While Duke Geoffrey tarried in Paris, receiving much honour at the
King's court, but obtaining very little encouragement in his hope of
help against Stephen, the time was heavy on the hands of some of his
followers; but others of them, seeing that they had little service and
much leisure, made up their minds to do not only what was good in their
own eyes, but sometimes also that which was evil, as a certain
chronicler once said of the English knights. For the wine of Gascony
was good, but some said that the vintage of Burgundy was better, and a
matter of such weight was evidently not to be left undecided; yet the
more often it came to judgment, the more evidence and testimony were
required in the case, so that the court sat night and day without
agreeing upon a verdict.
But Gilbert had never learned to sit for hours over a cup, slowly
addling his wits and marking the hour when the room should begin to
swing upon the pivot of his head; and Henry kept him constantly by his
side, saying that he was the only sober man in his father's court,
knight or squire; nor would the boy let him go, excepting when he
himself could pass his time with the Queen, and then he was more than
anxious that Gilbert should disappear. At first Eleanor was amused by
the lad's childish passion, but as she herself greatly preferred
Gilbert's society to that of Henry, she soon grew weary of the rather
tame sport which consisted in making a boy of twelve years fall
desperately in love with her.
Moreover, Henry was precocious and keen-sighted beyond his years, and
was not long in discovering his idol's predilection for his friend. His
chief consolation was that Gilbert himself seemed indifferent, and came
and went at the Queen's bidding as though he were obeying an order
rather than an impulse.
One lazy autumn afternoon, when the air was as hot as summer, and the
flies were swarming about the open doors of the great stables, and
before the deep archway that led into the main kitchen, and about the
open windows of the knights' and squires' quarters,--when the air was
still and lazy, and not a sound was heard in the vast enclosure of the
castle-yard,--Henry and Gilbert came out to play at tennis in a shady
corner behind the church, where there was a penthouse that would serve.
In half a dozen strokes Henry had scored high to Gilbert's nothing, and
the boy dropped the ball at his feet to tighten the network he had made
on his hand by winding a bowstring in and out between his fingers and
across the palm, as men did before rackets were thought of. Suddenly he
turned half round and faced Gilbert, planting himself with his sturdy
legs apart and crossing his arms, which were bare to the elbow; for he
had taken off his cloth tunic, and his embroidered shirt, girdled at
the waist by a leathern belt, hung over his scarlet hose, and was wide
at the neck and turned back above his elbows. He was hatless, ruddy,
and hot.
"Will you answer a fair question fairly, Master Gilbert?" he asked,
looking his friend in the eyes.
Gilbert had fallen into the habit of treating him like a man, as most
people did, excepting the Queen, and gravely nodded an answer.
"Do you not think that the Queen of France is the most beautiful woman
in the world?"
"Yes," answered Gilbert, without a smile, and without the slightest
hesitation.
The boy's eyes, that were so near together, gleamed and fixed
themselves in rising anger, while a dark red flush mounted from his
bare throat to his cheeks, and from his cheeks to his forehead.
"Then you love her?" he asked fiercely, and the words were thick on his
lips.
Gilbert was not easily surprised, but the conclusion was so sudden and
unexpected that he stared for a moment in blank amazement before he
smiled.
"I?" he exclaimed. "I love the Queen? I should as soon think of
coveting the King's crown!"
Henry looked into Gilbert's face a moment longer, and the blood slowly
subsided from his own.
"I can see that you are in earnest," he said, picking up the ball at
his feet, "though I cannot see why a man should not covet a king's
crown as well as a king's wife." He struck the ball.
"You are young," said Gilbert, "to ride atilt through all the Ten
Commandments at once."
"Young!" exclaimed the boy, keeping the ball up. "So was David when he
killed the giant! So was Hercules when he strangled the serpents, as
you told me the other day. Young!" he cried a second time, with
forcibly concentrated contempt. "You should know, Master Gilbert, that
a Plantagenet of thirteen years is the match of any other man of
twenty. As I can beat you at tennis, though you are six years older
than I, so I can beat you in other matters, and with the Queen herself,
even though she is half in love with you already, as all the court is
saying; and she shall belong to me some day, though I have to slay that
dish-faced prayer-master of a king to get her."
Gilbert was no more morally timid than he was physically a coward, but
he looked round with some anxiety as the boy uttered his outrageous
boast.
The place they had chosen for their game was the deep and shady corner
where the church made a right angle with the royal palace. The grass
was cropped during several hours every morning by a dozen sheep and
lambs kept in a stable at the other end of the castle-yard during the
rest of the day. The springing turf was kept fresh even in summer's
drought by the deep shadows. The church wall, built of well-hewn blocks
of stone, was flat and smooth, and was strengthened at regular
intervals by buttresses springing straight up from the sloping
penthouse of masonry, some two yards high. The interval between the
last buttress and the wall of the palace made an admirable court, and,
indeed, the tennis-courts of later days all seem to have been modelled
upon just such corners of old church architecture. The wall of the
palace was also smooth and almost without windows on that side. There
was one on the lower floor, at a considerable distance from the corner,
but the other was at least four or five yards from the ground, just
above the point where Gilbert and Henry were playing, and was made in
Norman fashion of two round arches springing from the rough-hewn
capital of a small stone column between them. Gilbert had often noticed
this window, though it was above an ordinary side glance, as he played
the ball at the other wall; and even as he turned now, he looked
instinctively behind him and towards the distant lower window.
A sweet low laugh rang out into the summer air just above his head. He
looked up to meet the sound, and young Henry missed the ball and turned
his eyes in the same direction. His bluff, boyish face blushed scarlet,
but Gilbert turned slowly pale, stepped back, and took his round
pointed cap from his fair hair in acknowledgment of the Queen's
presence.
"You were listening, Madam," cried the boy, red in his anger. "But I am
glad you did, since you have heard the truth."
The Queen laughed again, and drew back her head as if to see whether
there were any one in the room behind her, her white hand lying over
the stone sill, meanwhile, as if to show that she was not going away.
Gilbert even thought that the slender fingers tapped the stone ledge in
a reassuring way. Then she looked out again. A few late flowers and
sweet herbs grew in an earthenware trough in one division of the
window. There was sweet basil and rosemary, and a bit of ivy that tried
to find a hold upon the slender column, and, partly missing it, hung
down over the window-ledge. A single monthly rose made a point of
colour among the sweet green things.
The Queen was still smiling as she rested her elbows upon the sill and
her chin on her folded hands. She was near enough to the tennis-players
to be heard by them if she spoke in a low tone.
"Are you angry because Master Gilbert is frightened?" she asked,
looking at Henry. "Or are you frightened because his lordship, the
Count of Anjou, is angry?" she inquired, turning her eyes to Gilbert.
He smiled at her way of opening the conversation, but Henry thought
that she was laughing at him and grew redder than ever. Not deigning to
answer, he picked up the ball and served it over the penthouse to
himself, striking it back cleverly enough. The Queen laughed again as
he kept his face resolutely turned from her.
"Will you teach me to play, if I come down to you?" she asked, looking
at the back of his head.
"It is no game for women," answered the boy, rudely, and still keeping
the ball up.
"Will you give me a lesson, Master Gilbert?"
The laughing eyes were suddenly grave as they turned to the young
Englishman, the smiling lips grew tender, and the voice was gentle.
Without turning round, Henry felt the change and knew that she was
looking at his friend; he served the ball with a vicious stroke that
brought it back too high for him. Without turning his head to see where
it had rolled, the angry boy walked off, picked up his tunic, which lay
on the turf at a little distance, threw it over his arm, jammed his
pointed cap upon his head with his other hand, and departed in offended
dignity.
The Queen smiled as she looked after him, but did not laugh again.
"Will you teach me to play tennis?" she asked of Gilbert, who was
hesitating as to what he should do. "You have not answered me yet."
"I shall at all times do your Grace's bidding," answered Gilbert,
inclining his head a little and making a gesture with the hand that
held his cap as if to put himself at her disposal.
"At all times?" she asked quietly.
Gilbert looked up quickly, fearing lest he might be tricked into a
promise he did not understand, and he did not answer at once. But she
would not repeat the question.
"Wait," she said, before he spoke. "I am coming down."
With an almost imperceptible gesture, like a greeting, she disappeared.
Gilbert began to walk up and down, his hands behind him, his eyes on
the ground, and he did not see the tennis-ball which Henry had lost
until he almost stumbled over it. The boy's words had roused an
entirely new train of ideas in his mind. Perhaps no man could be so
free from vanity as not to be pleased, even against his will, with the
thought that the most beautiful living woman, and she a queen, was in
love with him. But whatever satisfaction of that sort Gilbert may have
felt was traversed in an opposite direction by the cool sense of his
own indifference. And besides, that was a simple age in which sins were
called by their own names and were regarded with a sort of
semi-religious, respectful abhorrence by most honest gentlemen; and
what was only the general expression of a narrow but high morality had
been branded upon Gilbert's soul during the past months in letters that
were wounds by the ever-present memory of his own mother's shame.
The confusion of his reflections was simplified by the appearance of
Queen Eleanor. At the window of the lower story, which opened to the
ground, she stepped out, looked up and down the deserted yard, and then
came towards him. Gilbert had been long enough in Paris to understand
that Queen Eleanor had not the slightest regard for the set rules,
formal prejudices, and staid traditions of her husband's court; and
when King Louis gravely protested against her dressing herself in man's
mail, bestriding his own favourite charger, and tilting at the Saracen
quintain in the yard, she hinted with more or less good or ill nature,
according to her mood, that her possessions were considerably more
extensive than the kingdom of France, and that what she had been taught
to do by William of Aquitaine was necessarily right, and beyond the
criticism of Louis Capet, who was descended from a Paris butcher.
Nevertheless, the Englishman had some reasonable doubts and misgivings
at finding himself, a humble squire, alone in that quiet corner with
the most beautiful and most powerful of reigning queens. But she, whose
quick intuition was a gift almost beyond nature, knew what he felt
before she had reached his side. She spoke quite naturally and as if
such a meeting were an everyday occurrence.
[Illustration: "PERHAPS THAT IS ONE REASON WHY I LIKE YOU"]
"You did not know that the window was mine?" she said quietly. "I saw
how surprised you were when I looked out. It is a window of a little
hall behind my room. There is a staircase leading down. I often come
that way, but I hardly ever look out. To-day as I was passing I heard
that silly child's angry voice, and when I saw his face and heard what
he said, I could not help laughing."
"The young Count is in earnest," said Gilbert, quietly, for it would
have seemed disloyal to him to join in the Queen's laughter.
"In earnest! Children are always in earnest!"
"They deserve the more respect," retorted the Englishman.
"I never heard of respecting children," laughed the Queen.
"You never read Juvenal," answered Gilbert.
"You often say things which I never heard before," answered the Queen.
"Perhaps that is one reason why I like you."
She stopped and leaned against the penthouse, for they had reached the
corner of the court, and she thoughtfully bit a sprig of rosemary which
she had picked from her window in passing. Gilbert could not help
watching the small white teeth that severed the little curling grey
leaves like ivory knives, but the Queen's eyes were turned from him and
were very thoughtful.
Gilbert deemed it necessary to say something.
"Your Grace is very kind." He bowed respectfully.
"What makes you so sad?" she asked suddenly, after a short pause, and
turning her eyes full upon him. "Is Paris so dull? Is our court so
grave? Is my Gascony wine sour, that you will not be merry like the
rest, or"--she laughed a little--"or are you not treated with the
respect and consideration due to your rank?"
Gilbert drew himself up a little as if not pleased by the jest.
"You know well that I have no rank, Madam," he said; "and though it
should please you to command of me some worthy deed, and I should, by
the grace of God, deserve knighthood, yet I would not have it save of
my lawful sovereign."
"Such as teaching me to play tennis?" she asked, seeming not to hear
the end of his speech. "You should as well be knighted for that as for
any other thing hard to do."
"Your Grace is never in earnest."
"Sometimes I am." Her eyelids drooped a little as she looked at him.
"Not often enough, you think? And you--too often. Always, indeed."
"If I were Queen of France, I could be light-hearted, too," said
Gilbert. "But if your Grace were Gilbert Warde, you should be perhaps a
sadder man than I."
And he also laughed a little, but bitterly. Eleanor raised her smooth
brows and spoke with a touch of irony.
"Are you so young, and have you already such desperate sorrows?"
But as she looked, his face changed, with that look of real and cruel
suffering which none can counterfeit. He leaned back against the
penthouse, looking straight before him. Then she, seeing that she had
touched the nerve in an unhealed wound, glanced sidelong at him, bit
upon her sprig of rosemary again, turned, and with half-bent head
walked slowly along to the next buttress; she turned again there, and
coming back stood close before him, laying one hand upon his folded arm
and looking up to his eyes, that gazed persistently over her head.
"I would not hurt you for the world," she said very gravely. "I mean to
be your friend, your best friend--do you understand?"
Gilbert looked down and saw her upturned face. It should have moved him
even then, he thought, and perhaps he did not himself know that between
her and him there was the freezing shadow of a faint likeness to his
mother.
"You are kind, Madam," he said, somewhat formally. "A poor squire
without home or fortune can hardly be the friend of the Queen of
France."
She drew back from him half a step, but her outstretched hand still
rested on his arm.
"What have lands and fortune to do with friendship--or with love?" she
asked. "Friendship's home is in the hearts of men and women;
friendship's fortune is friendship's faith."
"Ay, Madam, so it should be," answered Gilbert, his voice warming in a
fuller tone.
"Then be my friend," she said, and her hand turned itself palm upward,
asking for his.
He took it and raised it to his lips in the act of bending one knee.
But she hindered him; her fingers closed on his with a strength greater
than he had supposed that any woman could possess, and she held him and
made him stand upright again, so that he would have had to use force to
kneel before her.
"Leave that for the court," she said; "when we are alone let us enjoy
our freedom and be simply human beings, man and woman, friend and
friend."
Gilbert still held her hand, and saw nothing but truth in the mask of
open-hearted friendship in which she disguised her growing love. He was
young and thought himself almost friendless; a generous warmth was
suddenly at his heart, with something compounded of real present
gratitude and of the most chivalrous and unselfish devotion for the
future.
She felt that she had gained a point, and she forthwith claimed the
privilege of friendship.
"And being friends," she said, still holding his hand as he stood
beside her, "will you not trust me and tell me what it is that seems to
break your heart? It may be that I can help you."
Gilbert hesitated, and she saw the uncertainty in his face, and pressed
his hand softly as if persuading him to speak.
"Tell me!" she said. "Tell me about yourself!"
Gilbert looked at her doubtfully, looked away, and then turned to her
again. Her voice had a persuasion of its own that appealed to him as
her beauty could not. Almost before he knew what he was doing he was
walking slowly by her left side, in the shade of the church, telling
her his story; and she listened, silently interested, always turning
her face a little toward his, and sometimes meeting his eyes with eyes
of sympathy. He could not have told his tale to a man; he would not
have told it to a woman he loved; but Eleanor represented to him a new
and untried relation, and the sweet, impersonal light of friendship
waked the dark places of his heart to undreamt confidence.
He told her what had befallen him, from first to last, but the sound of
his own words was strange to him; for he found himself telling her what
he had seen two and three years ago, in the light of what he had known
but a few months, yet almost as if he had known it from the first. More
than once he hesitated in his speech, being suddenly struck by the
horror of what he was telling, and almost doubting the witness of his
own soul to the truth. One thing only he did not tell--he never spoke
of Beatrix, nor hinted that there had been any love in his life.
They turned, and turned again many times, and he was hardly aware that
at the end the Queen had linked one hand in his right arm and gently
pressed it from time to time in sign of sympathy. And when he had
finished, with a quaver in his deep voice as he told how he had come
out into the world to seek his fortune, she stopped him, and they both
stood still.
"Poor boy!" she exclaimed softly. "Poor Gilbert!"--and her tone
lingered on the name,--"the world owes you a desperate debt--but the
world shall pay it!"
She smiled as she spoke the last words, pressing his arm more suddenly
and quickly than before; and he smiled, too, but incredulously. Then
she looked down at her own hand upon his sleeve.
"But that is not all," she continued thoughtfully; "was there no
woman--no love--no one that was dearer than all you lost?"
A faint and almost boyish blush rose in Gilbert's cheek, and
disappeared again instantly.
"They took her from me, too," he said in a low, hard voice. "She was
Arnold de Curboil's daughter--when he married my mother he made his
child my sister. You know the Church's law!"
Eleanor was on the point of saying something impulsively, but her
eyelids suddenly drooped and she checked herself. If Gilbert Warde did
not know that the Church granted dispensations in such cases, she saw
no good reason for telling him.
"Besides," he added, "I could not have her now, unless I could take her
from her father by force."
"No," said the Queen, thoughtfully. "Is she fair?"
"Very dark," said Gilbert.
"I meant, is she beautiful?"
"To me, yes: the most beautiful in the world. But how should I know? I
have never heard others speak of her; she is not beautiful as your
Grace is,--not radiantly, supremely, magnificently perfect,--yet to my
eyes she is very lovely."
"I should like to see her," said the Queen.
In the silence that followed they began to walk up and down again side
by side, but Eleanor's hand no longer rested on Gilbert's arm. She
could see that his eyes were fixed upon a face that was far away, and
that his hand longed for a touch not hers; and a painful little thrill
of disappointment ran through her, for she was not used to any sort of
opposition, in great things or small. The handsome Englishman attracted
her strangely, and not by his outward personality only. From the first
a sort of mystery had hung over him, and she had felt, when she was
with him, the inexplicable fascination of a curiosity which she should
be sure to satisfy sooner or later. And now, having learned something
of his life, and liking him the more for what she knew, she was
suddenly filled with an irresistible longing to see the girl who had
made the first mark on Gilbert's life. She tried to conjure up the
young face, and the dark hue he had spoken of brought the vision of a
fateful shadow. Her mind dwelt upon the girl, and she started visibly
when Gilbert spoke to her.
"And has your Grace no deed for me to do?" he asked. "Is there nothing
whereby I may prove my thanks?"
"Nothing, save that you be indeed my friend--a friend I can trust, a
friend to whom I may speak safely as to my own soul, a friend whom I
may tell how heartily I hate this life I lead!"
She uttered the last words with a sudden rising accent of unruly
discontent, as genuine as every other outward showing of her vital
nature.
"How can your life be hateful?" asked Gilbert, in profound
astonishment, for he did not know her half as well as she already knew
him.
"How can it be anything else?" she asked, "How should life not be
hateful, when every natural thing that makes life worth living is
choked as soon as it is awake? Oh, I often wish I were a man!"
"Men do not wish you were," answered Gilbert, with a smile.
Suddenly, while they were speaking, a sound of voices filled the air
with loud chanting of Latin words. Instinctively the Queen laid her
hand on Gilbert's sleeve and drew him into the shadow of a buttress,
and he yielded, scarcely knowing what he did. The chanting swelled on
the air, and a moment later the procession began to appear beyond the
corner of the church. Two and two, led by one who bore a cross, the
song-boys in scarlet and white came first, then Benedictine monks in
black, then priests of the cathedral in violet cloth with fine white
linen surplices and bearing wax candles. And they all chanted as they
walked, loudly, fervently, as if a life and a soul depended on every
note. Then, as the Queen and Gilbert looked on from the shade where
they stood, they saw the canopy of cloth of gold borne on its six
gilded staves by slim young men in white, and beneath it walked the
venerable bishop, half hidden under the vast embroidered cope from
which the golden monstrance emerged, grasped by his closely wrapped
hands; and his colourless eyes were fixed devoutly upon the Sacred
Host, while his lips moved in silent prayer.
Just as the canopy was in sight the procession halted for some time. In
the shadow of the buttress Eleanor knelt upon the turf, looking towards
the Sacred Host, and Gilbert dropped upon one knee at her side, very
reverently bending his head.
Eleanor looked straight before her with more curiosity than religious
fervour, but in her ear she heard Gilbert's deep voice softly chanting
with the monks the psalms he had so often sung at Sheering Abbey. The
Queen turned her head at the sound, in surprise, and watched the young
man's grave face for a moment without attracting his attention.
Apparently she was not pleased, for her brows were very slightly drawn
together, the corners of her eyes drooped, and the deep bright blue was
darkened. At that moment the canopy swayed a little, the ancient bishop
moved his shoulders under the heavy cope in the effort of starting
again, and the procession began to move onward.
Next after the bishop, from behind the end of the church, the King came
into sight, walking, monk-like, with folded hands, moving lips and
downcast eyes, the long embroidered bliaut reaching almost to his feet,
while the scarlet mantle, lined with blue and bordered with ermine,
fell straight from his shoulders and touched the turf as he walked. He
was bareheaded, and as Eleanor noticed what was evidently intended for
another act of humility, the serene curve of her closed lips was
sharpened in scorn. And suddenly, as she gazed at her husband's cold,
white features in contempt, she heard Gilbert's voice at her elbow
again, chanting the Latin words musically and distinctly, and she
turned almost with a movement of anger to see the bold young face
saddened and softened by the essence of a profound belief.
"Was I born to love monks!" she sighed half audibly; but as she looked
back at the procession she started and uttered a low exclamation.
Beside her husband, but a little after him as the pageant turned, a
straight, thin figure came into sight, clad in a monk's frock scarcely
less dazzling white than the marvellous upturned face. At Eleanor's
exclamation Gilbert also had raised his eyes from the ground, and they
fixed themselves on the wonderful features of the greatest man of the
age, while his voice forgot to chant and his lips remained parted in
wonder. Upon the bright green grass against the background of hewn
stone walls, in the glorious autumn sunshine, Bernard of Clairvaux
moved like the supernal vision of a heavenly dream. His head thrown
back, the delicate silver-fair beard scarcely shadowing the spiritual
outlines of an almost divine face, his soft blue eyes looked upward,
filled with a light not earthly. The transparent brow and the almost
emaciated cheeks were luminously pale, and seemed to shed a radiance of
their own.
But it would have been impossible to say what it was in the man's form
or face that made him so utterly different and distinct from other men.
It was not alone the Christlike brow, nor the noble features inherited
from a line of heroes; it was not the ascetic air, the look of bodily
suffering, nor the fine-drawn lines of pain which, as it were, etched a
shadowy background of sorrow upon which the spiritual supremacy blazed
like a rising star: it was something beyond all these, above name and
out of definition, the halo of saintship, the glory of genius, the
crown of heroism. Of such a man, one's eyes might be filled, and one
might say, 'Let him not speak, lest some harsh tone or imperfect speech
should pierce the vision with sharp discord, as a rude and sudden sound
ends a soft dream.' Yet he was a man who, when he raised his hand to
lead, led millions like children; who, when he opened his lips to
speak, spoke with the tongue of men and of angels such words as none
had spoken before him--words which were the truth made light; one who,
when he took pen in hand to write to the world's masters, wrote without
fear or fault, as being the scribe of God, but who could pen messages
of tenderest love and gentlest counsel to the broken-hearted and the
heavy-laden.
Gilbert's eyes followed the still, white glory of the monk's face, till
the procession turned in a wide sweep behind the wing of the palace,
and even then the tension of his look did not relax. He was still
kneeling with fixed gaze when the Queen was standing beside him. The
scorn was gone from her lips and had given place to a sort of tender
pity. She touched the young man's shoulder twice before he started,
looked up, and then sprang to his feet.
"Who is that man?" he asked earnestly.
"Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux," answered the Queen, looking far away. "I
almost worshipped him once, when I was a child,--it is the will of
Heaven that I should lose my heart to monks!"
She laughed, as she had laughed from the window.
"Monks?" Gilbert repeated the word with curiosity. "Are you one of
those persons for whom it is necessary to explain everything?" asked
Eleanor, still smiling and looking at him intently. "I think you must
be half a monk yourself, for I heard you singing the psalms as sweetly
as any convent scholar."
"Even if I were not half a monk, but one altogether, I should not
wholly understand your Grace's speech;" Gilbert smiled, too, for he was
immeasurably far from guessing what was in her mind.
"So I have thought, in all these weeks and days while we have been
together."
Her eyes darkened as she looked at him, but his were clear and calm.
"Do you understand this?" she asked, and she laid her two hands upon
his shoulders.
"What?" he asked in surprise.
"This," she said, very softly, drawing herself near to him by her hands.
Then he knew, and he would have straightened himself, but her hands
sprang to meet each other round his neck, and her face was close to
his. But the vision of his own sinful mother rose in her eyes to meet
him.
She held him fast, and three times she kissed him before she would let
him go.