MOONLIGHT
The moon shone full and splendid, silvering the garden. The garden was
formal, paved paths outlining and enclosing flower beds geometrically
shaped--squares, circles, and triangles. But the riot of flowers
overslipped the edges. Flowers bloomed in multitude and made an ocean of
perfume. Perpetually there was sound of water, sliding and falling
water. It ran in narrow channels, and slept in a pool lined with marble,
and fell from stair to stair in a cascade formed by art. Black cypress
trees stood up like spires, on such a night silver spires, fairy spires.
The garden belonged to a castle palace that with huge stone arms clipped
it on three sides. The fourth saw cliffs and the sea, the sea like one
smooth shield of silver. The moon shone so bright that it put out all
but the larger stars. In the garden, in the trees, sang the
nightingales.
Through a low, arched doorway came into the garden a man and a woman. “O
the moon, the moonlight! O the nightingales!” They took the path that
outlined a square of flowers. Followed them through the doorway a second
couple--man and woman. “O the moon! Smell the orange trees!” They went
the path by the orange trees. A third pair came forth--man and woman.
“The moon on the sea! Hear the nightingales!” They paced around the
circle of roses. A fourth pair followed--a fifth--a sixth--a seventh--an
eighth. It seemed an Embarkment for Cythera. Here were ladies and their
knights--here were knights and ladies. Amaury and Adelaide--Balthasar
and Bérengère--Barral and Constance--Guibour and Mélisande--Roland and
Blanche--Thierry and Laure--Aldhelm and Eleanor--Raimbauld and Tiphaine.
The moon poured splendour, the nightingales were drunken with love.
There was a perron, a curving wide stair with landings mounting from the
garden to a main doorway, and here were flung cushions and cloths of
bright hues, all silvered now with the silver night. Here, after some
pacing of the paths, gathered the couples.
“How much lovelier than in hall where candles put out the moon! Let us
stay here and weave moonshine and go to the nightingales’ heaven! Let us
not go indoors the livelong night!”
“It is midnight now. Dawn comes soon!”
“Let us tell tales and sing! But first we finish our question that we
were debating--”
“Sing, Guibour, sing vers or canzon! Then shall we talk of love!”
“Where are Tanneguy and Beatrix?”
They came from the castle palace--Tanneguy and Beatrix. “Sing, Guibour!
sing this perfect night!”
The troubadour sang--outsang the nightingales. “Love--love--love--love!”
he sang.
The moon shone. When the singer ceased they heard again the
nightingales. From the perron they saw, beyond the cypresses, the sea.
“O the nightingales! O the moon on the sea! O love!”
“Now let us talk! Where were we when we left the hall?”
“Women blessed and crowned by the worship of Our Lady, the Ever Blessed
Virgin--”
“When God and Sire Jesus and Holy Church said, ‘Men, over all the earth,
you are to kneel and worship and sue for grace, for she is every man’s
Queen of Heaven--’”
“Then fell a ray that broke into stars! See, they are in Beatrix’s hair
and in Tiphaine’s and Adelaide’s and Mélisande’s and Laure’s--”
“O Tanneguy the Prince--! You borrow the nightingale’s note, but you
smile in the moonlight!”
“And you are laughing, too, Beatrix!”
Said Guibour: “When the moon drew us forth, it was Beatrix who was
speaking against that honour down-drifted upon women--”
“O Guibour the singer! I was not speaking against it! For doing that, I
know not what Holy Church would do to me! I had not even a dream wish to
speak against it! But here it is--but here it is--what knights so rarely
think of! What God and Sire Jesus and Holy Church say is this, ‘Men and
women, you are to kneel and worship and sue for grace, for she is every
man’s and every woman’s Queen of Heaven!’--Fair and good! But the Queen
is above women as she is above men--and she is in heaven and out of the
world--and though the ray comes down and breaks into stars--oh, they are
little stars and very faintly about the heads of women! For, see you! it
is not because she is woman that she is Queen--for then were she Queen
in herself and of herself--but because God and Sire Jesus chose her....
O knights and troubadours, do not the stars shine only about the heads
of those ladies whom you choose? And though a music comes down--and I
know not well what kind of music it is--yet I know what kind
troubadours and knights make of it!--Love--love! Nightingale
love--rose-leaf love! Love, love!”
“What kind of love would Beatrix have?”
“True love--wide love, deep love and high love, round love and square
love! Golden love out of leaden love! Lo, my diamond! Love with a myriad
faces--love in the centre--love thrown afar--love sublimed--”
“Do we not love?”
“Tourney love--pilgrimage love--canzon and serenade and aubade
love--glove in helm love--nightingale and nightingale love--and all for
a time and a season! Then, ‘Sparrow, stay at home, while I, hawk and
eagle, go sailing!’ But in words, ‘Immortal May and Guiding Star and
Saint Enshrined!’... But few women are Saints, and only one is Queen of
Heaven.... The mantle of love is not wide enough, and the thread that
was spun for it is not strong enough, and the loom for its weaving not
great enough.... We cannot get the furnace as it should be, and the lead
rests lead! Whether the piece is man or woman, it rests lead! Man knows
not how to love woman, and woman knows not how to love man.... Well, I
have done! Sing ‘No!’ to all that, Guibour, as you will--as you will!”
Guibour sang “No” as she had said. But while he sang, and when he had
done, it seemed that there was poison rankling. Said Tiphaine, and she
spoke half angrily and half enviously: “Have we not declared that there
is a treason against knight and ladies and love? Have we not, little by
little, in our garden meetings, in our love courts, worked out rules and
ways?--I hold that Beatrix is traitress, and should be penanced!”
Cried Adelaide, and after her Constance: “I hold so, too!”--“And I!”
The famed in tourney, Aldhelm, spoke stiffly: “The Lady Beatrix says
grievous things against love and lovers--”
Beatrix leaned against the stone, and on one side was a black cypress,
and on the other a stream and torrent of roses. “Do I so, Sir Aldhelm?
Truly I never meant such a thing!... You tourney--and this one and that
one goes down beneath your spear. And Adelaide, her cheek upon her hand,
sits and watches you and commends you to every Saint and the Queen of
Heaven! And when you have won the wreath, you bring it upon your spear,
and lay it at her feet.... There is beauty, Our Lady knows I would not
deny it!... Hearken to the nightingales! Trill--trill--trill! The orange
fragrance comes in waves, and the moonlight makes us silver folk!”
“Still you speak outrageously,” cried Tiphaine. “But we know you study
strange things, with books and alembics, sulphur and mercury, tincture
and quintessence and spirit--”
“Beatrix the traitress!”
“What penance?”
More or less, all were laughing, but the laughter of some carried
threads of anger. “What penance?”
“If you talk of that, penance me, too,” said Tanneguy. “My mind and
Beatrix’s pace together!”
But when it came to the majority they would not penance Tanneguy the
Prince, who was their host, nor Beatrix whose scarf Tanneguy wore in
joust and battle. The moon shone, the nightingales sang, ten thousand
thousand flower chalices dropped perfume, a gauze-like wind breathed
here, breathed there.
Tanneguy took the lute from Guibour and sang,--
“‘I dreamed the All was whole and knew Itself,
A robe it wore of million hues,
And million shapes that moved and played.
And here were flowers and here were fruit,
The vine ran here, the tree sprang there,
The root was seen, the seed, the stem,
And there were women, there were men!--
Yet all were figures in Its robe,
And when It thought, they shifted form.
Whence drew the Robe but from Itself?
And all the dreams, and all the shapes?--
O man and woman, know Thyself!
O shaken notes, re-find the chord!’--
That is my song and Beatrix’s, for we made it together!”
The summer dawn began, the early summer, between spring and summer.
There rang a convent bell. Cocks crew. The stars went out; the moon,
like a pearl, like a fairy raft, like a bubble, hung in the west, above
the sea. Behind the castle the sky spread branched with coral. The
nightingales still sang, but out of sheer weariness with delight, the
knights, the troubadours, the ladies, quitting the perron, went into
castle.
The baron who was Beatrix’s lord and husband was gone with the better
part of his knights and men overseas, upon the Fourth Crusade. He had
been from home a year when two barons, ill neighbours of his, combined
together, and taking advantage of a disordered world, thrust against his
fief and castle. Then was the place besieged, and Beatrix, the baron’s
wife, held it bravely and strongly.
Her lord, very far away, having seen the capture of Zara for the
Venetians, now with other leaders schemed the taking of Constantinople,
all in the interest of the young Alexius who would depose his uncle the
Emperor, and then, one good turn deserving another, aid the crusaders
to win Jerusalem! The baron, who was able, proud, and ambitious, dreamed
a kingdom of his own. Now and then he thought of his castle and fief and
his son. His wife was there to keep the castle and care for the son she
had borne. He loved her no more than another, but he knew that castle
and son would get from her right watch and ward.... Tanneguy the Prince
was Beatrix’s knight--that was quite correct in a time at once highflown
and very, very practical. Lord and his wife, lady and knight--and so the
lady and knight never forgot the lord and his wife, what harm in
poetizing?... So the baron sailed in his ship for Constantinople, and
dreamed of gold and power and Eastern delights.
Meantime, at home, Beatrix held with knowledge and courage that castle,
but against her were great odds.... Then came Tanneguy the Prince, who
for many a year had worn her colours. With a great force, in open field,
he beat the warring barons. One was slain, the other made submission.
But the castle walls lay in huge ruin, and half the keep was a flaming
fire.... Tanneguy’s town rose not many leagues away. Under his escort,
when she had taken good order for the wounded fief, came there Beatrix
and her two children, a son and a daughter. He gave her a fair house and
garden, close by his own great castle.
Here she dwelled in Tanneguy’s town. With her were steward and
chamberlain and tirewomen from the ruined castle, and she had the two
children Alard and Yolande. Tanneguy, all the world knew, was her
knight, and with poesy and tourney did her honour. He visited her in her
garden and hall, and often was she in his castle.
Tanneguy hod a stone room with groined roof upheld by pillars. Outside
its windows, cut in the thick, thick wall, quivered ivy and myrtle, sang
the birds, hummed the bees, fell the gold light or the pleasant rain. By
this room was a smaller room, and in this was built a furnace, and here
tables held alembics and crucibles with a many other curiously shaped
vessels, large and small, of glass or metal. Vials were there, and
chests great and small, balances, and instruments with which to measure,
manage, and design, earths and ores in heaps, and water falling from a
stone lion’s head into a basin curved around by a stone gryphon. He had
two men in brown who fed coals to his furnace, and for a helper an old,
skilled man in green, a notable alchemist, but a lesser alchemist than
Tanneguy himself. All this room held in a red-brown glow. With a magic
hand and eye, it fascinated the children of Beatrix, often let to come
and look from the great room or the deep, green garden. In the greater
room of the stone pillars were Tanneguy’s books. His time considered, he
had many.
He did not love books nor study more than did Beatrix whom he called his
lady and who was now his guest. Together they loved knowledge, enquiry
into the source and background and flow of things.
He was prince and she was lady. Abide within the four corners of sundry
conventions, acknowledge various unfreedoms, and for the rest, so long
as jealousy, envy, and hatred did not look their way, they might bend,
in this great room, over one book. They did so; they loved, but their
age found no occasion to blame their love.
These were their personal relations. They were beginning--after far
wandering in lands and times--to find that one was reality, but two
illusion. They were most happy in each other’s company. To be alone
together in bower or garden, or in this room of knowledge and thought,
had an ancient root of sweetness, a fulness of rest and home. But now
that old bliss was rising into wider space. They were together even
when, to eye or touch, they failed of physical nearness. They began in
all things each to feel, to perceive, the other. Far and near, then and
now, began to fade, divisions and limitations to grow of less account.
Once these had seemed unclimbable walls, unleapable gulfs. Now they
began to perceive that the gulfs were filling, the walls crumbling....
It came with a far-away perception that all walls and gulfs were
arbitrary, temporary.... In the meantime it was sweet to work together
in this old stone room.
Often and often she brought the two children with her and they played in
the little garden without. Sometimes Tanneguy watched her playing with
the children; sometimes the four of them played. She taught the children
well, and especially did she teach the girl Yolande. She would have her
leap and run, toss and catch again, ride and swim and draw a bow. She
would have her look and know and think, perceive, divine. Came to
Tanneguy’s castle a wise and famed Discoverer, a man who dreamed and
then went forth to find how the dream and the truth tallied, who fitted
ships and made little known shores better known, and unknown places
known, who dreamed of outer ocean and how to reach east from west and
north from south. He talked in hall for all to hear, and he talked in
the stone-lined room when there were fewer by. Tanneguy and Beatrix sat
with him here, listening and questioning. Beatrix kept by her the child
Yolande, willing enough to stay, her hand in her mother’s, her head
against her mother’s knee.
Said the old Discoverer: “Lady, bring your son to listen, who, when he
is grown, may do more than listen! Your daughter must listen to that
which will content her with women’s world.”
But Beatrix said: “Worlds melt into one another. I would have her listen
to that which will discontent her!”
Whereat the old Discoverer laughed, and said that he had himself found
discontent valuable.
Time passed. On a certain day Tanneguy and Beatrix watched the furnace
glow, and in the crucibles metals soften. The men in brown, the old man
in green, moved about; there were red and amber lights, and shadows
formless and shadows forked. There were the sound of fire and the sound
of water, and the show of strange shapes of glass and copper vessels.
And, a presence of power, there dwelled with the rest the philosophical
notions behind these experiments, these endeavours--transmutation,
transformation, _prima materia_ and the shapes it took, and why it took
the shapes--law, law, and what or who abode in law, yet could and did
make slow change in its body and its ways....
Tanneguy and Beatrix, after biding long in the room of the red and the
gold, came out together into the larger room. Without the lancet windows
the rain was streaming. They sat upon a bench before an oaken stand
where was spread a notably made copy of the Book of Democritus. The two
sat down. “Book of Democritus--Book of Crates--” said Tanneguy. “I would
that we had that Book of Chema that gives its name to our art, that
Messires the fallen angels wrote and gave to the women they married!”
The rain beat against the windows. In this room was a fire of wood. It
sent out a thin smoke. Light and shadow struggled between the pillars
beneath the groined roof. There came a blast of wind.
“We two in a cave together--” said Beatrix.
“We two in a forest together--”
“We two fighting each the other, over I know not what... It has been so
long ago.”
“I beat down and wronged you--”
“Oh, but I wronged you, too--”
“I was selfish, fierce, vain, proud, and jealous--”
“My body bound my mind. I was more weak than water.... I grew false to
myself and all things.”
“There was no true love.”
“No true love.”
“Then were we driven apart.... We were taught, or we began to teach
ourselves--”
“Yes.... Old, dim miseries.... Then there unfolded a higher world....”
“Often the old plucked us back.... But we guarded the flame with our
hands.”
“Yes.... The old world is afire, consumed for the new!”
“That is the meaning of sacrifice.”
“That is the meaning of sacrifice.”
The rain dashed, the wind beat, the firelight danced.
“Years like the raindrops or the sands of the sea.... Years to come like
the raindrops or the sands of the sea.”
“There were old unions, and they seemed true.... The flutes breathed,
the drums beat.... But now something stranger, sweeter, higher, more
pervasive--”
“In the cave, the forest, the plain, and ancient cities we never saw
that we were steadfastly one.”
“We are steadfastly one.... O may that which is faint knowledge become
knowledge shining like the sun!”
“Above, around, beneath, and through these modes and accidents--”
“Till modes and accidents melt away--”
“And the true gold is made.”
They sat before the fire and the wind beat and the rain poured.
The next day was high and clear. In the garden of the house that
Tanneguy had given her, Beatrix and the two children and the tiremaiden
Maeut played at ball. Came from the house the chamberlain Enric. “Lady,
my lord has sent messengers from overseas!”
She went indoors, into hall. She knew the messengers, Robert of the Good
Lance, a doughty knight, Hugh of the Mount, Conon the Clerk. “Greeting,
Sir Robert and Sir Hugh! Greeting, Conon the Clerk!--How is my Lord
Raymond?”
“He is well, lady, and in high fortune.”
“I am glad that he is well and in high fortune.... Did my letters come
to him, telling him of war against lands and castle?”
“They came, lady.”
“And that Tanneguy the Prince held as guests in all honour me and the
children?”
“Your letters came in safety, lady. He sends you this letter in return.”
She took and read, then sat a long time silent. Then she said, “You
know, Sir Robert and Sir Hugh, and Conon the Clerk, what he bids?”
“Lady, he has won from the Greek lands and villages and a town and a
huge castle. After a time he will redeem his vow as to the Holy
Sepulcher. But now he is duke of those lands and would establish his
dukedom in strength and in glory. For his fief here, it is given in my
charge, who am to place my hands for him in the hands of Count Henry.
But for you and his children Sir Hugh of the Mount is to bring you into
ship at Marseilles, whence sails a fleet on All Saints’ Day. Sir Hugh
and Conon the Clerk shall return with you, and you shall have
chamberlain and steward and what maidens you will. When you come to
Constantinople many will meet you and bring you and his children in pomp
and state to your new home in a greater castle than you have ever known,
where is wealth you have never known. His son he will train to win
kingdoms, and his daughter he will marry to the son of his
comrade-in-arms, Anseau the Red, who holds the neighbouring city.”
Beatrix stood up. She spread her hands, her face was pale between the
braids of hair. “Sir Robert of the Good Lance and Sir Hugh of the Mount
and Conon the Clerk, give me time alone in which to look at this you
bring--”
That was afternoon. Then next morn came Tanneguy. “Yes, I have heard. He
sent me words of thanks, in the tone of the Emperor.... You and I must
speak alone.”
“Let us go to the space behind the cypresses.”
This was truly where none might see or hear. Underfoot spread short, dry
grass, and around went a wall, thick and high, of dark, fine leaves,
fine-woven and dark like crape, and overhead was the blue vault. There
were three stones placed for seats. The two sat down, and she folded her
arms upon her knees and laid her head upon her arms.
“Beatrix, if you will say ‘I will not go!’ I will hold you here with all
my men and all my might!”
“That kind of warrior dies in you, Tanneguy. That kind that lives in
him.”
“Long years I might hold you--!”
“Long, earthly years of war and loss and death of lovers--a-many lovers
dying for one pair--”
“He is strong with Holy Church, and I am a man suspect. But with
compliances and gifts I might buy--”
“No, no, you could not! Do we not know that occasion is wished against
you?... Excommunication for me and for you, and over your lands long
interdict.... Leaden pall of woe and anguish, heavy on ten thousand
folk--”
“Say then we may not do it. What then?”
“O Tanneguy, are we not bound prisoners, you and I?”
The wind bent the grass and sighed in the cypresses. Tanneguy struck his
hands together. “I am weary of the unfreedom of women!”
“And the unfreedom of the sons, the sons of women!”
“Beatrix! Beatrix! What shall we do?”
“I shall go overseas. With Alard and Yolande, I shall go overseas.”
“And I, Beatrix? Shall I not take ship and follow?”
“Ah, no! Ah, no!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“You will live and die far, far away!”
“What is to live--what is to die?... Yet a knife turns in my heart!”
“And in mine.”
“Many a thing there is in this world that is barred away from light....
Tanneguy, Tanneguy! It is the task and the path, the ship to be built
and the land to be found!”
“Freedom....”
“That is what it is to be a knight. If you are a man--if you are a
woman--that is what it is to be a knight.”
“Yea, in truth.... But Beatrix, now, the knife in my heart!”
“And in mine!”
The winds were stilled, the cypresses, like a cloud ring, kept out the
world. The blue arch above was no tale-bearer. They wept in each other’s
arms.
Tanneguy the Prince made princely entertainment for Sir Robert of the
Good Lance and Sir Hugh of the Mount and Conon the Clerk. He wove
wreaths of knightliness and with them adorned the ways that Beatrix trod
to the day of All Saints. Came about her Amaury and Adelaide--Balthasar
and Bérengère--Barral and Constance--Guibour and Mélisande--Roland and
Blanche--Thierry and Laure--Aldhelm and Eleanor--Raimbauld and Tiphaine.
Again was the garden, but an autumn garden. Again was moonlight, and the
nightingales’ singing, but now they sang ancient love and ancient pain.
The leaves coloured, the leaves turned brown and sere, the leaves
fell....
A train of knights accompanied Hugh of the Mount and the Lady Beatrix
and the two children to the port where waited the fleet. Tanneguy was
with them, and rode beside Beatrix. All came upon a midday to the great
inn of the port. In the morning the ships would sail. Alone in a room of
the inn, red from the setting sun, Tanneguy and Beatrix said farewell.
“_What we live for now is to make the gold--_”
“_To build the world where love lives as one--_”
In the red morn of All Saints’ Day the great ship sailed. Tanneguy the
Prince watched from the sea strand. It went forth under sails like
stairs of clouds, it dwindled until it was only a star in the east. Then
distance came between, and only faith could know that there was there a
star.