand ready to do battle with all the world for the sake of a woman. Scarcely did he recall the familiar features of Esclaramonde; in his mind, as in his challenge, he was fighting for the rose of the world, but the rose was the rose of the lovely legend, the unfound flower.

Now knight after knight came forth from his pavilion and mounted his horse to do battle, and knight after knight went down before the conquering lance of young Athens. Guy de Hainault, Jaufre de Brabant, Ambrose of Blois, Gaston of Nîmes, Raymond of Provence, Demetrius of Epirus, and Andronicus Palæologus, each had his own fair lady, star of his life or star of the hour, to tilt for, and each in turn sustained defeat, and Rainouart remained invincible. The populace huzzaed, courtiers applauded demonstratively, Duke Baldwin grinned like a pleased hyena, the ladies of the discomfited tried to smile through tears, and the face of Esclaramonde shone with pride, for she had snared a rare mate. As for Rainouart, he thought not of her; his thoughts were only of the joy of strife and the delight of victory. He was fighting for an ideal; he could not give it name, but it seemed to fill the air with the scent and the color of roses.

Brimmed with the wine of exultation, he waited at his end of the lists after the overthrow of Andronicus Palæologus to see if any other champion would stand against his challenge. There was only one knight left of all the chivalry then in Athens who could hope to contend against him. That knight was Fernand Ximenes, and Rainouart hoped to see him advance. But Fernand Ximenes kept his tent, for he had his own thoughts and purposes concerning the Duchess of Thebes, and he wished to whisper later in her ear that he could not for the life of him challenge her supremacy. So Rainouart waited for a little in his place, a splendid image of steel upon a splendid horse, unquestioned master of the lists. All the spectators, gentle and simple, believed that the day was over, the field fought and won. Rainouart, thinking as they thought, was about to ride forward to receive the wreath of golden violets from the hand of Duke Baldwin when a great shout from the crowd without the barriers, and a murmur that ran along the galleries, stayed his purpose. Then he, with all the rest, became aware of the presence of a new challenger in the lists. A knight in gilded armor, with an acorn for his device, had emerged from a pavilion at the farthest end of the field, and after mounting a white horse which was held in waiting by a burly squire, had ridden slowly to the challenging station. The new-comer's visor was raised, and the spectators beheld a little of a young and beautiful face, very noble in an unfamiliar fairness of feature, of a pale favor delicately colored. But what most won all were the stranger's eyes of lively blue, which made many a woman wish to see her own countenance mirrored in them.

Duke Baldwin leaned forward on his throne in some surprise at the sudden presence; his rugged, bull face flushed with wonder. Count Ernault, after reading the new-comer's shield, whispered to a herald, and the herald proclaimed that the Prince of Eleusis desired to break a lance with the Prince of Athens on the question of his challenge. At this unexpected announcement Esclaramonde, who had bent forward to look at the new-comer and noted how slight he seemed, and youthful, leaned back again with a disdainful smile, though her ready senses quickened at the sight of the youth's beauty. Sympathetic smiles rippled all along the galleries, and many in the crowd beyond laughed derisively, though none that could see the stranger's face denied its marvellous grace. Duke Baldwin called to Count Ernault, who approached his throne.

"Who is this strange knight?" he said. "I have not heard of any Prince of Eleusis."

"Sire," the lord-marshal answered, "this is a young stripling of Greece who claims descent from an ancient Grecian line. For my own part, I know little or nothing of the race which it pleases your grace to rule, yet because he seemed of gentle blood and carried himself so fairly, I saw no reason to deny him a presence in the lists. Your grace, however, who, knowing all things, doubtless knows intimately the genealogy of every Greek his vassal, will be able to set me right if I have erred in this instance, but for myself I thought it better to stretch a point rather than perchance in denying to attain undoubted gentility."

Duke Baldwin frowned. His son was thus far the victor; the Lady Esclaramonde thus far proclaimed peerless. One never could tell what might come of an unexpected challenge. Yet Duke Baldwin, who, in spite of the omniscience attributed to him by his flattering marshal, was well aware in his heart that he knew nothing whatever about the people whom he held subject by an iron hand, was very unwilling to infringe courteous chivalry in the case of one who might be a gentleman of old descent. So with the ferocious distortion of countenance which was Duke Baldwin's conception of a smile, he approved the lord-marshal's action.

"It were shame," he declared, "if ever noble gentleman were denied to ride in lists opened by me. But here I think decision must rest with our son. If he elect to meet this stranger knight, your Prince of Eleusis has our willing leave to joust in this tourney. But tell our son that as he has fought to-day only with knights of known lineage and bearings, he is free if it please him to deny this Grecian, and to remain the unquestioned victor of the day."

The lord-marshal hastened to where Rainouart waited, and made him aware of the conditions under which a new player had come into the game, and of Duke Baldwin's decision in the matter. Rainouart answered instantly that he was in no way breathed or weakened by what had gone, that it would be strange, indeed, for him to deny any challenger, and that he would take the stranger's word for his gentility. Straightway Count Ernault sped to where Argathona waited, mounted on her white horse, and, after acquainting her with the cause of the delay, made her free of the duke's permission to tilt.

Nobody in all that vast concourse had watched these parleyings with more interest than the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes. Her heart had been dancing all manner of joyous measures at the success of her betrothed. As knight after knight went down before Rainouart, her eyes brightened and her spirits sang, for all was in her honor, and she knew, rejoicing in her knowledge, that every woman present envied her. The sudden apparition of an unexpected challenger could not affect her triumph. The cavalier who had so triumphantly overcome seven of the gallantest knights in Duke Baldwin's gallant court was scarcely like to have his supremacy menaced by a stripling of Greece. Yet in spite of herself, this apparition of this unexpected challenger, unknown to her, unknown to Athens, unknown to Athens's duke, seemed mysteriously to threaten her confidence, and her cheek burned with anger against the fair-faced stranger as she watched the preliminaries of the combat.

The trumpets sounded, and instantly the opposing knights rushed one against the other, swift as warring winds. In full centre of the tilt-yard the white horse and the black horse came wellnigh head to head. Rainouart's spear was aimed a thought too high as it seemed, and slid over the shoulder of his opponent while the lance of Eleusis struck fair and square at the breast-plate of the Athenian prince, and the next moment the black horse was sweeping riderless down the lists, and Duke Baldwin's son was lying on the grass. While a great groan came from all beholders at this fall, the Knight of Eleusis, galloping to the end of the lists, turned at the barrier and rode back again to draw rein with visor exalted in front of the royal pavilion.

When Duke Baldwin saw his son fall, he gripped his sceptre in both hands so fiercely that it bent in his fingers as if it had been a waxen candle, and his whole soul groaned in travail because he could think of no oath horrible enough with which to express his mortification. Esclaramonde for her part hid her burning face behind her fan and dreamed incredible tortures for the victor. However, there was nothing for it but acceptance of the result of the combat, and, while assiduous squires helped the fallen prince to his feet, Duke Baldwin took from the cushion held by a page at his side the golden wreath, and extended it to the Knight of Eleusis, who received it on the point of the lance. Hardly articulate, Duke Baldwin gasped out that the wreath was the victor's, and that his was the privilege to crown whom so he pleased in that presence queen of the day. Immediately the stranger, shifting a little in the saddle, extended the lance dexterously poised so that the golden wreath swung just in front of the face of Esclaramonde. A little sob of joy came from the duchess's lips.

"Why, this is better than best," she murmured, and with something almost too eager in her action she caught at the golden wreath and placed it on her head, while the whole arena now rang with applause at the chivalrous act of the victor. The moment the duchess had taken the wreath, Argathona turned her horse's head in the direction of her pavilion. Duke Baldwin rose in a towering fury from his throne. "This comes of the reading of books," he muttered to himself, and, quitting the gallery, he entered the lists to make inquiry as to the condition of his fallen son.

Argathona, slowly riding down the field on her white horse, was yet some distance from her pavilion, when a page, running breathlessly to her side, informed her that the lord-marshal desired speech with her. Immediately reining her horse, Argathona turned round and advanced to meet Count Ernault, who told her that the Duchess Esclaramonde earnestly entreated the favor of some speech with the victor who had crowned her queen of beauty.

XVIII

AN APPLE OF GOLD

Following the lord-marshal, Argathona came to the silken tent which sheltered the Lady Esclaramonde. At a sign from Count Ernault the pages in attendance drew back the curtains, and Argathona entering found herself in the presence of the Duchess of Thebes. The Lady Esclaramonde was reclining upon a pile of many-colored cushions, playing with a mirror and talking to her women. She propped herself on one elbow and smiled first at Sir Ernault and then at the fair face of the victor.

"I thank you," she said, and there was that in the tone of her voice, and that in the look of her eyes, and that in the deep of his own memory which made it plain to him that the duchess desired to be left alone with the young knight.

Gravity reigning in his face, irony rising in his mind, Count Ernault bowed and left the presence. At a sign from Esclaramonde the duchess's women withdrew into a further apartment of the pavilion, curtained off from the place where Esclaramonde now lay, who looked up alluringly into the impassive face of the youth. For to her, as to the others, with the glamour of the woodland will upon her, Argathona seemed no more than a handsome lad.

"You joust well, youth," she said. "Who is your true-love?"

"I played for a lady's sake," Argathona answered, "whom I maintain very fair."

Esclaramonde leaned forward a little on her silken couch, resting herself on both hands, like some beautiful wild beast about to spring.

"Who is this lady?" she asked, steel in her voice and steel in her eyes, for she could not bear to think that any man could find any woman fair while she was by.

A smile rippled over the dryad's face.

"I dare not say her name," she said, "yet, if you choose, you may see her."

Esclaramonde's dark brows met in a frown.

"Is she one of my women?" she asked, suddenly, and the sound of her voice boded ill for that one of her women whom the champion might name.

Argathona shook her head.

"Indeed no. She is not an inch below you in rank nor an inch above you in stature. Her eyes shine with no less than your brightness; her lips smile with your lively red. Here, if you please, is her image."

Stooping a little, Argathona caught up the mirror with which the duchess had been playing and held it deftly in front of the beautiful, cruel face. The red blood raced into Esclaramonde's cheeks and ebbed again, leaving her strangely pale.

"Am I your lady-love?" she cried, with that joy in her voice which conquest always brought her.

"You are she I rode to see," Argathona answered, enigmatically.

Esclaramonde gave a little sigh of dissatisfaction.

"Your heel needed a sharper spur; you are a day too late. I am to be married this evening."

Argathona laughed.

"Love you, lady! I am a fellow of adventure, and would never make a hearth-haunting husband. I am here to-day and gone to-morrow. My love is the child of a night."

Esclaramonde's eyes widened and dwindled like a cat's. She was thinking of many times and many nights and many comely men, and she was loath to admit that this stripling should slip through the net of her desires.

"Why, we may find a time by-and-by," she sighed, all enticement.

Argathona shook her head.

"I ride from Athens to-morrow," she began, slowly; then swiftly, with the imperiousness of victory, she ended, "Give me to-night."

The duchess laughed, but the duchess was pleased at the vehemence.

"You are a mad rascal. Am I not to be married this evening?"

Argathona answered her, in a lowered voice:

"There is an old tale of the Theban country, how a beautiful, open-hearted lady would send her lord to sleep in the sipping of a spiced wine, and then talk in the starlight with some lighter, brighter body."

As Argathona spoke a frown grew and deepened on the face of Esclaramonde.

"What are you saying?" she whispered.

"An old tale of Thebes," the dryad replied. "You know not such notions. Yet 'tis a pity. Here is your lord, the unhorsed knight, will be your fellow forever and a day, while I, who overtumbled him, must willy-nilly be gone to-morrow. If he were to sleep to-night how should it harm him? He would not hear us speak in the starlight."

The duchess waved her hand impatiently as if in dismissal.

"You are a mad lad; ride where you will."

"As you please," Argathona replied, "yet I have a toy here I would give to any fair who was gentle with me."

If the duchess was greedy of love, she was greedy also of lovely things.

"What toy?" she cried, eagerly.

Argathona put her hand to her girdle and held out on extended palm a small, perfectly fashioned apple of pure gold.

"This golden apple. See, it is pure gold, and see, writ on it in the Greekish script, 'To the most fair.' This was the globe Paris gave to Venus and set Troy burning. She who has it will ever be deemed the loveliest in the eyes of men. I will give this to you to-night if we talk together in the starlight."

The duchess propped her chin on her palm and meditated. There came before her mind a diverting picture of her late lord, the ancient Duke of Thebes, dozing hoggishly in his corner while she talked with another in the starlight. The young knight of Athens was fair, but very surely this young knight of Eleusis was fairer, and, after all, if he rode away to-morrow there would be an age-long time to pass in the company of Duke Baldwin's son. She decided quickly.

"Well, have your will if I win the golden apple. Come to the west postern of the palace to-night. I will see to it that the door is ajar. Mount the stair when I show a light from the window. Be very sure you bring the apple with you. Farewell."