On a hillside above a stone-terraced oval hollow, a youth lay singing
softly to himself and making such music as he could upon a rote. The
instrument was of the sort which King David had in mind when he said,
"Awake, psaltery and harp; I myself will awake early." It was a
box-shaped thing like a zither, which at one time had probably owned ten
strings. The player was adapting his music as best he might to favor its
peculiarities. Notwithstanding his debonair employment, he did not look
as if he were on very good terms with life. His cloak and hose were
shabby and weather-stained, his doublet was still less presentable,
his cheeks were hollow, and there were dark circles under his eyes.
Presently he abandoned the song altogether, and lay, chin in hand,
staring down into the grass-grown, ancient pit.
It had begun its history as a Roman amphitheater, a thousand years
before. Gladiators had fought and wild beasts had raged in that arena,
whose encircling wall was high enough to defy the leap of the most
agile of lions. Up here, on the hillside, in the archways outside the
outermost ring of seats, the slaves had watched the combats. The youth
had heard something about these old imperial customs, and he had
guessed that he had come upon a haunt of the Roman colonists who had
founded a forgotten town near by. He wondered, as he lay there, if he
himself were in any better ease than those unknown captives, who had
fought and died for the amusement of their owners.
Ranulph le Provencal, as he was one day to be known, was the son of a
Provencal father and a Norman mother. In the siege of a town his father
had been killed and his mother had died of starvation, and he himself
had barely escaped with life. That had been the penalty of being on
the wrong side of the struggle between the Normans of Anjou and their
unwilling subjects in Aquitaine. At the moment the rebellious counts
of Aquitaine were getting the best of it. Ranulph knew little of the
tangled politics of the time, but it seemed to him that all France was
turned into a cockpit in which the sovereign counts of France, who were
jealous of their independence, and the fierce pride of the Angevin
dukes who tried to keep a foothold in both France and England, and the
determined ambition of the King who sat in Paris, were warring over the
enslavement of an unhappy people. He himself had no chance of becoming
a knight; his life was broken off before it had fairly begun. He got
his living by wandering from one place to another making songs. He had
a voice, and could coax music out of almost any sort of instrument; and
he had a trick of putting new words to familiar tunes that made folk
laugh and listen.
Neighborhood quarrels had drained money and spirit out of the part of
the country where he was, and he had almost forgotten what it was like
to have enough to eat. The little dog that had followed him through
his wanderings for a year foraged for scraps and fared better than his
master; but now small Zipero was hungry too. The little fellow had been
mauled by a mastiff that morning, and a blow from a porter's staff had
broken his leg. Ranulph had rescued his comrade at some cost to himself,
and might not have got off so easily if a sudden sound of trumpets had
not cleared the way for a king's vanguard. As the soldiers rode in at
the gates the young minstrel folded his dog in his cloak and limped out
along the highway. Up here in the shade of some bushes by the deserted
ruins, he had done what he could for his pet, but the little whimper
Zipero gave now and then seemed to go through his heart.
Life had been difficult before, but he had been stronger, or more
ignorant. He had made blithe songs when he was anything but gay at
heart; he had laughed when others were weeping and howling; he had
danced to his own music when every inch of his body ached with
weariness; and it had all come to this. He had been turned out of his
poor lodgings because he had no money; he had been driven out of the
town because he would not take money earned in a certain way. He seemed
to have come to the end.
If that were the case he might as well make a song about it and see what
it would be like. He took up the rote, and began to work out a refrain
that was singing itself in his head. Zipero listened; he was quieter
when he heard the familiar sound. The song was flung like a challenge
into the silent arena.
The Planet of Love in the cloud-swept night
Hangs like a censer of gold,
And Venus reigns on her starlit height
Even as she ruled of old.
Yet the Planet of War is abroad on earth
In a chariot of scarlet flame,
And Mercy and Loyalty, Love and Mirth
Must die for his grisly fame.
Ravens are croaking and gray wolves prowl
On the desolate field of death,
The smoke of the burning hangs like a cowl--
Grim Terror throttles the breath.
Yet a white bird flies in the silent night
To your window that looks on the sea,
To bear to my Lady of All Delight
This one last song from me.
"Princess, the planets that rule our life
Are the same for beggar or King,--
We may win or lose in the hazard of strife,
There is ever a song to sing!
We are free as the wind, O heart of gold!
The stars that rule our lot
Are netted fast in a bond ninefold,--
The twist of Solomon's Knot."
"So you believe that, my son?" asked a voice behind him. He sat up and
looked about; an old man in a long dusky cloak and small flat cap had
come over the brow of the hill. He answered, a trifle defiantly,
"Perhaps I do. At any rate, that is the song."
"Oh, it is true," the old man said quietly as he knelt beside Zipero
on the turf. He examined the bandages on the little dog's neck and
forelegs, undid them, laid some bruised leaves from his basket on the
wounds. The small creature, with his eyes on his master's face, licked
the stranger's hand gratefully to show that he was more at ease. "Man
alone is free. This herb cannot change itself; it must heal; that one
must slay. Saturn is ever the Greater Malignant; our Lady Venus cannot
rule war, nor can Mars rule a Court of Love. The most uncertain
creature in the world is a man. The stars themselves cannot force me
to revile God."
Ranulph was silent. After months and years among rude street crowds,
the dignity and kindliness of the old man's ways were like a voice from
another world.
"I can cure this little animal," the stranger went on presently, "if
you will let me take him to my lodgings, where I have certain salves
and medicines. I shall be pleased if you will come also, unless you
are occupied."
Ranulph laughed; that was absurd. "I am a street singer," he said. "My
time is not in demand at present. I must tell you, however, that the
Count is my enemy--if a friendless beggar can have such a thing. One of
his varlets set his ban-dog on us both, this morning."
"He will give me no trouble," said the old man quietly. "Come,
children."
Ranulph got to his feet and followed with Zipero in his arms. At the
foot of the hill on the other side was a nondescript building which had
grown up around what was left of a Roman house. The unruined pillars
and strongly cemented stone-work contrasted oddly with the thatch and
tile of peasant workmen. They passed through a gate where an old and
wrinkled woman peered through a window at them, then they went up a
flight of stairs outside the wall to a tower-room in the third story.
A chorus of welcome arose from a strange company of creatures, caged
and free: finches, linnets, a parrot, a raven which sidled up at
once to have its head scratched, pigeons strutting and cooing on the
window-ledge, and a large cat of a slaty-blue color with solemn, topaz
eyes, which took no more note of Zipero than if he had been a dog of
stone. A basket was provided for the small patient, near the window that
looked out over the hills; the old servingwoman brought food, simple but
well-cooked and delicious, and Ranulph was motioned to a seat at the
table. It was all done so easily and quickly that dinner was over before
Ranulph found words for the gratitude which filled his soul.
"Will you not tell me," he said hesitatingly at last, "to whom I may
offer my thanks--and service--if I may not serve you in some way?"
"Give to some one else in need, when you can," said his host calmly.
"I am Tomaso of Padua. A physician's business is healing, wherever he
finds sickness in man or beast. Your little friend there needed certain
things; your need is for other things; the man who is now coming up the
stairs needs something else." Taking a harp from a corner he added,
"Perhaps you will amuse yourself with this for an hour, while I see
what that knock at the door means, this time."
Whoever the visitor was, he was shown into another room, and Ranulph
presently forgot all his troubles and almost lost the consciousness
of his surroundings, as the harp sang under his hand. He began to put
into words a song which had been haunting him for days,--a ballad of a
captive knight who spent seven long years in Fairyland, but in spite of
all that the Fairy Queen's enchantment could do, never forgot his own
people. Many of the popular romances of the time were fairy-tales full
of magic spells, giants, caverns within the hills, witches and wood-folk
hoofed and horned like Pan, sea-monsters, palaces which appeared and
vanished like moon-shine. When they were sung to the harp-music of a
troubadour who knew his work, they seemed very real.
"That is a good song," said a stranger who had come in so quietly that
Ranulph did not see him. "Did you find it in Spain?"
Ranulph stood up and bowed with the grace that had not left him in all
his wandering life. "No," he said, his dark eyes glinting with laughter,
"I learned it in the Grasshoppers' Library. I beg your pardon,
master,--that is a saying we have in Provence. You will guess the
meaning. A learned physician found me there, studying diligently though
perhaps not over-profitably upon a hillside."
"Not bad at all," said the stranger, sitting down by Ranulph in the
window and running over the melody on the harp. His fingers swept the
strings in a confident power that showed him a master-musician, and he
began a song so full of wonder, mystery and sweetness that Ranulph
listened spellbound. Neither of them knew that for centuries after they
sat there singing in a ruined Roman tower, the song would be known to
all the world as the legend of Parzifal.
"I too have studied in the Grasshoppers' Library," said the singer, "but
I found in an ancient book among the infidels in Spain this tale of a
cup of enchantment, and made use of it. I think that it is one of those
songs which do not die, but travel far and wide in many disguises, and
end perhaps in the Church. You are one of us, are you not?"
"I am a street singer," Ranulph answered, "a jongleur--a jester. I make
songs for this,"--he took up his battered rote and hummed a camp-chorus.
"Do you mean to say that you play like that--on that?" asked the other.
"Your studies must have led you indeed to Fairyland. You ought to go to
England. The Plantagenets are friendly to us troubadours, and the
English are a merry people, who delight in songs and the hearing of
tales."
Ranulph did not answer. Going to England and going to Fairyland were
not in the same class of undertaking. Fairyland might be just over the
border of the real world, but it cost money to cross the seas.
Tomaso came in just then, his deep-set eyes twinkling. "It is all
right," he said, nodding to the troubadour.
"I have been telling our friend here that he should go to England," said
the latter, rising and putting on his cloak. "If, as you say, his father
was loyal to the House of Anjou, Henry will remember it. He is a wise
old fox, is Henry, and he needs men whom he can trust. He is changing
laws, and that is no easy thing to do when you have a stubborn people
with all sorts of ideas in their heads about custom, and tradition, and
what not. He wants to make things safe for his sons, and the throne on
which he sits is rocking. The French king is greedy and the Welsh are
savage, and Italian galleys crowd the very Pool of London. I remember
me when I was a student in Paris, a Welsh clerk--he calls himself now
Giraldus Cambrensis, but his name then was Gerald Barri,--had the room
over mine, the year that Philip was born. We woke up one night to find
the whole street ablaze with torches and lanterns, and two old crones
dancing under our windows with lighted torches in their hands, howling
for joy. Barri stuck his head out of window and asked what ailed them,
and one of them screamed in her cracked voice, 'We have got a Prince now
who will drive you all out of France some day, you Englishmen!' I can
see his face now as he shouted back something that assuredly was not
French. I tell you, Philip will hate the English like his father before
him, and these are times when a troubadour who can keep a merry face and
a close tongue will learn much."
As the door closed the physician sat down in his round-backed chair,
resting his long, wrinkled hands upon the arms. "Well, my son," he said
in his unperturbed voice, "I find somebody yonder is very sorry that you
were thrown out of the gates this morning."
Ranulph glanced up quickly, but said nothing.
"He had no idea that you were here, of course. He came to get me to ask
the stars what had become of you, as you could not be found on the road.
When he found that you would not serve him in the matter of the dagger
and the poison, he never intended to let you leave the town, but as you
know, your dog, seeing you mishandled, flew at his varlet, and the
thick-headed fellow drove you out before he had any further orders. By
such small means," old Tomaso stroked Zipero's head, "are evil plans
made of no account."
Ranulph drew a long breath. He had lost color.
"But you," he faltered, "you must not shelter me if he is thus
determined. He will take vengeance on you."
The physician smiled. "He dares not. He is afraid of the stars. He knows
also that I hold the death of every soul in his house in some small vial
such as this--and he does not know which one. He knows that I have only
to reveal to any minstrel what I know of his plans and his doings, and
he would be driven from the court of his own sovereign. He can never
be sure what I am going to do, and he does not know himself what he is
going to do, so that he fears every one. By the twelve Houses of Fate,
it must be unpleasant to be so given over to hatred!
"Now, my son, let us consider. You heard what Christian said but now of
the need of the House of Anjou for faithful service. A trouvere can go
where others cannot. He knows what others dare not ask. He can say what
others cannot. Were it not for that prince of mischief and minstrelsy,
Bertran de Born, Henry and his folk would have been at peace long ago.
Know men's hearts, and though you are a beggar in the market-place, you
can turn them as a man turns a stream with a wooden dam. You shall go
with Christian to Troyes and thence to Tours, and I will keep your
little friend here until he is restored, and bring him to you when I
come to that place. If search is made for you it will be made in Venice,
where they think you have gone."
Ranulph, with the aid of his new friends, went forth with proper harp
and new raiment a day or two afterward, and repaid the loan of old
Tomaso when he met the latter in Tours some six months later. He did
not give up his studies in the Grasshoppers' Library, but the lean years
were at an end both for him and for Zipero.