The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay by Maurice Hewlett (digital ebook reader .txt) 📗

The Duke of Burgundy was not there, but Conrad knew that he could be counted. Richard owed him (so he said) forty pounds; besides, Richard had called him a sponge—and it was true. There, lastly, was Des Barres, that fine Frenchman, ready to hate anybody who was not French, and most ready to hate Richard, who had broken up the Gisors wedding and put, single-handed, all the guests to shame. Now, this was a company after Prince John's own heart. Standing next to the English throne, he was an excellent footstool; he felt the delicate position, he was flattered at every turn. The Marquess found him most useful, not only because he was on better terms with Philip than himself could hope to be, but because he understood him better. John knew that there were two tender spots in that moody King, and he knew which was the tenderer, pardieu! So Conrad's gross finger, guided by John's, probed the raw of Philip's self-esteem, and found a rankling wound, very proud flesh. Oh, intolerable affront to the House of Capet, that a tall Angevin robber should take up and throw away a daughter of France, and then whistle you to a war in the East! Prince John, you perceive, knew where to rub in the salt.

The storm broke when King Richard was again at Chinon. King Philip sent messengers—William des Barres, the Bishop of Beauvais, and Stephen of Meaux—about the homage due to him for Normandy and all the French fiefs. So far well; King Richard was very urbane, as bland as such an incisive dealer could be. He would do homage for Normandy, Anjou, and the rest on such and such a day. 'But,' he added quietly, 'I attach the condition that it be done at Vézelay, when I am there with my army for the East, and he with his army.'

The ambassadors demurred, talking among themselves: Richard sat on immovable, his hands on his knees. Presently the Bishop of Beauvais, better soldier than priest, stood out from his fellows and made this remarkable speech:—

'Beau sire, our lord the august King takes it very ill that you have so long delayed the marriage agreed upon solemnly between your Grace and Madame Alois his sister. Therefore—' Milo (who was present) says that he saw his master narrow his eyes so much that he seemed to have none at all, but 'sockets and blank balls in them, like statues.' The Bishop of Beauvais, apparently, did not observe it. 'Therefore,' he went on, orotund, 'our lord the King desires that the marriage may be celebrated before he sets out for Acre and the blessed work in those parts. Other matters there are for settlement, such as the title of the most illustrious Marquess of Montferrat to the holy throne, in which my master is persuaded your Grace will conform to his desires. This and other matters a many.'

The King got up. 'Too many matters, Bishop of Beauvais,' he said, 'for my appetite, which is poor just now. There is no debate. Say this to your master, I pay homage where it is due. If by his own act he prove that it is not due, I will not be blamed. As to the Marquess, I will never get a kingdom for him, and I marvel that King Philip can make no better choice than of a man whose only title is rape, and can get no better ally than the slanderer of his sister. And upon the subject of that unhappy lady, I tell you this upon the Holy Gospels, that I will marry King Philip himself before I will marry her; and so much he very well knows. I am upon the point to depart in the fulfilment of my vows. Let your master please himself. He is a bad sailor, he tells me. Am I to think him a bad soldier? And if so, in such a cause, what sort of a Christian, what sort of a king, am I to think him?'

The Bishop, his diplomacy at an end, grew very red. He had nothing to say. Des Barres must needs put in his word.

'Bethink you, fair sire,' he says: 'the Marquess is of my kindred.'

'Oh, I do think, Des Barres,' the King answered him; 'and I am very sorry for you. But I am not answerable for the trespasses of your ancestry.'

Des Barres glared about him, as if he hoped to find a reply among the joists.

'My lord,' he began again, 'it is laid in charge upon us to speak the mind of France. Our master is greatly put about in his sister's affair, and not he only, but his allies with him. Among whom, sire, you must be pleased to reckon my lord John of Mortain.'

He had done better to leave John out; Richard's eyes burnt him, and his voice cut. 'Let my brother John have her, who knows her rights and wrongs. As for you, Des Barres, take back to your master your windy conversation, and this also, that I allow no man to dictate marriages to me.' So said, he broke up the audience, and would see no more of the ambassadors. They, in two or three days, departed with what grace they had in them.

The immediate effect of this, you may perhaps expect, was to drive Richard all the road to Navarre. He was profoundly offended, so much so that not Jehane herself dared speak to him. As he always did when his heart mastered his head, he acted now alone and at once. In the heart we choose to seat rage of all sorts, the purest and the most base, the most fervent and the most cold. It so happened that there was business for our King in Gascony, congenial business. Guillem de Chisi, a vassal of his, had been robbing pilgrims, so Guillem was to be hanged. Richard went swift-foot to Cahors, hanged Guillem in front of his own gatehouse, then wrote letters to Pampluna inviting King Sancho to a conference 'upon many affairs touching Almighty God and ourselves.' Thus he put it, and King Sancho needed no accents to the vowels. The wise man set out with a great train, his virgin with him.

The day of his expectation, King Richard heard mass in a most unchristian frame of mind. There was no Sursum Corda for him; but he knelt like a stone image, inert and cold from breast to backbone; said nothing, moved not. How differently do men and women stand at the gate of sorrows! Not far off him knelt Countess Jehane, who in her hands again (it may be said) held up her bleeding heart. The luxury of this strange sacrifice made the girl glow like a fire opal; she was in a fierce ecstasy, her lips parted, eyes half-shut; she breathed short, she panted. There is no moralising over these things: love is a hearty feeder, and thrives on a fast-day as well as on a gaudy. By fasting come visions, tremors, swoonings and such like, dainty perversions of sense. But part of Jehane's exaltation, you must know, came of another spur. She had a sure and certain hope; she knew what she knew, though no other even guessed it. With that to carry she could lift up her head. No woman in the world need grudge the usurper of place while she may go on, carrying her title below the heart. More of this presently. Two hours before noon, in that clear October weather, over the brown hills came a company of knights on white destriers, with their pennons flying and white cloaks over their mail, the outriders of Navarre. They were met in the meadow of the Charterhouse and escorted to their quarters, which were on the right of the King's pavilion. That same pavilion was of purple silk, worked over with gold leopards the size of life. It had two standards beside it, the dragon of the English, the leopards of Anjou. The pavilion of King Sancho was of green silk with silver emblems—a heart, a castle, a stag; Saint George, Saint Michael, Saint James the Great, and Saint Martin with his split cloak—a shining place before whose door stood twenty ladies in white, their hair let loose, to receive Madame Berengère and minister to her. Chief among these was Countess Jehane. King Richard was not in his own pavilion, but would greet his brother king in the hail of the citadel.

So in due time, after three soundings on the silver trumpets and much curious ceremony of bread and salt, came Don Sancho the Wise in a meinie of his peers, very noble on a roan horse; and Dame Berengère his daughter in a wine-coloured litter, with her ladies about her on ambling palfreys, the colour of burnt grass. When they took this little princess out of her silken cage the first face she looked for and the first she saw was that of Jehane Saint-Pol, who received her courteously.

Jehane always wore sumptuous clothing, being aware, no doubt, that her person justified the display. For this time she had dressed herself in silver brocade, let her bosom go bare, and brought the strong golden plaits round about in her favourite fashion. Upon her head she had a coronet of silver flowers, in her neck a blue jewel. All the colour she had lay in her hue of faint rose, in her hair like corn in the sun, in her eyes of green, in her deep red lips. But her height, free build, and liberal curves marked her out of a bevy that glowed in a more Southern fashion. She had to stoop overmuch to kiss Berengère's hand; and this made the little Spaniard bite her lip.

Berengère herself was like a bell, in a stiff dress of crimson sewn with great pearls in leaf and scroll-work. From the waist upwards she was the handle of the bell. This immoderation of her clothes, the fright she was in—so nervous at first that she could hardly stand—became her very ill. She was quite white in the face, with solemn black eyes, glazed and expressionless; her little hands stuck out from her sides like a puppet's. Handsome as no doubt she was, she looked a doll beside the tall Jehane, who could have dandled her comfortably on her knee. She spoke no language but her own, and that not the langue d'oc, but a blurred dialect of it, rougher even than Gascon. Conversation was very difficult on these terms. At first the Princess was shy; then (when she grew curious and forgot her qualms) Jehane was shy. Berengère fingered the jewel in the other's neck, turned it about, wanted to know whence it had come, whose gift it was, etc., etc. Jehane blushed to report it the gift of a friend; whereupon the Princess looked her up and down in a way that made her hot all over.

But when it came to the time of meeting King Richard, Berengère's nervous fears came crowding back; the poor little creature began to shake, clung to Jehane. 'How tall is the king, how tall is he? Taller than you?' she asked, looking up at the Picard girl.

'Oh, yes, Madame, he is taller than I.'

'They say he is cruel. Did you—do you think him cruel?'

'Madame, no, no.'

'He is a poet, they say. Has he made many songs of me?'

Jehane murmured her doubts, exquisitely confused.

'Fifty poets,' continued nestling Berengère, 'have made songs of me. There is a wreath of songs. They call me Frozen Heart: do you know why? They say I am too proud to love a poet. But if the poet is a king! I have a certain fear just now. I think I will—' She took Jehane's arm—'No! no!' She drew away. 'You are too tall—I will never take your arm—I am ashamed. I beg you to go before me. Lead the way.'

So Jehane went first of all the ladies who led the Queen to the King.

King Richard, who himself loved to go splendidly, sat upon his throne in the citadel looking like a statue of gold and ivory. Upon his head was a crown of gold, he had a long tunic of white velvet, round his shoulders a great cope of figured gold brocade, work of Genoa, and very curious. His face and hands were paler than their wont was, his eyes frosty blue, like a winter sea that is made bright, not warm, by the sun. He sat up stiffly, hands on knees; and all about him stood the lords and prelates of the most sumptuous court in the West. King Sancho the Wise was ready to stoop all his wisdom and burden of years before such superb state as this; but the moment his procession entered the hall Richard went down from his daïs to meet it, kissed him on the cheek, asked how he did, and set the careworn man at his ease. As for Berengère, he took from her