"Yes," she answered, "for I am your pretext. I can well believe,
messire, that you love your pretext for theft and murder."
Neither spoke after this, and presently the Earl of Warwick having
come to his peroration, the matter was adjourned till the next day.
The party separated. It was not long before Katharine had informed her
mother that, God willing, she would never again look upon the King of
England's face uncoffined. Isabeau found her a madwoman. The girl
swept opposition before her with gusts of demoniacal fury, wept,
shrieked, tore at her hair, and eventually fell into a sort of
epileptic seizure; between rage and terror she became a horrid,
frenzied beast. I do not dwell upon this, for it is not a condition in
which the comeliest maid shows to advantage. But, for the Valois,
insanity always lurked at the next corner, and they knew it; to save
the girl's reason the Queen was forced to break off all discussion of
the match. Accordingly, the Duke of Burgundy went next day to the
conference alone. Jehan began with "ifs," and over these flimsy
barriers Henry, already fretted by Katharine's scorn, presently
vaulted to a towering fury.
"Fair cousin," the King said, after a deal of vehement bickering, "we
wish you to know that we will have the daughter of your King, and that
we will drive both him and you out of this kingdom."
The Duke answered, not without spirit, "Sire, you are pleased to say
so; but before you have succeeded in ousting my lord and me from this
realm, I am of the opinion that you will be very heartily tired."
At this the King turned on his heel; over his shoulder he flung: "I am
tireless; also, I am agile as a fox in the pursuit of my desires. Say
that to your Princess." Then he went away in a rage.
It had seemed an approvable business to win love incognito, according
to the example of many ancient emperors, but in practice he had
tripped over an ugly outgrowth from the legendary custom. The girl
hated him, there was no doubt about it; and it was equally certain he
loved her. Particularly caustic was the reflection that a twitch of
his finger would get him Katharine as his wife, for before long the
Queen-Regent was again attempting secret negotiations to bring this
about. Yes, he could get the girl's body by a couple of pen-strokes,
and had he been older that might have contented him: as it was, what
he wanted was to rouse the look her eyes had borne in Chartres orchard
that tranquil morning, and this one could not readily secure by
fiddling with seals and parchments. You see his position: this
high-spirited young man now loved the Princess too utterly to take her
on lip-consent, and this marriage was now his one possible excuse for
ceasing from victorious warfare. So he blustered, and the fighting
recommenced; and he slew in a despairing rage, knowing that by every
movement of his arm he became to her so much the more detestable.
Then the Vicomte de Montbrison, as you have heard, betrayed France,
and King Henry began to strip the French realm of provinces as you
peel the layers from an onion. By the May of the year of grace 1420
France was, and knew herself to be, not beaten but demolished. Only a
fag-end of the French army lay entrenched at Troyes, where King
Charles and his court awaited Henry's decision as to the morrow's
action. If he chose to destroy them root and branch, he could; and
they knew such mercy as was in the man to be quite untarnished by
previous using. Sire Henry drew up a small force before the city and
made no overtures toward either peace or throat-cutting.
This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday after
Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in his
apartments at the Hôtel de Ville. The King was pursing his lips over
an alternative play, when somebody began singing below in the
courtyard.
Sang the voice:
"I can find no meaning in life,
That have weighed the world,--and it was
Abundant with folly, and rife
With sorrows brittle as glass,
And with joys that flicker and pass
Like dreams through a fevered head;
And like the dripping of rain
In gardens naked and dead
Is the obdurate thin refrain
Of our youth which is presently dead.
"And she whom alone I have loved
Looks ever with loathing on me,
As one she hath seen disproved
And stained with such smirches as be
Not ever cleansed utterly;
And is both to remember the days
When Destiny fixed her name
As the theme and the goal of my praise;
And my love engenders shame,
And I stain what I strive for and praise.
"O love, most perfect of all,
Just to have known you is well!
And it heartens me now to recall
That just to have known you is well,
And naught else is desirable
Save only to do as you willed
And to love you my whole life long;--
But this heart in me is filled
With hunger cruel and strong,
And with hunger unfulfilled.
"Fond heart, though thy hunger be
As a flame that wanders unstilled,
There is none more perfect than she!"
Malise now came into the room, and, without speaking, laid a fox-brush
before the Princess.
Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered table.
"So you are in his pay, Malise? I am sorry. But you know that your
employer is master here. Who am I to forbid him entrance?" The girl
went away silently, abashed, and the Princess sat quite still, tapping
the brush against the table.
"They do not want me to sign another treaty, do they?" her father
asked timidly. "It appears to me they are always signing treaties, and
I cannot see that any good comes of it. And I would have won the last
game, Katharine, if Malise had not interrupted us. You know I would
have won."
"Yes, Father, you would have won. Oh, he must not see you!" Katharine
cried, a great tide of love mounting in her breast, the love that
draws a mother fiercely to shield her backward boy. "Father, will you
not go into your chamber? I have a new book for you, Father--all
pictures, dear. Come--" She was coaxing him when Sire Henry appeared
in the doorway.
"But I do not wish to look at pictures," Charles said, peevishly; "I
wish to play cards. You are an ungrateful daughter, Katharine. You are
never willing to amuse me." He sat down with a whimper and began to
pluck at his dribbling lips.
Katharine had moved a little toward the door. Her face was white. "Now
welcome, sire!" she said. "Welcome, O great conqueror, who in your
hour of triumph can find no nobler recreation than to shame a maid
with her past folly! It was valorously done, sire. See, Father; here
is the King of England come to observe how low we sit that yesterday
were lords of France."
"The King of England!" echoed Charles, and he rose now to his feet. "I
thought we were at war with him. But my memory is treacherous. You
perceive, brother of England, I am planning a new mouse-trap, and my
mind is somewhat preëmpted. I recall now that you are in treaty for my
daughter's hand. Katharine is a good girl, a fine upstanding girl, but
I suppose--" He paused, as if to regard and hear some invisible
counsellor, and then briskly resumed: "Yes, I suppose policy demands
that she should marry you. We trammelled kings can never go free of
policy--ey, my compère of England? No; it was through policy I wedded
her mother; and we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in
your ear, son-in-law: Madame Isabeau's soul formerly inhabited a sow,
as Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the
influence of the moon drew it hither."
Henry did not say anything. Steadily his calm blue eyes appraised Dame
Katharine. And King Charles went on, very knowingly:
"Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, though by
ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy again,
son-in-law: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the great
hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten flies--
very black they were, the black shrivelled souls of parricides,--and
afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the Mediterranean hath its
sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at cards. Cheats, sir!--and
I her father!" The incessant peering, the stealthy cunning with which
Charles whispered this, the confidence with which he clung to his
destroyer's hand, was that of a conspiring child.
"Come, Father," Katharine said. "Come away to bed, dear."
"Hideous basilisk!" he spat at her; "dare you rebel against me? Am I
not King of France, and is it not blasphemy for a King of France to be
mocked? Frail moths that flutter about my splendor," he shrieked, in
an unheralded frenzy, "beware of me, beware! for I am omnipotent! I am
King of France, Heaven's regent. At my command the winds go about the
earth, and nightly the stars are kindled for my recreation. Perhaps I
am mightier than God, but I do not remember now. The reason is written
down and lies somewhere under a bench. Now I sail for England. Eia!
eia! I go to ravage England, terrible and merciless. But I must have
my mouse-traps, Goodman Devil, for in England the cats of the
middle-sea wait unfed." He went out of the room, giggling, and in the
corridor began to sing:
"A hundred thousand times good-bye!
I go to seek the Evangelist,
For here all persons cheat and lie ..."
All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon
Katharine. Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the
boulder, and they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But
she turned and met his gaze squarely. She noted now for the first time
how oddly his left eyebrow drooped. Katharine said: "And that is the
king whom you have conquered! Is it not a notable conquest to overcome
so wise a king? to pilfer renown from an idiot? There are cut-throats
in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who would scorn the action. Now shall
I fetch my mother, sire? the commander of that great army which you
overcame? As the hour is late, she is by this time tipsy, but she will
come. Or perhaps she is with some paid lover, but if this conqueror,
this second Alexander, wills it she will come. O God!" the girl
wailed, on a sudden; "O just and all-seeing God! are not we of Valois
so contemptible that in conquering us it is the victor who is shamed?"
"Flower of the marsh!" he said, and his voice pulsed with tender
cadences--"flower of the marsh! it is not the King of England who now
comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry Plantagenet God has led
hither by the hand to punish the sins of this realm, and to reign in
it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet will cast out the Valois from
the throne they have defiled, as Darius cast out Belshazzar, for such
is the desire and the intent of God. But to you comes Alain the
harper, not as a conqueror but as a suppliant,--Alain who has loved
you whole-heartedly these two years past, and who now kneels before
you entreating grace."
Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he had
fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood that he
believed France to be his by Divine favor and Heaven's peculiar
intervention. He thought himself God's factor, not His rebel. He was
rather stupid, this huge, handsome, squinting boy; and as she
comprehended this, her hand went to his shoulder, half maternally.
"It is nobly done, sire. But I understand. You must marry me in order
to uphold your claim to France. You sell, and I with my body purchase,
peace for France. There is no need of a lover's posture when hucksters
meet."
"So changed!" he said, and he was silent for an interval, still
kneeling. Then he began: "You force me to point out that I do not need
any pretext for holding France. France lies before me prostrate. By
God's singular grace I reign in this fair kingdom, mine by right of
conquest, and an alliance with the house of Valois will neither make
nor mar me." She was unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact.
"But I love you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you
not understand that there can be between us no question of expediency?
Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know of;
now in Troyes they meet again,--not as princess and king, but as man
and maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your heart, I think.
And now in all the world there is one thing I covet--to gain for the
poor king some portion of that love you would have squandered on the
harper." His hand closed upon her hand.
At his touch the girl's composure vanished. "My lord, you woo too
timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced advocates. I am
daughter to the King of France, and next to my soul's salvation I
esteem the welfare of France. Can I, then, fail to love the King of
England, who chooses the blood of my countrymen as a judicious garb to
come a-wooing in? How else, since you have ravaged my native land,
since you have besmirched the name I bear, since yonder afield every
wound in my dead and yet unburied Frenchmen is to me a mouth which
shrieks your infamy?"