off, the muffled sound of the tramping of many feet. Turning his
watchful face to the white roadway, after a little while he beheld a
number of gleaming specks scarcely bigger than so many glow-worms.
Then came what seemed like a dark, rolling cloud starred with points
of fire, and this presently resolved itself into a mass of armed men,
some of them on horseback, some of them bearing torches whose light
flowed ruddy over shields and helms and spears. With the help of these
earthly lights and of the light of the moon in heaven he saw that the
torch-bearers and the armed men formed two bodies, one preceding and
one following a number of litters of which the most sumptuous was drawn
by four small black horses.
As this procession moved beneath his wondering gaze along the highway,
those who led the van suddenly halted and seemed to look in Simon's
direction and hold conference together. Instantly Simon remembered
that he stood conspicuous enough against the moonlight in the open,
and that his presence in that lonely place had naturally attracted
the attention of the travellers. But he did not know the meaning of
fear, and, though he was ever of a prudent disposition, he felt no need
for flight, easy though flight would have been into the concealment
of the wood. For he was conscious that he was doing no harm, and he
entertained no expectation of harm from a company so numerous, so
well armed, and travelling with so many lights by night in a time of
peace. In no such fashion did marauders go abroad, so Simon resolved
with little self-discussion to stand where he would and see out the
adventure.
The new-comers were such a little way off, and so plainly to be
observed in the quavering pool of torch-light spilled on the white
path, that he could see how first the leaders of van and rear left
their ranks and consulted together, and how next the curtains of the
leading litter were plucked aside and a woman's head thrust forth,
while a woman's imperious voice said something in question which he
could not catch. Then the curtains of the other litters were pulled
aside and other women thrust their heads into the night, squealing out
many questions with sleepy voices. Then he heard the same imperious
voice speak again, and the speaker railed at the others, rating them
roundly for silly fools, and telling them to hold their peace, at
which the pages about the litters tittered, and the women's heads were
swiftly withdrawn and their voices silent. Then she who spoke so
haughtily gave a command, and immediately the pages who led the four
black horses turned them from the roadway and guided them carefully
across the grass in his direction. A few of the escort remained on the
highway with the other litters, but most of the knights a-horseback,
and the men-at-arms and the torch-bearers, accompanied the litter and
formed a great circle of steel and flame around Simon, where he stood
placidly guarding the sleeping body of the young Lord of Athens, and
gazing into the set faces of the strangers, and wondering what was
going to happen next.
What did happen was that the four black horses halted a few yards from
him, that the silken curtains of the litter were sharply pulled apart,
and that a very beautiful face revealed itself to him in the mingled
moonlight and torch-light. It was a splendid, sensual face, of the kind
that appealed to Simon's directness, skin the color of fine ivory, hair
the color of smooth ebony, eyes that seemed to change with every change
of light, with every mood of mind, with every phase of desire, like
a cat's, and a mouth as ripely red as the berries of the rowan-tree.
Such a face might Semiramis have shown nightly to her nightly changing
lovers ere they glided into Tigris; such a face might Clytemnestra have
shown to her impatient paramour when she had newly butchered the king
of men. Simon's simple, straightforward thought was that he wished the
lady were for instant sale, and that he possessed the opulence which
might purchase her. Simon's reflections in such matters were always
direct.
The woman's eyes were fixed on Simon's stalwart body with a cold
commendation of its proportions, but she spoke not to Simon but to a
page in cloth of gold who stood obedient by her litter side.
"What is the matter, Bohemond?" she asked, in a voice that was wont
to govern those who heard it with the sensuous charm of strange music
chanted at sunset. Her eyes were still fixed on Simon, and Simon,
nothing daunted, gave her back her gaze as boldly as if she had been a
staring kitchen-wench, while the knights and men-at-arms stood about as
fixed and rigid as armored effigies in audience halls.
"Grace," the golden page answered, "here lies a man dead or sleeping on
the grass, and here stands a sturdy fellow with a club that keeps watch
over him."
The lady whom the page hailed as "Grace" pushed aside the curtains of
her litter impatiently and stepped into the moonlight. She was no more
than common tall, but she carried her head high and commandingly, and
Simon, still eying her steadfastly, thought that she walked like some
old-time empress. Swiftly she stepped to where Rainouart lay, bent over
him, and recognized him as the gallant youth whose face and form had
stirred her facile pulses when he rode victorious down the lists in
Paris, and who denied her as decidedly as he denied all the ladies at
the court of Philip the Fair. She swung on Simon like a cat about to
scratch.
"This is the young Lord Rainouart of Athens," she cried. "How comes he
here and in this case? Have you injured him, villain?"
"I have neither hurt him nor helped him," Simon answered, composedly,
"nor, for the matter of that, am I a villain, nor other than an honest
soldier; but I can tell you all there is to tell when I know to whom I
speak."
The little gilded page stepped a pace forward and addressed Simon
sharply.
"It is the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes, fellow, who honors you with
her speech."
Simon shrugged his shoulders; the woman was a fine piece of flesh were
she duchess or no duchess, and his gaze was blatant admiration. The
duchess, appraising his bulk, did not resent his possessive gaze.
"Who are you, sir?" she asked, in a voice more amiable, while she
motioned to her attendant to rein his zeal.
Simon made her a leg.
"Lady, I am a soldier of fortune voyaging to Athens to seek for service
under the bully duke, but your concern is not with me but with his
countship yonder."
The Duchess of Thebes looked down again upon the fair sleeping body on
the sward.
"How did Sir Rainouart come here?" she demanded, and Simon answered:
"Being foolish enough to overstay sunset near these woods in the
reading of silly verses, he was set upon by footpads who thought to
kill and strip him, but a girl who lives in these woods scared them
away. The rascals took her for a witch, tumbling plump on them from
the thicket, and gave leg-bail. It was the devil take the hindermost,
I promise you; you would have laughed to see them scamper. The maid
tended his wounds, that were little enough save for an ugly clip on the
crown, and what should my young gentleman do but fall in love with his
sweet nurse and she with him. I think they have plighted their troth,
for he has proffered her a ring, and this daughter of the forest bids
fair to end her days as Duchess of Athens."
The red blood raged in the woman's face, staining its ivory. "That she
shall never be," she said in her heart. "I love this youth, and will
not yield him." For, indeed, she had loved him with what Esclaramonde
called love, in those painted days in Paris, before in despite she had
taken Nemours for her husband, the old Duke of Thebes, who had lately
left her an eager widow. What she spoke aloud was:
"A likely tale that Duke Baldwin's son should woo to mate a peasant."
"She is no peasant, I promise you," Simon answered, doggedly. He did
not choose to tell what the girl had told him, for he was very far from
sure that he believed it himself, and he was very sure, indeed, that no
one else would believe it. "She is no peasant, whatever she be. These
ears heard him ask her in marriage, and here lies the ring he proffered
her."
Simon held out the rosary ring on his brown palm. The duchess's white
hand dived at it as a peregrine dives on his prey, and caught it before
he could guess or prevent her purpose. He had ever been used to dealing
with damsels ready to snatch any trifles they might spy from their
chance companions, and, being of a business-like humor in such matters,
he made now as if to clutch the ring back again, just as if he were
toying with a Corinthian doxy. But the duchess gave a sidelong glance
at her escort, and in an instant a dozen swords were naked and aimed
at Simon's breast, and Simon, being a sensible man, gave up the idea
of further argument or expostulation. The duchess moved nearer to one
of the torch-bearers, and in the orange light she looked at the ring
covetously, much for its own rich beauty, for she loved all costly
toys, and more because it seemed to mean a man's love for another
woman, a man's love that should be, might be, hers. For the sanctity of
the symbolism of the ring she had no thought at all.
"I will take better care of it," she said, with a queer smile, as
she came near again to Simon and the youth at Simon's feet. Her evil
wits, shuttles in the loom of deadly sins, were nimbly weaving a web
of guile. Rainouart stirred uneasily as she came near, for the sleep
that the woodland creatures can give may be molested by the coming of a
hostile presence. The duchess looked down into his twitching face.
"See, he begins to wake," she said. "Give place all of you, and keep
the tall soldier in ward."
At her command the duchess's people, knights and men-at-arms and
torch-bearers, taking Simon, very reluctant, with them, drew away a
little distance to the edge of the forest. He could see how, on the
high-road eager heads peeped again from between the curtains of the
litters of the duchess's women, and he grinned to think how little they
could see of the business. But he was heartily wishing himself well out
of the whole bother, and was casting about for a means of escape from
it.
Meanwhile the Duchess Esclaramonde kneeled down on the grass beside
Rainouart, watching him with malign eyes. The ring that she had taken
from Simon she placed deliberately on her left hand. Then she drew from
her right a ring set with a royal ruby, and, taking Rainouart's limp
hand in hers, thrust it onto the finger where the red mark showed her
that he had been wont to wear the ring she now wore. At her touch the
youth turned his head once or twice like a man who dreams bad dreams,
and then opened his eyes heavily. He groped with his arms as if seeking
some dear presence.
"Where are you, love?" he asked, faintly.
Instantly Esclaramonde answered him.
"Here, my dear lord," she whispered, passionately, and she bowed her
dark head tenderly over him.
Rainouart, his senses hurriedly returning, gazed with wonder into her
fair, familiar face, and for an instant deemed himself in France, in
Paris, at the court of King Philip. He lifted himself a little on one
arm, for he was stronger now with the strength given by deep sleep, and
realized that he was in the forest, but that Esclaramonde was bending
over him.
"I crave your pardon, lady," he said. "When came you here? I seek
another, she who was here but now."
The dark eyes of the duchess swam in the sad waters of anxiety, and
well-feigned amazement was painted on her face.
"Of what other do you speak, dear lord?" she asked. "I have been here
by your side ever since those villains fell upon you."
Rainouart looked dully at her and overmuttered her words, trying to
interpret their meaning.
"You have been by my side?" he asked.
The duchess wound her arms tightly about him and kissed his forehead
hotly, and the kiss troubled him, for the woman was very beautiful and
his flesh was strange to kisses. Esclaramonde spoke in his ear low and
quick.
"I was journeying to Athens, travelling by night for my whim and
pleasure, and by happy chance passed by here at the time when you were
bested. The coming of my people frightened the knaves from you, and
they fled, with some of mine in pursuit. We were alone together"--she
lowered her eyelids for a moment, craftily modest--"and I tended your
wounds."
The prince made to free himself bodily from those embracing arms,
mentally from the net-work of those bewildering words. It was easy to
free himself from her clasp, though he did so with all courtesy and
rather as one unwilling and unworthy to be so greatly honored, but it
was harder to free his spirit from the meshes of her lying tale.
"You speak strangely," he said, vaguely, wondering if this were parcel
of a dream. "Surely you did not tend me? Where is she?"
His haggard eyes wandered over the moonlit space towards the darkling
wood and marvelled at the solemn presence of the men-at-arms. Again
Esclaramonde wound her arms around him, reluctant, and there was an
agony of solicitude in the duchess's voice, an ecstasy of tenderness in
her eyes, as she cried to him, clasping him tighter to her warm body:
"My lord, my dear lord, what trouble has come to you? It was but a few
poor moments ago that you told me how you loved me."
The prince looked despairingly into that beautiful, sensual face, and
he remembered how it had shone in its splendor over the festivals at
Paris. It was very lovely to behold, alluring, commanding, yielding,
insisting, but it was not the loveliness his white spirit had longed
for then or the worshipped loveliness his memory longed for now.
"I told you that I loved you?" The sound of his voice was full of
doubt, and yet it went hard with his knightly heart to doubt the word
of a woman.
Esclaramonde's pale cheeks filled with flame.
"With words too flattering sweet for me to echo," she whispered, and
she stooped, and her eager face was close to his and her dark hair
brushed his forehead, and she kissed him on the mouth at once sharply
and suavely, and the fire from her lips ran through his veins.
"You gave me a ring which I shall wear forever." She withdrew one
clinging arm from about his neck and held a smooth hand before him, and
he saw on her finger the ring that had been his own for so long, the
ring that had been his mother's, that she had made him promise when
she gave it to him never to part with save to the loveliest and the
worthiest. "You took a ring from me." She lifted his hand a little and
he stared stupidly at the great ruby.
"Have you forgotten?" Esclaramonde cried. "Can men forget so soon?" Her
eyes swam in obedient tears.
The maze of the man's mind showed tragically in his eyes, and then he
spoke, but rather to himself than to the woman by his side.
"Which is the dream?" he asked. "I thought when I fell that a white
girl came from the woods and succored me, a divine child, the
loveliest--"
Esclaramonde shifted her body a little away from him, though still she
clasped him fast and he could not in courtesy release her clinging
fingers.
"Dear my lord," she protested, pathetically, "my overvaunted beauty may
be of little account; still it is not many seconds since you chose to
call me passing fair."
The prince, looking at Esclaramonde, knew that she was very fair
indeed. There was for the merely desirous no more desirable woman of
all the French dames dwelling in Greece.
"You are very fair," he said, truly, "but you are not she whom I saw."
And once again his anxious eyes looked longingly over the silver grass
towards the implacable silence of the wood.
"She was some dream," Esclaramonde answered him, earnestly, her warm
lips close to his flushed cheek, her soft breath fanning his troubled
face. "She was a vision born of the quick fever of your wounds. You
swooned again after our change of vows and change of rings, and in
this swoon you must have dreamed this dream of another who was not I.
Indeed, you murmured snatches of strange speech in your sleep which
astounded me, but such delirium is common with men in your case. Will
you stain your knightly faith and deny your honor for the sake of a
sick dream?"
Great waves of doubt flooded the prince's struggling consciousness,
overwhelming it, drowning it. Was she, in very fact, no more than a
vision, that white child of the woods with her yellow hair and her
haunting eyes and her perfect body? Did the help he had dreamed of
really come to him from this splendid, voluptuous creature who had
striven to allure him in France? Was it those insistent hands that had
brought healing to his hurt? Was it those passionate lips that had
soothed him to sleep? Was it those enticing eyes that had summoned
love to take possession of his stainless soul? His thoughts were all a
tangle, his fever burned bright as his eyes travelled vaguely from the
unfamiliar ring upon his finger to his mother's ring upon the finger
of Esclaramonde. One thing alone seemed plain to him where all was
imbroglio. If in whatever bewildering way he had pledged his word to
this lady, his word must be kept.
"If I gave you my knightly faith, lady," he said, faintly, "I may not
take it again."
The eyes of the duchess were triumphant torches, success was throned in
her smiling face. But the pallor of Rainouart's face grew greater, for
the spiritual strife within him had weakened him more than his loss of
blood, and Esclaramonde, watching him, believed he was about to swoon
again. She turned and made a sign in the direction where her following
stood, huddled together, a group of lances and flaring torches on the
lip of the wood. The golden page quitted the little throng and ran to
his mistress.
"Bring me some wine, Bohemond," she ordered.
The page sped back to the litter and returned to his mistress with a
golden flagon and a golden cup. Esclaramonde took the cup and held it
while Bohemond poured out red wine that glowed like dragon's blood in
the moonlight. Then a gesture dismissed the page to his companions,
and the duchess set the golden cup upon the grass. She was still
supporting Rainouart with one arm, his eyes were closed, and his lips
had lost their color. From the jewelled pouch that hung at her girdle
the duchess drew with her free hand a tiny phial, and, cuddling it in
her palm, drew the stopper with her finger and thumb. She poured the
contents into the cup and thrust the empty phial back into her pouch.
Then she lifted the cup and pressed it to the young man's pale lips.
"Drink, my lord, drink," she entreated, and her voice could implore and
command with the same breath and charm the listener away from reason.
She was eager that he should drink, for she knew that what he drank
would make him sleep sound, and that when he woke he must needs think
as she would have him think, and so she said again:
"Drink, my lord, drink."
Rainouart opened his eyes wearily and looked up. He had hoped that he
might sleep, and, waking, find the coming of the duchess a fever's
fantasy. But she was still with him, his imperial deliverer, and the
white child only the picture of a dream. Esclaramonde tilted the cup a
little at his lips, and he drank at it eagerly, sucking in surcease of
memory, sucking in unconquerable sleep. It was delicious, that draught
of dark and deep oblivion; the tired senses relaxed.
"I thank you, lady," he sighed, in relief, and then all knowledge
slipped from him and he lay his length unconscious. The duchess called
to her page, and Bohemond raced across the grass to her side. Him the
duchess commanded:
"Let two of my people carry this lord to my litter. We will make sure
of his safe convoy to Athens. I will ride for the rest of the journey."
Her orders were swiftly and instantly obeyed. Three tall fellows of her
men-at-arms, picked by the knight who led the van of her escort, came
to where Rainouart lay and carried him as easily and as gently as if he
had been a sleeping child to their lady's litter. A servitor moved from
the rear of the little army leading a white riding palfrey, valiantly
caparisoned. As she made to mount she paused, missing something, and
her quick eyes sought for Simon.
"Where is the braggart we talked with but now?" she asked, sharply,
and her question proved hard to answer. The men-at-arms into whose
charge Simon had been put looked at one another with dismay, for truly
Simon had disappeared. The disappearance, very surprising to the
soldiery, was not very surprising in itself. The fact of the matter
was that Simon had decided some time back that it would be excellent
well for him to be quite clear of the complication that the coming
of the duchess had created. It was plain to the adventurer that the
duchess had taken a fancy for the heir of Athens. It was also patent
to his understanding that he himself existed an undesirable witness
of that earlier passage between Rainouart and the woman of the wood,
the story of which the duchess had so vehemently resented. Simon, who
had something of the art of reading women's natures in their faces,
imagined, not unwisely, that the Duchess of Thebes was not a woman
to stick at much if the removal of a disagreeable witness might be
convenient to her. Once Simon had made up his mind that it were well
for him to go, he lost no time in making the experiment.
It was no very difficult enterprise. The men in whose custody he
stood, occupied to their greater interest in watching the duchess's
attentions to the wounded knight, though they could see little and hear
less, paid scant heed to Simon, who, on his side, had done nothing
to provoke watchfulness by any resistance to their guardianship. So,
finding them thus indifferent, little by little he edged him away from
their neighborhood, moving very cautiously and gradually as one who
scarcely seemed to move at all till he backed against a tree, against
which he leaned lazily for some seconds. Once in front of a tree it
was but simple strategy to slip to the other side of its trunk, and
this feat Simon, choosing his time wisely, accomplished dexterously
and unnoticed. Had he been by misluck interrupted in his progress,
he relied upon his mighty strength to overthrow any six who sought
to restrain him, and to make a bolt for it into the thickness of the
wood where he believed he might effectually evade pursuit. But he
wished, if it might be, to glide away in quiet, and fortune favored the
adventurer. A floating fleece of cloud, stray fragment of the shattered
dragon that seemed to obey Argathona's incantation, had again muffled
the moonlight. In the gloom Simon was on his hands and knees in the
brushwood and threading his way on all-fours with amazing celerity
among the trees into the deep of the forest. Thus it came to pass that
when the duchess demanded Simon, Simon was not forthcoming.
"He was here a moment since," one man-at-arms asserted, lying hardily,
as he stared into the vacant faces of his fellows.
"Belike he has slipped into the wood," another suggested, shading his
eyes with his hands and peering into the impenetrable gloom behind him.
"Shall we search for him with torches?" Bohemond proposed, briskly,
while the men-at-arms looked sheepish over their blunder and wished
Simon at the devil. The duchess shook her head impatiently.
"No, it is no matter," she said.
She believed that she would recognize the man again if she saw him
in Athens. She was confident, too, that the man could have little
power, even if he had the inclination, to interfere with her plans.
The immediate need was to carry Rainouart quickly to Athens and there
to work her will upon his troubled wits. She mounted lightly into the
saddle of her horse, her spirits were nimble, her heart gay, her brain
elated. She had taken at last a prize that she had long desired, a
prize that she would not lightly yield again. All was very well with
her.
"Onward!" she commanded, "onward! Athens, ho!" So she and her company
resumed their measured journey to Athens, a line of torches on the
white highway, while the prince slept a dreamless sleep on the litter
still warm with the pressure of the limbs of Esclaramonde.
X
SIMON BLOWS OUT HIS LANTERN