TOURNAMENT
THE next morning they heard mass in the castle chapel. The hour was
early, the world all drenched with autumn dews. The prince and the
duke and Alazais the Fair and Audiart, and behind them many knights
and ladies, kneeled on the stone flooring between the sparks of the
altar-lamps and the pink morning light. The chanted Latin rose and
fell, the bell rang, all bent. In came a lance of sunlight and the
vagrant morning breeze. Mass over, all flowed into the paved court. For
to-day there was arranged in the duke’s honour, a splendid tourney.
Many a good knight would joust—the duke also, it was said. Two hours,
and the trumpets would sound. The court was glad when the great folk
turned away with their immediate people, and the rest of the world
could begin to prepare.
Prince Gaucelm did not tilt. When he was young he had proved himself
_preux chevalier_. Now he was not so young, and his body weighed heavy,
and all his striving was to be _prud’homme_. When he came to his
chamber in the great donjon he dismissed from it all save a chamberlain
and a page, and the latter he sent to the princess his daughter with
a message that she might come to him now as she had asked. In as few
minutes as might be she came.
There was a window looking to the east, over the castle wall and moat
and forth upon the roofs of the town. The prince had here a great chair
and a bench with cushions, and the princess was to sit upon the bench.
Instead she came and stood beside him, and then slipped to her knees
and rested her head against the arm of the chair. “My good father,” she
said, “my wise father, my dear father, do you love me?”
“You know that I love you,” answered Gaucelm, and put his hand upon her
head.
“If you do, then it is all safe.”
Gaucelm slightly laughed. In the sound was both amusement and anger.
“But my guest the duke,” he said, “does not love you.”
“He loves me most vilely!” said the ugly princess with energy.
Prince Gaucelm mused. “Shall I show offence or no? I have not decided.”
“Why show offence?” said the ugly princess. “I am as I am, and he is
as he is. Let him go, with smiles and a stirrup-cup, and a ‘Fair lord,
well met and well parted!’”
“He is a foolish man.”
“There are many such—and women. Let him go. I grudge him no happiness,
nor a fair wife.”
The ugly princess rose from the floor and went and stood by the window.
Doves that Gaucelm cherished flew from their cote in the court below
across and across the opening. One came and sat upon the sill and
preened its feathers.
“This question of fairness has many aspects,” said Gaucelm the
Fortunate. “The cover in which you are clad is not so bad!—Well, let
us take it that this great baron is gone.”
“I will make an offering to Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne! But I will
thank you, too,—and most, I think.”
“It rests,” said Gaucelm, “that you must marry.”
“Ah, must I so surely?”
Prince Gaucelm regarded her ponderingly, with bent brows. “What is
there else for women? You will not be a nun?”
“Not I!”
“Fief by fief,” said Gaucelm, “Roche-de-Frêne was built, now by
conquest and now by alliance. If I have no son, you are my heir. There
is a bell that rings in all men’s ears. _Make for your heir betimes a
prudent marriage, adding land to land, gold to gold!_”
“Does it ring so joyously in your ears? It does not ring joyously in
mine. No, nor with a goodly, solemn sound!”
“It is the world’s way,” said the prince. “I do not know if it is the
right way.”
The Princess Audiart watched the dove, iris against the morning sky,
then turned, full face, to her father. “I am not fair,” she said. “Men
who want just that will never want me. It seems to me also that I am
not loving. At times, when I listen to what they say, I want to laugh.
I can see great love. But it seems to me that what they see is not
great love.... Well, but we marry without love! Well, it seems to me
that that is very irksome!—Well, but you may have a knight to love, so
that it be courtly love and your lord’s honour goes unhurt! Well, it
seems to me that that is children’s love.—I wish not to marry, but to
stay here and learn and learn and learn, and with you rule and serve
Roche-de-Frêne!”
In the distance a horn was winded. The mounting sun struck strongly
upon the roofs of Roche-de-Frêne. The dove spread its wings and flew
down to its cote. Voices and a sound of trampling hoofs came from the
court, and a nearer trumpet blew.
“Time and the mind have wings,” said Prince Gaucelm, “and it is not
well to look too far into the future!” He rose from his chair. “Load
not the camel and the day too heavily! Let us go now and watch the
knights joust.”
The tournament was held without the walls, in a long meadow sunk like
a floor between verdant slopes of earth. At either end were pavilions,
pitched for those who jousted. Midway of the lists appeared a wreathed
platform, silken-canopied, built for the great. Right and left of this
space of honour was found place for men-at-arms and castle retainers,
and likewise for the magistrates of the town and the more important
burghers. But on the other side of the lists there were slopes of
turf with out-cropping stones and an occasional well-placed tree, and
here the town poured out its workers, men and women. The crowd was
cheerful. There surged a loud, beating sea of talk. Up and down and
across sprang glitter and light, with sharp notes of colour. Squires
and men-at-arms, heralds and pages gave their quota. Nor did there
lack priest and pilgrim,—and that though the Church thundered against
tournaments,—Jew, free-lance and travelling merchant, jongleur and
stroller. All was gay beneath a bright blue sky, and esquires held the
knights’ horses before the painted pavilions.
The trumpets blew, and out of the castle gates and down the road cut in
the living rock came the great folk. When they reached the meadow and
the gallery built for them, and when presently all were seated, it was
like a long bank of flowers, coloured glories. At each end of the lists
waited twenty knights in mail with painted surcoats. Between, over the
green meadow, rode and staidly consulted the marshals. Horses neighed,
metal jingled, the folk laughed, talked, gesticulated, now and then
disputed. Jongleurs picked at stringed instruments, trumpeters made a
gay shower of notes. Towers and battlements closed the scene, and the
walled town spread upon the hill-top.
The prince did not tilt, but the duke had granted that during the day
he would splinter one lance. His pavilion was therefore pitched, his
shield hung before it, and two esquires walked up and down with a great
black stallion. Now, with Stephen the Marshal and with his own knights,
he left the gallery of honour and went to arm himself. Edging the lists
ran a pathway, wide enough for two horsemen abreast. A railing divided
it from the throng. As the duke and his party passed along this road,
the crowd, suddenly learning or conjecturing that here was the lord
in whose honour was planned the tournament, craned, many-headed, that
way. It was very important to know if this lord were going to wed the
princess! There were townsmen who had caught the word and called her
the ugly princess. As yet they did not know much about her, though they
saw her ride through the streets with her father, and that she looked
at the people not with haughtiness but attentively. Of Alazais they
were proud. Merchants of Roche-de-Frêne, when they travelled far away
and there insinuated the praises of home, bragged of the beauty of
their lord’s wife. Her name was known in Eastern bazaars.—But if there
was to be a marriage it was important, and important to know the looks
of the bridegroom.
Some crowding took place, some pressing against the wooden barrier.
At one point a plane tree, old and gnarled, stretched a bough above
the pathway. It made a superb tower of observation and as such had
been seized upon. The duke, walking with the marshal, and approaching
this tree, became aware of folk aloft, thick as fruit upon the bough,
half-hidden by the bronzing leaves, and more vocal than elsewhere.
Certain judgements floated down.
Holiday and festival encouraged licence of speech. The time enforced a
reality of obedience from rank to rank, but that provided for, cared
not to prevent mere wagging of tongues. The ruling castes never thought
it out, but had they done so they might have said that it was not amiss
that the people should somewhere indemnify themselves. Let them laugh,
exercise their wit, so that it grew not too caustic—be merry-hearted,
bold, and familiar! Who held the land held them, but it was pleasanter
for the lord himself when the land knew jollity. Add that the courts
of the south were more democratic than those of the north, and that
Gaucelm was a democratic prince.
The duke was of another temper,—a martinet and a stickler for respect
on the part of the vulgar. He caught the comment and flushed. “An
unmannerly people!” he said to Stephen the Marshal.
That baron darted an experienced glance. “They are the younger,
mechanical sort. Take no heed of them, fair lord.”
The remark caught had not been ill-natured, was more jocose than
turbulent, might pass where any freedom of speech was accorded. But
suddenly came clearly from the bough of the plane tree a genuinely
seditious utterance. Given forth in a round, naturally sonorous voice,
it carried further than the speaker intended. “_One day a burgher will
be as good as a duke!_”
The great folk were almost beneath that wide-spreading bough. They
looked sharply up—the duke, Stephen the Marshal, all the knights. The
voice said on, like an oracle aloft among the leaves: “The man in my
skin isn’t any less than the man in his skin. I say that one day—”
A branch that had served to steady the oracle suddenly broke, snapping
short. Amid ejaculations, oracle and branch came together to earth.
Down they tumbled, on the inner side of the barrier, upon the grassy
path before the duke and Stephen the Marshal.
Laughter arose with, on the knights’ side, some angry exclamation. The
fallen man got hastily to his feet. “The branch was rotten—” He put a
hand to either side his head, seemed to settle it upon his shoulders
and recover his wits. “Give me pardon, good lords, for tumbling there
like a pippin—” He was a young man, square-shouldered and sturdy, with
crisply curling black hair, a determined mouth, and black, bold, and
merry eyes.
Stephen the Marshal spoke sternly. “That bough brought you to earth,
Thibaut Canteleu, but, an you rein it not, your tongue will bring you
into earth!”
The offender turned his cap in his hand. “I spoke not to be heard by
great lords,” he said. “I know not that I said harm. I said that,
change my lord duke and me, and I might make a fair duke, and he a
fair master-saddler and worker in Cordovan! I think that he might, and
I will tell you that it taketh skill—”
The duke saw fit to laugh, though after an irritated and peevish
fashion. “Roche-de-Frêne,” he said, “breeds fair princesses and
townsmen with limber tongues!—Well, my Lord Stephen, let us not tarry
here!”
Lords and knights passed on toward the pavilions. Thibaut Canteleu,
pressed aside, stood close to the barrier until they were gone, then
put his hands upon the rail and swung himself up and over. The folk,
men and women, received him with laughter, and some admiration, and he
laughed at himself. Being a holiday, that was the best thing to do.
A jongleur, a dark Moorish-looking fellow in yellow and brown, accosted
him. “Thou poor mad-house citizen! Burgher and knight, lion and lamb,
priest and heretic, pope and paynim, villein and lord, jongleur and
troubadour, Jean and Jeanne, let us all go to heaven together!”
“We might,” answered Thibaut Canteleu sturdily. “That is a fine lute of
thine! Play us a tune while we wait.”
“Not I!” said the jongleur coolly. “It would demean me. Last night I
gave a turn of my art in the hall up yonder, before the prince and all
his court.—Who is this coming now, with a green-and-silver banner and
fifty men behind him?”
The meadow was pitched by the high road running from the north, and
now from this road there turned toward the lists, the holiday crowd,
and the wreathed gallery, a troop of half a hundred mounted men, at
their head one who seemed of importance. Not only the rustling people
on the green banks, but the lists now making final preparation, and the
silken-canopied gallery took cognizance of the approach. The troop came
nearer. A tall man rode in front upon a bay mare. Behind him an esquire
held aloft a spear with a small green-and-silver banner attached. A
poursuivant, gorgeously clad, detached himself from the mass and cried
out: “Montmaure!”
“Ha!” exclaimed Gaucelm the Fortunate. “Here is Count Savaric!” He
spoke to the seneschal. “Take five or six of the best and go meet him.
Bring him here with due honour.”
“Perhaps,” said Alazais, “he will joust. He is a mighty man of his arms
and bears down good knights.”
The unlooked-for guests were now riding close at hand, coming upon the
edge of the meadow, full before the platform of state. So important was
this arrival, that for the moment it halted interest in the tourney.
All turned to watch the troop with the green-and-silver banner.
Montmaure was less powerful than Roche-de-Frêne, but not greatly less.
Roche-de-Frêne held from the French King Philip. Montmaure did homage
for his lands to Richard, Duke of Aquitaine. But there was a certain
fief, a small barony,—to wit, the one that included Castel-Noir and
Raimbaut the Six-fingered’s keep,—for which Montmaure had put his
hands between the hands of Gaucelm of Roche-de-Frêne. To the extent of
three castles with their villages Gaucelm was his liege lord. Now, as
he came beneath the platform and immediately opposite that prince, he
gave ceremonious recognition of the fact. Turning in his saddle, he
drew his sword an inch from its sheath, holding the pommel toward the
prince, then let it slip home again. Gaucelm the Fortunate made a sign
of acceptance. The superb cavalcade passed on and in another moment was
met by the welcoming seneschal.
It seemed that Montmaure would not joust, though several of his knights
wished no better hour’s play. It was explained that he was travelling
to Montferrat, proceeding on a visit to the marquis his kinsman.
Last night he had slept with such a baron. To-day, servitors and
sumpter-mules had gone on, but the count with his immediate following
would halt at Roche-de-Frêne to enquire after the health and well-being
of Prince Gaucelm.
With ceremony Montmaure was marshalled to the gallery, and, mounting
the steps, came between the wreathed posts to the seats of state.
The prince with Alazais rose to greet him. In Gaucelm of the Star’s
time there had been trouble between Montmaure and Roche-de-Frêne.
Some harrying had taken place, the blood of a number of knights and
men-at-arms been shed, a few hundred peasants slain. But this present
Gaucelm was a man of peace, and had effected peace with Montmaure.
But Roche-de-Frêne was sceptical of its lasting forever. Who knew
Montmaure, knew an ambitious, grasping, warring lord—and a cruel and
unscrupulous.
He was a tall man, broad-shouldered, long-armed, with red-gold hair and
beard. When all courtesies of speech had been exchanged, when he had
saluted in courtly fashion the most beautiful Alazais and the Princess
Audiart, he took the chair of worth that was placed for him, and made
enquiry for the duke. He had heard last night that he was a visitor at
Roche-de-Frêne. Told that he would joust, and his pavilion pointed out.
Montmaure gazed at it for half a minute, then, just turning his head,
transferred his glance to the Princess Audiart. It was but an instant
that he looked, then came square again to the regard of the lists. He
turned a great emerald ring that he wore.
“Fair lord,” said Alazais, “your son, Count Jaufre, is not with you?”
Montmaure bent his red-gold head toward her. “Peerless lady, my son, in
hunting, came upon a young wolf who tore his side. He cannot ride yet
with ease. I have left him at Montmaure. There he studies chivalry, and
makes, I doubt not, chansons for princesses.”
“Travellers from Italy,” said Alazais, “have told us that he is an
accomplished knight.”
“It becomes not his father to boast of him,” said Montmaure. “I will
say though that Italy is the poorer since his return home and his own
land is the richer. I would that he were tilting to-day in the light,
princesses, of your four fair eyes!”
Again he looked at the Princess Audiart, and at the duke’s pavilion,
and turned his emerald ring.
The jousting began. Trumpets blew—two knights advanced against each
other with levelled spears—round and round the green arena the eager
folk craned necks. They had shows not a few in their lives, but this
was a show that never palled. Cockfights were good—baiting of bears
was good—a bull-fight passed the first two—but the tourney was
the prime spectacle by just as much as knights in armour outvalued
beasts of wood and field. The knights met with an iron clamour, each
breaking his lance against the other’s shield. Another two were
encountering—one of these was unhorsed. Others rode forth, coming from
either end of the lists....
Encounter followed encounter as knight after knight took part. Now
there were single combats and now mêlées. The dust rose in clouds, the
trumpets brayed, the sun climbed high. Knights were unhorsed; a number
had hurts, two or three had been dragged senseless to the barrier.
Stephen the Marshal was the champion; all who came against him broke at
last like waves against a rock.
It was high noon and the duke had not yet jousted. The crowd was
excited and began to murmur. It did not wish to be cheated—the greater
he that jousted, the greater the show! Moreover it wished to be able
to tell the points of him who might be going to wed Roche-de-Frêne. A
statement had spread that the duke was a bold knight in a tourney—that
he had an enchanted lance, a thread from Saint Martha’s wimple being
tied around its head—that his black stallion had been brought from
the land over the sea, and had been sired by a demon steed. The crowd
wanted to see him joust against Stephen the Marshal. His honour would
not allow him to strike a lesser shield. But then the prince would
not wish Stephen to unhorse his guest. But perhaps Lord Stephen could
not—the duke might be the bolder knight. But was the duke going to
tilt?
He was going to tilt. He came forth from his orange silk pavilion, in
a hauberk covered with rings of steel, and his esquires helped him to
mount the black stallion. He took and shook his lance; the sun made the
sheath of his sword to flash; they gave him a heart-shaped shield. All
around the lists sprang a rustling, buzzing, and clamour. The gallery
of state rustled, whispered.
“He is not a large man,” quoth Montmaure.
“I have heard that he jousts well,” Prince Gaucelm answered.
“My Lord Stephen the Marshal outmatches him.”
“The marshal is a passing good knight. But he is wearied.”
“Ha!” thought Montmaure, “you are so courteous that you mean the duke
to win the wreath. Crown your daughter Queen of Love and Beauty? God’s
teeth! I suppose he must do it if he wants Roche-de-Frêne—”
The black stallion and his rider crossed to the marshal’s pavilion. The
duke touched the shield with his lance, then backed the stallion to his
own end of the meadow. Stephen the Marshal mounted his big grey and
took a lance from his esquire. The field was left clear for the two.
They met midway, in dust-cloud and clangour. Whether the marshal was
tired, or whether he was as courteous as his lord, or whether the duke
was truly great in the tourney, may be left to choice. Each lance
splintered, but Stephen the Marshal, as his horse came back upon its
haunches, lost his seat, recovered it only by clutching at the mane and
swinging himself into the saddle. Every herald at once found voice—up
hurried the marshals—silver trumpets told to the four quarters, name
and titles of the victor.
Around and around rose applause, though indeed no immoderate storm of
sound. Stephen the Marshal was a valiant man. But there was enough to
let one say that nothing lacked. The duke turned his horse from side to
side, just bowed his head in its pointed helmet. Then, as the custom
was, a wreath of silken flowers and leaves was placed upon the point
of his spear. He made the stallion to curvet and caracole, and then to
pace slowly around the lists. A body of jongleurs began to play with
enthusiasm as passionate a love-air as they knew. All Roche-de-Frêne,
town and castle—all the barons and ladies from afar—all the knights
who jousted—all watched to see the duke lay the wreath at the feet of
the young princess—watched to see if he would lay it there. If he did
it might be said to announce that here, if he might, he would wed.
The duke rode around the lists; then before the wide platform of state
and the centre of that platform, before the chairs set arow upon a rich
Eastern rug and canopied with silk, he checked the black stallion, and,
lowering his lance, let the wreath slip from it and rest at the feet
of certainly the most beautiful woman there, Gaucelm’s princess, the
dazzling Alazais.