As had been arranged when Lemprière challenged Leicester, they met
soon after dawn among the trees beside the Thames. A gentleman of the
court, to whom the Duke’s Daughter had previously presented
Lemprière, gayly agreed to act as second, and gallantly attended the
Lord of Rozel in his adventurous enterprise. There were few at court
who had not some grudge against Leicester, few who would not
willingly have done duty at such a time; for Leicester’s friends were
of fair-weather sort, ready to defend him, to support him, not for
friendship, but for the crumbs that dropped from the table of his
power. The favorite himself was attended by the Earl of Ealing, a
youngster who had his spurs to win, who thought it policy to serve
the great time-server. Two others also came.
It was a morning little made for deeds of rancor or of blood. As they
passed, the early morning mists above the green fields of Kent and
Essex were being melted by the summer sun. The smell of ripening
fruit came on them with pungent sweetness, their feet crashed
odorously through clumps of tigerlilies, and the dew on the
ribbon-grass shook glistening drops upon their velvets. Overhead the
carolling of the thrush came swimming recklessly through the trees,
and far over in the fields the ploughmen started upon the heavy
courses of their labor; while here and there a poacher with bow and
arrow slid through the green undergrowth, like spies hovering on an
army’s flank.
To Lemprière the morning carried no impression save that life was
well worth living. No agitation passed across his nerves, no
apprehension reached his mind. He had no imagination; he loved the
things that his eyes saw because they filled him with enjoyment; but
why they were, or whence they came, or what they meant or boded,
never gave him meditation. A vast epicurean, a consummate egotist,
ripe with feeling and rich with energy, he could not believe that
when he spoke the heavens would not fall. The stinging sweetness of
the morning was a tonic to all his energies, an elation to his mind;
he swaggered through the lush grasses and boskage as though marching
to a marriage.
Leicester, on his part, no more caught at the meaning of the morning,
at the long whisper of enlivened nature, than did his foe. The day
gave to him no more than was his right. If the day was not fine, then
Leicester was injured; but if the day was fine, then Leicester had
his due. Moral blindness made him blind for the million deep
teachings trembling round him. He felt only the garish and the
splendid. So it was that at Kenilworth, where his Queen had visited
him, the fêtes that he had held would far outshine the fête which
would take place in Greenwich Park on this May Day. The fête of this
May Day would take place, but would he see it? The thought flashed
through his mind that he might not; but he trod it underfoot; not
through an inborn, primitive egotism like that of Lemprière, but
through an innate arrogance, an unalterable belief that fate was ever
on his side. He had played so many tricks with fate, had mocked while
taking its gifts so often, that, like the son who has flouted his
indulgent father through innumerable times, he conceived that he
should never be disinherited. It irked him that he should be fighting
with a farmer, as he termed the seigneur of the Jersey isle; but
there was in the event, too, a sense of relief, for he had a will for
murder. Yesterday’s events were still fresh in his mind; and he had a
feeling that the letting of Lemprière’s blood would cool his own and
be some cure for the choler which the presence of these strangers at
the court had wrought in him.
There were better swordsmen in England than he, but his skill was
various, and he knew tricks of the trade which this primitive Norman
could never have learned. He had some touch of wit, some biting
observation, and, as he neared the place of the encounter, he played
upon the coming event with a mordant frivolity. Not by nature a brave
man, he was so much a fatalist, such a worshipper of his star, that
he had acquired an artificial courage which had served him well. The
unschooled gentlemen with him roared with laughter at his sallies,
and they came to the place of meeting as though to a summer feast.
“Good-morrow, nobility,” said Leicester, with courtesy overdone, and
bowing much too low.
“Good-morrow, valentine,” answered Lemprière, flushing slightly at
the disguised insult and rising to the moment.
“I hear the crop of fools is short this year in Jersey, and through
no fault of yours--you’ve done your best most loyally,” jeered
Leicester, as he doffed his doublet, his gentlemen laughing in
derision.
“’Tis true enough, my lord, and I have come to find new seed in
England, where are fools to spare; as I trust in Heaven one shall be
spared on this very day for planting yonder.”
He was eaten with rage, but he was cool and steady. He was now in his
linen and small-clothes, and looked like some untrained Hercules.
“Well said, nobility,” laughed Leicester, with an ugly look. “’Tis
seed-time--let us measure out the seed. On guard!”
Never were two men such opposites, never two so seemingly
ill-matched. Leicester’s dark face and its sardonic look, his lithe
figure, the nervous strength of his bearing, were in strong contrast
to the bulking breadth, the perspiring robustness of Lemprière of
Rozel. It was not easy of belief that Lemprière should be set to
fight this matadore of a fighting court. But there they stood,
Lemprière’s face with a great-eyed gravity looming above his rotund
figure like a moon above a purple cloud. But huge and loose though
the seigneur’s motions seemed, he was as intent as though there were
but two beings in the universe, Leicester and himself. A strange
alertness seemed to be upon him, and, as Leicester found when the
swords crossed, he was quicker than his bulk gave warrant. His
perfect health made his vision sure; and, though not a fine
swordsman, he had done much fighting in his time, had been ever ready
for the touch of steel, and had served some warlike days in fighting
France, where fate had well befriended him. That which Leicester
meant should be by-play of a moment became a full half-hour’s
desperate game. Leicester found that the thrust--the fatal thrust
learned from an Italian master--he meant to give was met by a swift
precision, responding to quick vision. Again and again he would have
brought the end, but Lemprière heavily foiled him. The wound which
the seigneur got at last, meant to be mortal, was saved from that by
the facility of a quick apprehension.
Indeed, for a time the issue had seemed doubtful, for the endurance
and persistence of the seigneur made for exasperation and
recklessness in his antagonist, and once blood was drawn from the
wrist of the great man; but at length Lemprière went upon the
aggressive. Here he erred, for Leicester found the chance for which
he had man[oe]uvred--to use the feint and thrust got out of Italy. He
brought his enemy low, but only after a duel the like of which had
never been seen at the court of England. The matadore had slain his
bull at last, but had done no justice to his reputation. Never did
man more gallantly sustain his honor with heaviest odds against him
than did the Seigneur of Rozel that day.
[Illustration: “‘HANG FAST TO YOUR HONORS BY THE SKIN OF YOUR TEETH,
MY LORD’”]
As he was carried away by the merry gentlemen of the court, he called
back to the favorite:
“Leicester is not so great a swordsman, after all. Hang fast to your
honors by the skin of your teeth, my lord.”