Followed silence. "Roger," the Queen ordered, sharply, "give me the
paper which I would not sign."
The Earl of March had drawn an audible breath. The Bishop of London
somewhat wrinkled his shaggy brows, as a person in shrewd and epicurean
amusement, what while she subscribed the parchment within the moment,
with a great scrawling flourish.
"Take, in the devil's name, the hire of your dexterities," said
Ysabeau, and pushed this document with her wet pen-point toward March,
"and ride for Berkeley now upon that necessary business we know of.
And do the rest of you withdraw, saving only my prisoner--my prisoner!"
she said, and laughed not very pleasantly.
[Illustration: "'MY PRISONER!' SHE SAID" _Painting by Howard Pyle_]
Followed another silence. Queen Ysabeau lolled in her carven chair,
considering the comely gentleman who stood before her, fettered, at the
point of shameful death. There was a little dog in the room which had
come to the Queen, and now licked the palm of her left hand, and the
soft lapping of its tongue was the only sound you heard. "So at peril
of your life you rode for Ordish, then, messire?"
The tense man had flushed. "You have harried us of the King's party
out of England--and in reason I might not leave England without seeing
her."
"My friend," said Ysabeau, as half in sorrow, "I would have pardoned
anything save that." She rose. Her face was dark and hot. "By God
and all His saints! you shall indeed leave England to-morrow and the
world as well! but not without a final glimpse of this same Rosamund.
Yet listen: I, too, must ride with you to Ordish--as your sister,
say--Gregory, did I not hang last April the husband of your sister?
Yes, Ralph de Belomys, a thin man with eager eyes, the Earl of
Farrington he was. As his widow will I ride with you to Ordish, upon
condition you disclose to none at Ordish, saving only, if you will,
this quite immaculate Rosamund, even a hint of our merry carnival. And
to-morrow (you will swear according to the nicest obligations of honor)
you must ride back with me to encounter--that which I may devise. For
I dare to trust your naked word in this, and, moreover, I shall take
with me a sufficiency of retainers to leave you no choice."
Darrell knelt before her. "I can do no homage to Queen Ysabeau; yet
the prodigal hands of her who knows that I must die to-morrow and
cunningly contrives, for old time's sake, to hearten me with a sight of
Rosamund, I cannot but kiss." This much he did. "And I swear in all
things to obey her will."
"O comely fool!" the Queen said, not ungently, "I contrive, it may be,
but to demonstrate that many tyrants of antiquity were only bunglers.
And, besides, I must have other thoughts than that which now occupies
my heart: I must this night take holiday, lest I go mad."
Thus did the Queen arrange her holiday.
"Either I mean to torture you to-morrow," Dame Ysabeau said, presently,
to Darrell, as these two rode side by side, "or else I mean to free
you. In sober verity I do not know. I am in a holiday humor, and it
is as the whim may take me. But you indeed do love this Rosamund
Eastney? And of course she worships you?"
"It is my belief, madame, that when I see her I tremble visibly, and my
weakness is such that a child has more intelligence than I--and toward
such misery any lady must in common reason be a little compassionate."
Her hands had twitched so that the astonished palfrey reared. "I
design torture," the Queen said; "ah, I perfect exquisite torture, for
you have proven recreant, you have forgotten the maid Ysabeau--Le Desir
du Cuer, was it not, my Gregory?"
His palms clutched at heaven. "That Ysabeau is dead! and all true joy
is destroyed, and the world lies under a blight wherefrom God has
averted an unfriendly face in displeasure! yet of all wretched persons
existent I am he who endures the most grievous anguish, for daily I
partake of life without any relish, and I would in truth deem him
austerely kind who slew me now that the maiden Ysabeau is dead."
She shrugged, although but wearily. "I scent the raw stuff of a
Planh," the Queen observed; "_benedicite!_ it was ever your way, my
friend, to love a woman chiefly for the verses she inspired." And she
began to sing, as they rode through Baverstock Thicket.
Sang Ysabeau:
"_Man's love hath many prompters,
But a woman's love hath none;
And he may woo a nimble wit
Or hair that shames the sun,
Whilst she must pick of all one man
And ever brood thereon--
And for no reason,
And not rightly,--_
"_Save that the plan was foreordained
(More old than Chalcedon,
Or any tower of Tarshish
Or of gleaming Babylon),
That she must love unwillingly
And love till life be done,
He for a season,
And more lightly._"
So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a
retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell.
Lord Berners received the party with boisterous hospitality.
"And the more for that your sister is a very handsome woman," was
Rosamund Eastney's comment. The period appears to have been after
supper, and she sat with Gregory Darrell in not the most brilliant
corner of the main hall.
The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then with a
sudden splurge of speech informed her of the sorry masquerade. "The
she-devil designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she plans I know
not what."
"Yet I--" said Rosamund. The girl had risen, and she continued with an
odd inconsequence. "You have told me you were Pembroke's squire when
long ago he sailed for France to fetch this woman into England--"
"Which you never heard!" Lord Berners shouted at this point. "Jasper,
a lute!" And then he halloaed, more lately, "Gregory, Madame de
Farrington demands that racy song you made against Queen Ysabeau during
your last visit."
Thus did the Queen begin her holiday.
It was a handsome couple which came forward, hand quitting hand a shade
too tardily, and the blinking eyes yet rapt; but these two were not
overpleased at being disturbed, and the man in particular was troubled,
as in reason he well might be, by the task assigned him.
"Is it, indeed, your will, my sister," he said, "that I should
sing--this song?"
"It is my will," the Countess said.
And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. "What I have
written I shall not disown in any company. It is not, look you, of my
own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if she bade me would I sing
this song as willingly before Queen Ysabeau, for, Christ aid me! the
song is true."
Sang Sir Gregory:
"_Dame Ysabeau, la prophécie
Que li sage dit ne ment mie,
Que la royne sut ceus grever
Qui tantost laquais sot aymer--_"
and so on. It was a lengthy ditty and in its wording not
oversqueamish; the Queen's career in England was detailed without any
stuttering, and you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir
Gregory sang it with an incisive gusto, though it seemed to him to
countersign his death-warrant; and with the vigor that a mangled snake
summons for its last hideous stroke, it seemed to Ysabeau regretful of
an ancient spring.
_Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, and for obvious reasons, his
translator would prefer to do otherwise._
Only the minstrel added, though Lord Berners did not notice it, a
fire-new peroration.
Sang Sir Gregory:
"_Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gémit--
Peu pense à ce que la voix dit,
Car me membre du temps jadis
Et d'ung garson, d'amour surpris,
Et d'une fille--et la vois si--
Et grandement suis esbahi._"
And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without
speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance
caught between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had
annoyed her. She drew the little dagger from her girdle and
meditatively cut the buzzing thing in two. Then she flung the
fragments from her, and resting the dagger's point upon the arm of her
chair, one forefinger upon the summit of the hilt, considerately
twirled the brilliant weapon.
"This song does not err upon the side of clemency," she said at last,
"nor by ordinary does Queen Ysabeau."
"That she-wolf!" said Lord Berners, comfortably. "Hoo, Madame
Gertrude! since the Prophet Moses wrung healing waters from a rock
there has been no such miracle recorded."
"We read, Messire de Berners, that when the she-wolf once acknowledges
a master she will follow him as faithfully as any dog. Nay, my
brother, I do not question your sincerity, yet you sing with the voice
of an unhonored courtier. Suppose Queen Ysabeau had heard your song
all through and then had said--for she is not as the run of
women--'Messire, I had thought till this there was no thorough man in
England saving Roger Mortimer. I find him tawdry now, and--I remember.
Come you, then, and rule the England that you love as you may love no
woman, and rule me, messire, for I find even in your cruelty--England!
bah, we are no pygmies, you and I!'" the Countess said with a great
voice; "'yonder is squabbling Europe and all the ancient gold of
Africa, ready for our taking! and past that lies Asia, too, and its
painted houses hung with bells, and cloud-wrapt Tartary, wherein we
twain may yet erect our equal thrones, whereon to receive the tributary
emperors! For we are no pygmies, you and I.'" She paused and more
lately shrugged. "Suppose Queen Ysabeau had said this much, my
brother?"
Darrell was more pallid, as the phrase is, than a sheet, and the lute
had dropped unheeded, and his hands were clenched.
"I would answer, my sister, that as she has found in England but one
man, I have found in England but one woman--the rose of all the world."
His eyes were turned at this toward Rosamund Eastney. "And yet," the
man stammered, "for that I, too, remember--"
"Nay, in God's name! I am answered," the Countess said. She rose, in
dignity almost a queen. "We have ridden far to-day, and to-morrow we
must travel a deal farther--eh, my brother? I am a trifle overspent,
Messire de Berners." And her face had now the weary beauty of an
idol's.
So the men and women parted. Madame de Farrington kissed her brother
in leaving him, as was natural; and under her caress his stalwart
person shuddered, but not in repugnance; and the Queen went bedward
regretful of an ancient spring and singing hushedly.
Sang Ysabeau:
"_Were the All-Mother wise, life (shaped anotherwise)
Would be all high and true;
Could I be otherwise I had been otherwise
Simply because of you,
Who are no longer you._
"_Life with its pay to be bade us essay to be
What we became,--I believe
Were there a way to be what it was play to be
I would not greatly grieve...
And I neither laugh nor grieve!_"
Ysabeau would have slept that night within the chamber of Rosamund
Eastney had either slept at all. As concerns the older I say nothing.
The girl, though soon aware of frequent rustlings near at hand, lay
quiet, half-forgetful of the poisonous woman yonder. The girl was now
fulfilled with a great blaze of exultation; to-morrow Gregory must die,
and then perhaps she might find time for tears; but meanwhile, before
her eyes, the man had flung away a kingdom and life itself for love of
her, and the least nook of her heart ached to be a shade more worthy of
the sacrifice.
After it might have been an hour of this excruciate ecstasy the
Countess came to Rosamund's bed. "Ay," the woman hollowly began, "it
is indisputable that his hair is like spun gold and that his eyes
resemble sun-drenched waters in June. And that when this Gregory
laughs God is more happy. Ma belle, I was familiar with the routine of
your meditations ere you were born."
Rosamund said, quite simply: "You have known him always. I envy the
circumstance, Madame Gertrude--you alone of all women in the world I
envy, since you, his sister, being so much older, must have known him
always."
"I know him to the core, my girl," the Countess answered, and afterward
sat silent, one bare foot jogging restlessly; "yet am I two years the
junior-- Did you hear nothing, Rosamund?"
"Nay, Madame Gertrude, I heard nothing."
"Strange!" the Countess said; "let us have lights, since I can no
longer endure the overpopulous darkness." She kindled, with twitching
fingers, three lamps and looked in vain for more. "It is as yet dark
yonder, where the shadows quiver very oddly, as though they would rise
from the floor--do they not, my girl?--and protest vain things. Nay,
Rosamund, it has been done; in the moment of death men's souls have
travelled farther and have been visible; it has been done, I tell you.
And he would stand before me, with pleading eyes, and reproach me in a
voice too faint to reach my ears--but I would see him--and his groping
hands would clutch at my hands as though a dropped veil had touched me,
and with the contact I would go mad!"
"Madame Gertrude!" the girl now stammered, in communicated terror.
"Poor innocent dastard!" the woman said, "I am Ysabeau of France." And
when Rosamund made as though to rise, in alarm, Queen Ysabeau caught
her by the shoulder. "Bear witness when he comes I never hated him.
Yet for my quiet it was necessary that it suffer so cruelly, the
scented, pampered body, and no mark be left upon it! Eia! even now he
suffers! Nay, I have lied. I hate the man, and in such fashion as you
will comprehend only when you are Sarum's wife."
"Madame and Queen!" the girl said, "you will not murder me!"
"I am tempted!" the Queen hissed. "O little slip of girlhood, I am
tempted, for it is not reasonable you should possess everything that I
have lost. Innocence you have, and youth, and untroubled eyes, and
quiet dreams, and the glad beauty of the devil, and Gregory Darrell's
love--" Now Ysabeau sat down upon the bed and caught up the girl's
face between two fevered hands. "Rosamund, this Darrell perceives
within the moment, as I do, that the love he bears for you is but what
he remembers of the love he bore a certain maid long dead. Eh, you
might have been her sister, Rosamund, for you are very like her. And
she, poor wench--why, I could see her now, I think, were my eyes not
blurred, somehow, almost as though Queen Ysabeau might weep! But she
was handsomer than you, since your complexion is not overclear, praise
God!"
Woman against woman they were. "He has told me of his intercourse with
you," the girl said, and this was a lie flatfooted. "Nay, kill me if
you will, madame, since you are the stronger, yet, with my dying
breath, Gregory has loved but me."
"Ma belle," the Queen answered, and laughed bitterly, "do I not know
men? He told you nothing. And to-night he hesitated, and to-morrow,
at the lifting of my finger, he will supplicate. Throughout his life
has Gregory Darrell loved me, O white, palsied innocence! and he is
mine at a whistle. And in that time to come he will desert you,
Rosamund--though with a pleasing Canzon--and they will give you to the
gross Earl of Sarum, as they gave me to the painted man who was of late
our King! and in that time to come you will know your body to be your
husband's makeshift when he lacks leisure to seek out other recreation!
and in that time to come you will long at first for death, and
presently your heart will be a flame within you, my Rosamund, an
insatiable flame! and you will hate your God because He made you, and
hate Satan because in some desperate hour he tricked you, and hate all
masculinity because, poor fools, they scurry to obey your whim! and
chiefly hate yourself because you are so pitiable! and devastation only
will you love in that strange time which is to come. It is adjacent,
my Rosamund."
The girl kept silence. She sat erect in the tumbled bed, her hands
clasping her knees, and appeared to deliberate what Dame Ysabeau had
said. The plentiful brown hair fell about this Rosamund's face, which
was white and shrewd. "A part of what you say, madame, I understand.
I know that Gregory Darrell loves me, yet I have long ago acknowledged
he loves me but as one pets a child, or, let us say, a spaniel which
reveres and amuses one. I lack his wit, you comprehend, and so he
never speaks to me all that he thinks. Yet a part of it he tells me,
and he loves me, and with this I am content. Assuredly, if they give
me to Sarum I shall hate Sarum even more than I detest him now. And
then, I think, Heaven help me! that I would not greatly grieve-- Oh,
you are all evil!" Rosamund said; "and you thrust thoughts into my mind
I may not grapple with!"
"You will comprehend them," the Queen said, "when you know yourself a
chattel, bought and paid for."
The Queen laughed. She rose, and either hand strained toward heaven.
"You are omnipotent, yet have You let me become that into which I am
transmuted," she said, very low.
Anon she began, as though a statue spoke through motionless and pallid
lips. "They have long urged me, Rosamund, to a deed which by one
stroke would make me mistress of these islands. To-day I looked on
Gregory Darrell, and knew that I was wise in love--and I had but to
crush a filthy worm to come to him. Eh, and I was tempted--!"
The fearless girl said: "Let us grant that Gregory loves you very
greatly, and me just when his leisure serves. You may offer him a
cushioned infamy, a colorful and brief delirium, and afterward
demolishment of soul and body; I offer him contentment and a level
life, made up of tiny happenings, it may be, and lacking both in
abysses and in skyey heights. Yet is love a flame wherein must the
lover's soul be purified, as an ore by fire, even to its own discredit;
and thus, madame, to judge between us I dare summon you."
"Child, child!" the Queen said, tenderly, and with a smile, "you are
brave; and in your fashion you are wise; yet you will never comprehend.
But once I was in heart and soul and body all that you are to-day; and
now I am Queen Ysabeau. Assuredly, it would be hard to yield my single
chance of happiness; it would be hard to know that Gregory Darrell must
presently dwindle into an ox well-pastured, and garner of life no more
than any ox; but to say, 'Let this girl become as I, and garner that
which I have garnered--!' Did you in truth hear nothing, Rosamund?"
"Why, nothing save the wind."
"Strange!" said the Queen; "since all the while that I have talked with
you I have been seriously annoyed by shrieks and various imprecations!
But I, too, grow cowardly, it maybe-- Nay, I know," she said, and in a
resonant voice, "that I am by this mistress of broad England, until my
son--my own son, born of my body, and in glad anguish, Rosamund--knows
me for what I am. For I have heard-- Coward! O beautiful sleek
coward!" the Queen said; "I would have died without lamentation and I
was but your plaything!"
"Madame Ysabeau--!" the girl stammered, and ran toward her, for the
girl had risen, and she was terrified.
"To bed!" said Ysabeau; "and put out the lights lest he come presently.
Or perhaps he fears me now too much to come to-night. Yet the night
approaches, none the less, when I must lift some arras and find him
there, chalk-white, with painted cheeks, and rigid, and smiling very
terribly, or look into some mirror and behold there not myself but
him--and in that instant I will die. Meantime I rule, until my son
attains his manhood. Eh, Rosamund, my only son was once so tiny, and
so helpless, and his little crimson mouth groped toward me, helplessly,
and save in Bethlehem, I thought, there was never any child more fair--
But I must forget all that, for even now he plots. Hey, God orders
matters very shrewdly, my Rosamund."
And timidly the girl touched one shoulder. "In part, I understand,
madame and Queen."
"You understand nothing," said Ysabeau; "how should you understand
whose breasts are yet so tiny? Nay, put out the light! though I dread
the darkness, Rosamund--For they say that hell is poorly lighted--and
they say--" Then Queen Ysabeau shrugged. Herself blew out each lamp.
"We know this Gregory Darrell," the Queen said in the darkness, and
aloud, "ay, to the marrow we know him, however steadfastly we blink,
and we know the present turmoil of his soul; and in common-sense what
chance have you of victory?"
"None in common-sense, madame, and yet you go too fast. For man is a
being of mingled nature, we are told by those in holy orders, and his
life here but one unending warfare between that which is divine in him
and that which is bestial, while impartial Heaven attends as arbiter of
the cruel tourney. Always his judgment misleads the man, and his
faculties allure him to a truce, however brief, with iniquity. His
senses raise a mist about his goings, and there is not an endowment of
the man but in the end plays traitor to his interest, as of His wisdom
God intends; so that when the man is overthrown, God the Eternal Father
may, in reason, be neither vexed nor grieved if only he takes heart to
rise again. And when, betrayed and impotent, the man elects to fight
out the allotted battle, defiant of common-sense and of the counsellors
which God Himself accorded, I think that they hold festival in heaven."
"A very pretty sermon," said the Queen, and with premeditation yawned.
Followed a silence, vexed only on the purposeless September winds; but
I believe that neither of these two slept with an inappropriate
profundity.
About dawn one of the Queen's attendants roused Sir Gregory Darrell and
presently conducted him into the hedged garden of Ordish, where Ysabeau
walked in tranquil converse with Lord Berners. The old man was in high
good-humor.
"My lad," said he, and clapped Sir Gregory upon the shoulder, "you
have, I do protest, the very phoenix of sisters. I was never happier."
And he went away chuckling.