THE STORY OF VITEAU
[Illustration: RAYMOND, LOUIS, AND THE PAGE RETURN TO VITEAU.]
THE
STORY OF VITEAU
BY
FRANK R. STOCKTON
AUTHOR OF "A JOLLY FELLOWSHIP," "THE FLOATING PRINCE," ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1907
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COPYRIGHT 1884
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
RAYMOND, LOUIS AND THE PAGE RETURN TO VITEAU, (Frontispiece.)
BERNARD, RAYMOND AND LOUIS MEET THE MONK, 9
LOUIS AND BERNARD ON THEIR WAY TO DEBARRAN'S CASTLE, 20
LOUIS, AGNES, AND THE FALCON, 29
LOUIS FINDS ONE OF THE HIGHWAYMEN A GOOD-NATURED FELLOW, 41
BERNARD TEACHING RAYMOND THE USE OF THE LONG SWORD, 50
BROTHER ANSELMO THREATENS BERNARD AND RAYMOND, 60
THE COUNTESS SENT FOR JASTO AND THANKED HIM WARMLY, 93
A SMALL WINDOW WAS OPENED, 97
AGNES TELLS RAYMOND AND LOUIS OF HER PLAN, 109
SIR HUGO AND SIR CHARLES CHARGE THE ROBBERS, 120
THE FLIGHT OF THE COUNTESS, 132
MICHOL WELCOMES THE COUNTESS, 136
AGNES MAKES A PLEA FOR THE MOTHER OF RAYMOND AND LOUIS, 141
THE ROBBERS IN THE OLD WOMAN'S COTTAGE, 160
THE ROBBERS IN THE HALLWAY WERE FORCED INTO THE COURT-YARD, 178
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The Story of Viteau.
CHAPTER I.
BY the side of a small stream, which ran through one of the most
picturesque portions of the province of Burgundy, in France, there sat,
on a beautiful day in early summer, two boys, who were brothers.
They had been bathing in the stream, and now, having dressed, they were
talking together on the bank.
Raymond, the elder, was about fourteen years old, and his brother Louis
was some eighteen months younger. In form and feature, and in general
disposition and character, they were not unlike many of the boys of our
day, and yet these two young fellows lived more than six hundred years
ago. They were dressed in simple tunics, one green, one brown, and wore
short breeches, dark-colored stockings, and rather clumsy shoes.
The two brothers were very busily engaged in conversation, for they had
a great deal to say to each other, and not much time to say it in. On
the next day Louis was going away from home, to be gone a long, long
time.
Raymond and Louis were the sons of the Countess of Viteau, whose chateau
stood on a little eminence about half a mile away. Their father, the
Count of Viteau, had been one of the most steadfast adherents and
supporters of the Duke of Burgundy, in his endeavors to maintain the
independence of his dukedom against the claims of the French crown, and
had fallen in one of the battles between the Duke's followers and the
army of the Regent, Queen Blanche, who, in those days, ruled France in
the name of her son, the young King, Louis IX., afterward known as Louis
the Just, or St. Louis.
The Duke's forces had been defeated, Burgundy had been compelled to
acknowledge the supremacy of the French crown, and peace reigned in the
kingdom.
The widowed Countess of Viteau now found herself the sole protector and
guardian of her two boys. Fortunately, she had a large estate, but even
this added to her cares and responsibilities, and rendered her less able
to attend to what she had intended should be the aim and business of her
life—the education of her sons.
Education, in those days, did not mean what it does now. The majority of
the people, even of the upper classes, were not educated at all, some of
the lords and barons being unable to write their names. Printing had not
been invented; all books were in manuscript, and were scarce and
valuable. Most of the learning, such as it was, had been, for a long
time, confined to the monks and priests; but, in the era in which our
two boys lived, people had begun to give more attention to general
education, and there were schools in some of the large cities which were
well attended, and where the students of that day were taught grammar,
logic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, although
their studies in most of these branches were not carried very far. The
school of Paris was one of the most celebrated of these institutions.
The Countess of Viteau was among the few ladies of the time who really
cared for an education beyond that which included the small number of
accomplishments then considered necessary to persons of high position.
When quite a young woman, she had learned all that the priests, one or
more of whom generally lived in her father's house, could teach her, and
afterward, when her sons were old enough, she made it her personal
business to attend to their studies. Some things she taught them
herself, and, for other branches, she employed such men of
knowledge—almost always members of some order of the clergy—as could be
obtained.
But now the time had arrived when the customs of the day demanded that
one of her sons, at least, should leave her to receive an education of
another sort, and her younger boy was to be sent away to the castle of
the Count de Barran, an old friend and fellow-soldier of her husband, to
be taught, as most of the boys of his station were taught, the arts and
usages of knighthood and chivalry. Raymond would also be a knight, but
his mother wished him to be more than that. He would succeed to the rank
and estate of his father, and she hoped that he would not only be a
nobleman and a soldier, but a scholar. When he should leave her to go to
the school at Paris,—and it was for this school that she was now
endeavoring to prepare him,—he would live with one of his relatives, by
whom he would be instructed in the noble duties of chivalry. His mother
felt sure that his studies at the school and his knightly exercises
would not interfere with each other.
"Only one more day," said Raymond, "and then it will seem so strange
here without you, Louis."
"But it will be ever so much stranger for me," said Louis, "for I shall
be without everybody. I have never seen a single soul of the castle
people, excepting the Count de Barran, and it is so long since he was
here that I have almost forgotten him. He was a big, stout man, and
that's all I know about him."
"You might as well have never seen him," said Raymond, "for he is not
stout, and he is not big. He's a tall, thin man, and, I think, a kind
one. But I expect you soon will know everybody."
"Or they will know me," said Louis, "which will be the same thing. I
know I shall have lively times. Let me see: For a year and a half I
shall be a page. There must be ever so many ways for the pages,
especially if there are a good many of us, to have royal fun. And then,
when I am fourteen, I shall be a squire. I think I shall not like that
so much, excepting for the fighting part."
"Fighting!" exclaimed his brother. "You'll have none of that."
"Oh yes, but I shall have," returned Louis. "Barran has always been
fighting, ever since I heard of him; and if he does his duty by me, he
is bound to take me with him to the wars."
"But the wars are all over," said Raymond. "You know that as well as I
do."
"Oh, there'll be more," said Louis, laughing. "There is sure to be
trouble of some kind before I'm fourteen. And, if there are any wars,
you must come to them. It won't do to be spending all your time here,
with priests and books."
"Priests and books!" exclaimed Raymond. "I don't expect to spend half my
time with them. I shall ride and fence, and tilt and hunt quite as much
as you will, or even more, I doubt not. But I can do all that, and be a
scholar too."
"I'd like well enough to be a scholar," said Louis, "if it were not so
much trouble. Just to learn to write, like the monks who make our books,
must take years! I tell you, Raymond, it would be time wasted for me."
"No doubt of that," said his brother, laughing. "You would never have
the patience to write out all the pages of a book, even if you could do
it so well that people could read it. If you can do so much as write me
a letter from the castle, to tell me how you find things there, and what
happens to you, I shall be glad enough."
"I never did write a letter," said Louis, "but I feel quite sure that I
could do it. The trouble would be for you to read it."
"That's true;" said Raymond, "but I will do my best to read, if you will
do your best to write."
"Did not our mother tell you to ask me this?" said Louis, turning
towards his brother with a smile.
"She did," answered Raymond.
"I thought it sounded like her," said Louis. "She greatly wants me to
read and write; and, for her sake, and yours, too, Raymond, I'll try a
letter. But is not that Bernard, over in the field?"
"Yes, it is," said Raymond. "He is training a young falcon for me."
"For you!" cried Louis, jumping up. "I did not know that. Let us go down
to him."
"I did not know it, either," said his brother, rising, "until yesterday.
Bernard is going to teach me to fly the bird as soon as it is trained."
"And I am going away to-morrow," cried Louis. "It is too bad!"
The boys now ran down to the field, where a tall, broad-shouldered man,
dressed in a short, coarse jacket of brown cloth, with tight breeches of
the same stuff, was walking towards them. He bore on his left hand a
large falcon, or goshawk, a bird used in that day for hunting game of
various kinds.
"Ho, Bernard!" cried Louis, "how is it I never heard that you were
training that bird? I should have liked to watch you all the time."
"That is the reason you were not told," said Bernard, who had been the
squire of the late Count, and was now a well-trusted member of the
household of Viteau.
"If you had known what I was about," he continued, "you would have done
nothing but watch me, and therefore it was that your good mother told me
to keep the matter from you. It takes a long time and a world of trouble
to train a hawk, especially one that was nearly full-grown when caught,
as this one was. Those taken from their nests are far easier to manage."
"But he is trained now, isn't he?" said Louis. "Why not try him to-day?
Just one flight, good Bernard, for, you know, I shall be gone to-morrow.
We can easily find a heron, or a pheasant, or something he can go
after."
"No, no, my boy," said the squire; "this bird is not yet ready to cast
off for a free flight. Why, it was only last week that I ceased using
the long string with which I brought him back when I wanted him; and,
ever since, I have been very careful to have a lure which should be so
tempting that he would be certain to come down to it, no matter how high
he might soar. See, here is the one I used to-day. He has eaten from it
the whole breast of a pigeon."
With this he showed the boys his "lure," which was a rude figure of a
bird, the body made of cloth, with the head, talons, and wings of a real
bird, and to which had been attached a piece of some kind of meat of
which the falcon is fond. By being thus accustomed to find something
good to tear and eat when called to his master, the bird gradually
learned to obey the call whenever he heard it.
[Illustration: BERNARD, RAYMOND, AND LOUIS MEET THE MONK.]
Raymond was quite willing to wait until the hawk was thoroughly trained,
before testing him in actual sport; but Louis, very naturally, made
great complaint. To-day was his last chance. Bernard, however, was firm,
and so they walked towards the chateau, the hooded bird still perched
upon the squire's wrist.
Just as the three, now busily talking of Louis' future life at the
castle of the Count de Barran, were about entering a little gate in the
lower part of the grounds which surround the house, there came out of
the gate a monk wearing a long, dark, and rather dirty gown, and walking
with his eyes fixed upon the ground, as if deeply engaged in thought. He
seemed scarcely to perceive the boys or the squire, as he passed them.
"I shall be glad to be free from those long-gowned folk," said Louis, as
they entered the grounds. "No more priests' lessons for me. I shall have
knights and soldiers for my teachers."
"All very fine," said Bernard, "but you will have other things to do
besides learning how to be a knight and soldier. You will serve your
masters and your mistresses at table, clean armor, hold stirrups, and do
everything else they ask of you."
"Oh yes," said Louis; "but that will be only while I am a page. In a
year and a half all that will be over."
"A year and a half seems to me like a long time," said Raymond; "but
time always passes quickly with Louis."
This remark was made to Bernard, but the squire did not appear to hear
it. He was looking back through the gate at the departing monk.
"If I only knew that _he_ was never coming back," he said to himself, "I
would not much care what else happened."
And then he followed the boys up to the chateau.
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