Followed silence. "Roger," the Queen ordered, "give me the paper which I
would not sign."
The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of London
somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, like a person in shrewd and
epicurean amusement, while the Queen subscribed the parchment, with a
great scrawling flourish.
"Take, in the devil's name, the hire of your dexterities," said Ysabeau.
She pushed this document with her wet pen-point toward March. "So! get
it over with, that necessary business with my husband at Berkeley. And
do the rest of you withdraw, saving only my prisoner."
Followed another silence. Queen Ysabeau lolled in her carven chair,
considering the comely gentleman who stood before her, fettered, at the
point of shameful death. There was in the room a little dog which had
come to the Queen, and now licked the palm of her left hand, and the
soft lapping of its tongue was the only sound you heard. "So at peril of
your life you rode for Ordish, then, messire?"
The tense man had flushed. "You have harried us of the King's party out
of England,--and in reason I might not leave England without seeing the
desire of my heart."
"My friend," said Ysabeau, as if half in sorrow, "I would have pardoned
anything save that." She rose. Her face was dark and hot. "By God and
all His saints! you shall indeed leave England to-morrow and the world
also! but not without a final glimpse of this same Rosamund. Yet listen:
I, too, must ride with you to Ordish--as your sister, say--Gregory, did
I not hang, last April, the husband of your sister? Yes, Ralph de
Belomys, a thin man with eager eyes, the Earl of Farrington he was. As
his widow I will ride with you to Ordish, upon condition you disclose to
none at Ordish, saving only, if you will, this quite immaculate
Rosamund, any hint of our merry carnival. And to-morrow (you will swear
according to the nicest obligations of honor) you must ride back with me
to encounter--that which I may devise. For I dare to trust your naked
word in this, and, moreover, I shall take with me a sufficiency of
retainers to leave you no choice."
Darrell knelt before her. "I can do no homage to Queen Ysabeau; yet the
prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die to-morrow and cunningly
contrives, for old time's sake, to hearten me with a sight of Rosamund,
I cannot but kiss." This much he did. "And I swear in all things to obey
your will."
"O comely fool!" the Queen said, not ungently, "I contrive, it may be,
but to demonstrate that many tyrants of antiquity were only bunglers.
And, besides, I must have other thoughts than those which I have known
too long: I must this night take holiday from thinking them, lest I go
mad."
Thus did the Queen arrange her holiday.
"Either I mean to torture you to-morrow," Dame Ysabeau said, presently,
to Darrell, as these two rode side by side, "or else I mean to free you.
In sober verity I do not know. I am in a holiday humor, and it is as the
whim may take me. But do you indeed love this Rosamund Eastney? And of
course she worships you?"
"It is my belief, madame, that when I see her I tremble visibly, and my
weakness is such that a child has more intelligence than I,--and toward
such misery any lady must in common reason be a little compassionate."
Her hands had twitched so that the astonished palfrey reared. "I design
torture," the Queen said; "ah, I perfect exquisite torture, for you have
proven recreant, you have forgotten the maid Ysabeau,--Le Desir du
Cuer, was it not, my Gregory, that you were wont to call her, as
nowadays this Rosamund is the desire of your heart. You lack
inventiveness."
His palms clutched at heaven. "That Ysabeau is dead! and all true joy is
destroyed, and the world lies under a blight from which God has averted
an unfriendly face in displeasure! yet of all wretched persons existent
I am he who endures the most grievous anguish, for daily I partake of
life without any relish, and I would in truth deem him austerely kind
who slew me now that the maiden Ysabeau is dead."
She shrugged wearily. "I scent the raw stuff of a Planh," the Queen
observed; "_benedicite!_ it was ever your way, my friend, to love a
woman chiefly for the verses she inspired." And she began to sing, as
they rode through Baverstock Thicket.
Sang Ysabeau:
"Man's love hath many prompters,
But a woman's love hath none;
And he may woo a nimble wit
Or hair that shames the sun,
Whilst she must pick of all one man
And ever brood thereon--
And for no reason,
And not rightly,--
"Save that the plan was foreordained
(More old than Chalcedon,
Or any tower of Tarshish
Or of gleaming Babylon),
That she must love unwillingly
And love till life be done,--.
He for a season,
And more lightly."
So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a
retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell. Lord
Berners received the party with boisterous hospitality.
"Age has not blinded Father to the fact that your sister is a very
handsome woman," was Rosamund Eastney's comment. The period appears to
have been after supper, and the girl sat with Gregory Darrell in not the
most brilliant corner of the main hall.
The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then with a
tumbling rush of speech told of the sorry masquerade. "The she-devil
designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she plans I know not what."
"Yet I--" said Rosamund. The girl had risen, and she continued with an
odd inconsequence: "You have told me you were Pembroke's squire when
long ago he sailed for France to fetch this woman into England--"
"--Which you never heard!" Lord Berners shouted at this point. "Jasper,
a lute!" And then he halloaed, "Gregory, Madame de Farrington demands
that racy song you made against Queen Ysabeau during your last visit."
Thus did the Queen begin her holiday.
It was a handsome couple which came forward, with hand quitting hand
tardily, and with blinking eyes yet rapt: these two were not overpleased
at being disturbed, and the man was troubled, as in reason he well might
be, by the task assigned him.
"Is it, indeed, your will, my sister," he said, "that I should
sing--this song?"
"It is my will," the Countess said.
And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. "A truth, once
spoken, may not be disowned in any company. It is not, look you, of my
own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if Queen Ysabeau herself were to
bid me sing this song, I could not refuse, for, Christ aid me! the song
is true."
Sang Sir Gregory:
"Dame Ysabeau, la prophécie
Que li sage dit ne ment mie,
Que la royne sut ceus grever
Qui tantost laquais sot aymer--"[4]
and so on. It was a lengthy ditty, and in its wording not oversqueamish;
the Queen's career in England was detailed without any stuttering, and
you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory delivered
it with an incisive gusto, desperately countersigning his own death
warrant. Her treacheries, her adulteries and her assassinations were
rendered in glowing terms whose vigor seemed, even now, to please their
contriver. Yet the minstrel added a new peroration.
Sang Sir Gregory:
"Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gémit--
Peu pense à ce que la voix dit,
Car me membre du temps jadis
Et d'ung garson, d'amour surpris,
Et d'une fille--et la vois si--
Et grandement suis esbahi."
And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without
speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance caught
between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had annoyed her.
She drew the little dagger from her girdle and meditatively cut the
buzzing thing in two. She cast the fragments from her, and resting the
dagger's point upon the arm of her chair, one forefinger upon the summit
of the hilt, considerately twirled the brilliant weapon.
"This song does not err upon the side of clemency," she said at last,
"nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau."
"That she-wolf!" said Lord Berners, comfortably. "Hoo, Madame Gertrude!
since the Prophet Moses wrung healing waters from a rock there has been
no such miracle recorded."
"We read, Messire de Berners, that when the she-wolf once acknowledges a
master she will follow him as faithfully as any dog. My brother, I do
not question your sincerity, yet everybody knows you sing with the voice
of an unhonored courtier. Suppose Queen Ysabeau had heard your song all
through as I have heard it, and then had said--for she is not as the run
of women--'Messire, I had thought until this that there was no thorough
man in England save tall Roger Mortimer. I find him tawdry now, and--I
remember. Come you, then, and rule the England that you love as you may
love no woman, and rule me, messire, since I find even in your
cruelty--For we are no pygmies, you and I! Yonder is squabbling Europe
and all the ancient gold of Africa, ready for our taking! and past that
lies Asia, too, and its painted houses hung with bells, and cloud-wrapt
Tartary, where we two may yet erect our equal thrones, upon which to
receive the tributary emperors! For we are no pygmies, you and I." She
paused. She shrugged. "Suppose Queen Ysabeau, who is not as the run of
women, had said this much, my brother?"
Darrell was more pallid (as the phrase is) than a sheet, and the lute
had dropped unheeded, and his hands were clenched.
"I would answer, my sister, that as she has found in England but one
man, I have found in England but one woman--the rose of all the world."
His eyes were turned at this toward Rosamund Eastney. "And yet," the man
stammered, "because I, too, remember--"
"Hah, in God's name! I am answered," the Countess said. She rose, in
dignity almost a queen. "We have ridden far to-day, and to-morrow we
must travel a deal farther--eh, my brother? I am going to bed, Messire
de Berners."
So the men and women parted. Madame de Farrington kissed her brother at
leaving him, as was natural; and under her caress his stalwart person
shuddered, but not in repugnance; and the Queen went away singing
hushedly.
Sang Ysabeau:
"Were the All-Mother wise, life (shaped anotherwise)
Would be all high and true;
Could I be otherwise I had been otherwise
Simply because of you, ...
With whom I have naught to do,
And who are no longer you!
"Life with its pay to be bade us essay to be
What we became,--I believe
Were there a way to be what it was play to be
I would not greatly grieve ...
Hearts are not worn on the sleeve.
Let us neither laugh nor grieve!"
Ysabeau would have slept that night within the chamber of Rosamund
Eastney had either slept. As concerns the older I say nothing. The girl,
though soon aware of frequent rustlings near at hand, lay quiet,
half-forgetful of the poisonous woman yonder. The girl was now fulfilled
with a great blaze of exultation: to-morrow Gregory must die, and then
perhaps she might find time for tears; meanwhile, before her eyes, the
man had flung away a kingdom and life itself for love of her, and the
least nook of her heart ached to be a shade more worthy of the
sacrifice.
After it might have been an hour of this excruciate ecstasy the Countess
came to Rosamund's bed. "Ay," the woman began, "it is indisputable that
his hair is like spun gold and that his eyes resemble sun-drenched
waters in June. It is certain that when this Gregory laughs God is more
happy. Girl, I was familiar with the routine of your meditations before
you were born."
Rosamund said, quite simply: "You have known him always. I envy the
circumstance, Madame Gertrude--you alone of all women in the world I
envy, since you, his sister, being so much older, must have known him
always."
"I know him to the core, my girl," the Countess answered. For a while
she sat silent, one bare foot jogging restlessly. "Yet I am two years
his junior--Did you hear nothing, Rosamund?" "No, Madame Gertrude, I
heard nothing."
"Strange!" the Countess said; "let us have lights, since I can no longer
endure this overpopulous twilight." She kindled, with twitching fingers,
three lamps. "It is as yet dark yonder, where the shadows quiver very
oddly, as though they would rise from the floor--do they not, my
girl?--and protest vain things. But, Rosamund, it has been done; in the
moment of death men's souls have travelled farther and have been
visible; it has been done, I tell you. And he would stand before me,
with pleading eyes, and would reproach me in a voice too faint to reach
my ears--but I would see him--and his groping hands would clutch at my
hands as though a dropped veil had touched me, and with the contact I
would go mad!"
"Madame Gertrude!" the girl stammered, in communicated terror.
"Poor innocent fool!" the woman said, "I am Ysabeau of France." And when
Rosamund made as though to rise, in alarm, Queen Ysabeau caught her by
the shoulder. "Bear witness when he comes that I never hated him. Yet
for my quiet it was necessary that it suffer so cruelly, the scented,
pampered body, and no mark be left upon it! Eia! even now he suffers!
No, I have lied. I hate the man, and in such fashion as you will
comprehend when you are Sarum's wife."
"Madame and Queen!" the girl said, "you will not murder me!" "I am
tempted!" the Queen answered. "O little slip of girlhood, I am tempted,
for it is not reasonable you should possess everything that I have lost.
Innocence you have, and youth, and untroubled eyes, and quiet dreams,
and the fond graveness of a child, and Gregory Darrell's love--" Now
Ysabeau sat down upon the bed and caught up the girl's face between two
fevered hands. "Rosamund, this Darrell perceives within the moment, as I
do, that the love he bears for you is but what he remembers of the love
he bore a certain maid long dead. Eh, you might have been her sister,
Rosamund, for you are very like her. And she, poor wench--why, I could
see her now, I think, were my eyes not blurred, somehow, almost as
though Queen Ysabeau might weep! But she was handsomer than you, since
your complexion is not overclear, praise God!"
Woman against woman they were. "He has told me of his intercourse with
you," the girl said, and this was a lie flatfooted. "Nay, kill me if you
will, madame, since you are the stronger, yet, with my dying breath, I
protest that Gregory has loved no woman truly in all his life except
me."
The Queen laughed bitterly. "Do I not know men? He told you nothing. And
to-night he hesitated, and to-morrow, at the lifting of my finger, he
will supplicate. Since boyhood Gregory Darrell has loved me, O white,
palsied innocence! and he is mine at a whistle. And in that time to
come he will desert you, Rosamund--bidding farewell with a pleasing
Canzon,--and they will give you to the gross Earl of Sarum, as they gave
me to the painted man who was of late our King! and in that time to come
you will know your body to be your husband's makeshift when he lacks
leisure to seek out other recreation! and in that time to come you will
long for death, and presently your heart will be a flame within you, my
Rosamund, an insatiable flame! and you will hate your God because He
made you, and hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you,
and hate all men because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whims!
and chiefly you will hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and
devastation only will you love in that strange time which is to come. It
is adjacent, my Rosamund."
The girl kept silence. She sat erect in the tumbled bed, her hands
clasping her knees, and she appeared to deliberate what Dame Ysabeau had
said. Plentiful brown hair fell about this Rosamund's face, which was
white and shrewd. "A part of what you say, madame, I understand. I know
that Gregory Darrell loves me, yet I have long ago acknowledged he loves
me as one pets a child, or, let us say, a spaniel which reveres and
amuses one. I lack his wit, you comprehend, and so he never speaks to me
all that he thinks. Yet a part of it he tells me, and he loves me, and
with this I am content. Assuredly, if they give me to Sarum I shall hate
Sarum even more than I detest him now. And then, I think, Heaven help
me! that I would not greatly grieve--Oh, you are all evil!" Rosamund
said; "and you thrust into my mind thoughts which I may not understand!"
"You will comprehend them," the Queen said, "when you know yourself a
chattel, bought and paid for."
The Queen laughed. She rose, and her hands strained toward heaven. "You
are omnipotent, yet have You let me become that into which I am
transmuted," she said, very low.
She began to speak as though a statue spoke through lips that seemed
motionless. "Men have long urged me, Rosamund, to a deed which by one
stroke would make me mistress of these islands. To-day I looked on
Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in love--and I had but to
crush a lewd soft worm to come to him. Eh, and I was tempted--!"
The girl said: "Let us grant that Gregory loves you very greatly, and me
just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a cushioned infamy, a
colorful and brief delirium, and afterward demolishment of soul and
body; I offer him contentment and a level life, made up of small events,
it may be, and lacking both in abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love
a flame wherein the lover's soul must be purified; it is a flame which
assays high queens just as it does their servants: and thus, madame, to
judge between us I dare summon you." "Child, child!" the Queen said,
tenderly, and with a smile, "you are brave; and in your fashion you are
wise; yet you will never comprehend. But once I was in heart and soul
and body all that you are to-day; and now I am Queen Ysabeau--Did you in
truth hear nothing, Rosamund?"
"Why, nothing save the wind."
"Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with
you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and imprecations! But I,
too, grow cowardly, it may be--Nay, I know," she said, and in a resonant
voice, "that by this I am mistress of broad England, until my son--my
own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund--knows me for
what I am. For I have heard--Coward! O beautiful sleek coward!" the
Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I was but your
plaything!"
"Madame Ysabeau--!" the girl answered vaguely, for she was puzzled and
was almost frightened by the other's strange talk.
"To bed!" said Ysabeau; "and put out the lights lest he come presently.
Or perhaps he fears me now too much to come to-night. Yet the night
approaches, none the less, when I must lift some arras and find him
there, chalk-white, with painted cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very
terribly, or look into some mirror and behold there not myself but
him,--and in that instant I shall die. Meantime I rule, until my son
attains his manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and so
helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly, and
save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more fair--But I
must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, God orders matters
very shrewdly, my Rosamund."
Timidly the girl touched Ysabeau's shoulder. "In part, I understand,
madame and Queen."
"You understand nothing," said Ysabeau; "how should you understand whose
breasts are yet so tiny? So let us put out the light! though I dread
darkness, Rosamund--For they say that hell is poorly lighted--and they
say--" Then Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Pensively she blew out each lamp.
"We know this Gregory Darrell," the Queen said in the darkness, "ah, to
the marrow we know him, however steadfastly we blink, and we know the
present turmoil of his soul; and in common-sense what chance have you of
victory?"
"None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. For man is a
being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy orders, and his
life here is one unending warfare between that which is divine in him
and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of
the tourney. Always a man's judgment misleads him and his faculties
allure him to a truce, however brief, with iniquity. His senses raise a
mist about his goings, and there is not an endowment of the man but in
the end plays traitor to his interest, as of God's wisdom God intends;
so that when the man is overthrown, the Eternal Father may, in reason,
be neither vexed nor grieved if only the man takes heart to rise again.
And when, betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight out the
allotted battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors which
God Himself accorded, I think that the Saints hold festival in heaven."
"A very pretty sermon," said the Queen. "Yet I do not think that our
Gregory could very long endure a wife given over to such high-minded
talking. He prefers to hear himself do the fine talking."
Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but I
believe that neither of these two slept with profundity.
About dawn one of the Queen's attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and
conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, where Ysabeau walked in
tranquil converse with Lord Berners. The old man was in high good-humor.
"My lad," said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the shoulder, "you have,
I do protest, the very phoenix of sisters. I was never happier." And he
went away chuckling.