In the year of grace 1381 (Nicolas begins) was Dame Anne magnificently
fetched from remote Bohemia, and at Westminster married to Sire
Richard, the second monarch of that name to reign in England. The
Queen had presently noted a certain priest who went forbiddingly about
her court, where he was accorded a provisional courtesy, and more
forbiddingly into many hovels, where day by day a pitiful wreckage of
humanity both blessed and hoodwinked him, as he morosely knew, and
adored him, as he never knew at all.
Queen Anne made inquiries. This young cleric was amanuensis to the
Duke of Gloucester, she was informed, and notoriously a by-blow of the
Duke's brother, the dead Lionel of Clarence. She sent for this Edward
Maudelain. When he came her first perception was, "How wonderful his
likeness to the King!" while the thought's commentary ran,
unacknowledged, "Ay, as an eagle resembles a falcon!" For here, to the
observant eye, was a more zealous person, already passion-wasted, and
ineffably a more dictatorial and stiff-necked being than the lazy and
amiable King; also, this Maudelain's face and nose were somewhat too
long and high; and the priest was, in a word, the less comely of the
pair by a very little, and by an infinity the more kinglike.
"You are my cousin now, messire," she told him, and innocently offered
to his lips her own.
He never moved; but their glances crossed, and for that instant she saw
the face of a man who has just stepped into a quicksand. She trembled,
without knowing why. Then he spoke, composedly, and of trivial matters.
Thus began the Queen's acquaintance with Edward Maudelain. She was by
this time the loneliest woman in the island. Her husband granted her a
bright and fresh perfection of form and color, but desiderated any
appetizing tang, and lamented, in his phrase, a certain kinship to the
impeccable loveliness of some female saint in a jaunty tapestry; bright
as ice in sunshine, just so her beauty chilled you, he complained: and
moreover, this daughter of the Caesars had been fetched into England,
chiefly, to breed him children, and this she had never done.
Undoubtedly he had made a bad bargain--he was too easy-going, people
presumed upon it. His barons snatched their cue and esteemed Dame Anne
to be negligible; whereas the clergy, finding that she obstinately read
the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, under the irrelevant plea of not
comprehending Latin, denounced her from their pulpits as a heretic and
as the evil woman prophesied by Ezekiel.
It was the nature of this desolate child to crave affection, as a
necessity almost, and pitifully she tried to purchase it through
almsgiving. In the attempt she could have found no coadjutor more
ready than Edward Maudelain. Giving was with these downright two a
sort of obsession, though always he gave in a half scorn but half
concealed; and presently they could have marshalled an army of
adherents, all in rags, who would cheerfully have been hacked to pieces
for either of the twain, and have praised God at the final gasp for the
privilege. It was perhaps the tragedy of the man's life that he never
suspected this.
Now in and about the Queen's unfrequented rooms the lonely woman and
the priest met daily to discuss now this or that comminuted point of
theology, or now (to cite a single instance) Gammer Tudway's obstinate
sciatica. Considerate persons found something of the pathetic in their
preoccupation by these trifles while, so clamantly, the dissension
between the young King and his uncles gathered to a head: the air was
thick with portents; and was this, then, an appropriate time, the
judicious demanded of high Heaven, for the Queen of fearful England to
concern herself about a peasant's toothache?
Long afterward was Edward Maudelain to remember this brief and tranquil
period of his life, and to wonder over the man that he had been through
this short while. Embittered and suspicious she had found him, noted
for the carping tongue he lacked both power and inclination to bridle;
and she had, against his nature, made Maudelain see that every person
is at bottom lovable, and all vices but the stains of a traveller
midway in a dusty journey; and had led the priest no longer to do good
for his soul's health, but simply for his fellow's benefit.
And in place of that monstrous passion which had at first view of her
possessed the priest, now, like a sheltered taper, glowed an adoration
which yearned, in mockery of common-sense, to suffer somehow for this
beautiful and gracious comrade; though very often a sudden pity for her
loneliness and the knowledge that she dared trust no one save himself
would throttle him like two assassins and move the hot-blooded young
man to an exquisite agony of self-contempt and exultation.
Now Maudelain made excellent songs, it was a matter of common report.
Yet but once in their close friendship had the Queen commanded him to
make a song for her. This had been at Dover, about vespers, in the
starved and tiny garden overlooking the English Channel, upon which her
apartments faced; and the priest had fingered his lute for an
appreciable while before he sang, a thought more harshly than was his
custom.
Sang Maudelain;
"_Ave Maria! now cry we so
That see night wake and daylight go._
"_Mother and Maid, in nothing incomplete,
This night that gathers is more light and fleet
Than twilight trod alway with stumbling feet,
Agentes uno animo._
"_Ever we touch the prize we dare not take!
Ever we know that thirst we dare not slake!
And ever to a dreamed-of goal we make--
Est caeli in palatio!_
"_Yet long the road, and very frail are we
That may not lightly curb mortality,
Nor lightly tread together silently,
Et carmen unum facio:_
"_Mater, ora filium,
Ut post hoc exilium
Nobis donet gaudium
Beatorum omnium!_"
Dame Anne had risen. She said nothing. She stayed in this posture for
a lengthy while, reeling, one hand yet clasping either breast. More
lately she laughed, and began to speak of Long Simon's recent fever.
Was there no method of establishing him in another cottage? No, the
priest said, the villiens, like the cattle, were by ordinary deeded
with the land.
One day, about the hour of prime, in that season of the year when
fields smell of young grass, the Duke of Gloucester sent for Edward
Maudelain. The court was then at Windsor. The priest came quickly to
his patron. He found the Duke in company with Edmund of York and bland
Harry of Derby, John of Gaunt's oldest son. Each was a proud and
handsome man. To-day Gloucester was gnawing at his finger nails, big
York seemed half-asleep, and the Earl of Derby patiently to await
something as yet ineffably remote.
"Sit down!" snarled Gloucester. His lean and evil countenance was that
of a tired devil. The priest obeyed, wondering so high an honor should
be accorded him in the view of three great noblemen. Then Gloucester
said, in his sharp way: "Edward, you know, as England knows, the King's
intention toward us three and our adherents. It has come to our
demolishment or his. I confess a preference in the matter. I have
consulted with the Pope concerning the advisability of taking the crown
into my own hands. Edmund here does not want it, and John is already
achieving one in Spain. Eh, in imagination I was already King of
England, and I had dreamed-- Well! to-day the prosaic courier arrived.
Urban--the Neapolitan swine!--dares give me no assistance. It is
decreed I shall never reign in these islands. And I had dreamed--
Meanwhile, de Vere and de la Pole are at the King day and night, urging
revolt. Within the week the three heads of us will embellish Temple
Bar. You, of course, they will only hang."
"We must avoid England, then, my noble patron," the priest considered.
Angrily the Duke struck a clenched fist upon the table. "By the Cross!
we remain in England, you and I and all of us. Others avoid. The Pope
and the Emperor will have none of me. They plead for the Black
Prince's heir, for the legitimate heir. Dompnedex! they shall have
him!"
Maudelain recoiled, for he thought this twitching man insane.
"Besides, the King intends to take from me my fief at Sudbury," said
the Duke of York, "in order he may give it to de Vere. That is both
absurd and monstrous and abominable."
Openly Gloucester sneered. "Listen!" he rapped out toward Maudelain;
"when they were drawing up the Great Peace at Brétigny, it happened, as
is notorious, that the Black Prince, my brother, wooed in this town the
Demoiselle Alixe Riczi, whom in the outcome he abducted. It is not as
generally known, however, that, finding this sister of the Vicomte do
Montbrison a girl of obdurate virtue, he had prefaced the action by
marriage."
"And what have I to do with all this?" said Edward Maudelain.
Gloucester retorted: "More than you think. For she was conveyed to
Chertsey, here in England, where at the year's end she died in
childbirth. A little before this time had Sir Thomas Holland seen his
last day--the husband of that Joane of Kent whom throughout life my
brother loved most marvellously. The disposition of the late
Queen-Mother is tolerably well-known. I make no comment save that to
her moulding my brother was as so much wax. In fine, the two lovers
were presently married, and their son reigns to-day in England. The
abandoned son of Alixe Riczi was reared by the Cistercians at Chertsey,
where some years ago I found you--sire."
He spoke with a stifled voice, and wrenching forth each sentence; and
now with a stiff forefinger flipped a paper across the table. "_In
extremis_ my brother did far more than confess. He signed--your
Grace," said Gloucester. The Duke on a sudden flung out his hands,
like a wizard whose necromancy fails, and the palms were bloodied where
his nails had cut the flesh.
"Moreover, my daughter was born at Sudbury," said the Duke of York.
And of Maudelain's face I cannot tell you. He made pretence to read
the paper carefully, but ever his eyes roved, and he knew that he stood
among wolves. The room was oddly shaped, with eight equal sides; the
ceiling was of a light and brilliant blue, powdered with many golden
stars, and the walls were hung with smart tapestries which commemorated
the exploits of Theseus. "King," this Maudelain said aloud, "of France
and England, and Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine! I perceive
that Heaven loves a jest." He wheeled upon Gloucester and spoke with
singular irrelevance: "And the titular Queen?"
Again the Duke shrugged. "I had not thought of the dumb wench. We
have many convents."
And now Maudelain twisted the paper between his long, wet fingers and
appeared to meditate.
"It would be advisable, your Grace," observed the Earl of Derby,
suavely, and breaking his silence for the first time, "that yourself
should wed Dame Anne, once the Apostolic See has granted the necessary
dispensation. Treading too close upon the impendent death of our
nominal lord the so-called King, the foreign war perhaps necessitated
by her exile would be highly inconvenient."
Then these three princes rose and knelt before the priest; in long
bright garments they were clad, and they glittered with gold and many
jewels, what while he standing among them shuddered in his sombre robe.
"Hail, King of England!" cried these three.
"Hail, ye that are my kinsmen!" he answered; "hail, ye that spring of
an accursed race, as I! And woe to England for that fearful hour
wherein Foulques the Querulous held traffic with a devil and on her
begot the first of us Plantagenets! Of ice and of lust and of
hell-fire are all we sprung; old records attest it; and fickle and cold
and ravenous and without shame are we Plantagenets until the end. Of
your brother's dishonor ye make merchandise to-day, and to-day
fratricide whispers me, and leers, and, Heaven help me! I attend. O
God of Gods! wilt Thou dare bid a man live stainless, having aforetime
filled his veins with such a venom? Then haro, will I cry from Thy
deepest hell... Nay, now let Lucifer rejoice for that his descendants
know of what wood to make a crutch! You are very wise, my kinsmen.
Take your measures, messieurs who are my kinsmen! Though were I any
other than a Plantagenet, with what expedition would I now kill you
that recognize the strength to do it! then would I slay you! without
any animosity, would I slay you then, and just as I would kill as many
splendid snakes!"
[Illustration: "'HAIL YE THAT ARE MY KINSMEN!'" _Painting by Howard
Pyle_]
He went away, laughing horribly. Gloucester drummed upon the table,
his brows contracted. But the lean Duke said nothing; big York seemed
to drowse; and Henry of Derby smiled as he sounded a gong for that
scribe who would draw up the necessary letters. The Earl's time was
not yet come, but it was nearing.
In the antechamber the priest encountered two men-at-arms dragging a
dead body from the castle. The Duke of Kent, Maudelain was informed,
had taken a fancy to a peasant girl, and in remonstrance her misguided
father had actually tugged at his Grace's sleeve.
Maudelain went first into the park of Windsor, where he walked for a
long while alone. It was a fine day in the middle spring; and now he
seemed to understand for the first time how fair his England was. For
entire England was his splendid fief, held in vassalage to God and to
no man alive, his heart now sang; allwhither his empire spread, opulent
in grain and metal and every revenue of the earth, and in stalwart men
(his chattels), and in strong orderly cities, where the windows would
be adorned with scarlet hangings, and women (with golden hair and red
lax lips) would presently admire as King Edward rode slowly by at the
head of a resplendent retinue. And always the King would bow,
graciously and without haste, to his shouting people.... He laughed to
find himself already at rehearsal of the gesture.
It was strange, though, that in this glorious fief of his so many
persons should, as yet, live day by day as cattle live, suspicious of
all other moving things (with reason), and roused from their incurious
and filthy apathy only when some glittering baron, like a resistless
eagle, swept uncomfortably near on some by-errand of the more bright
and windy upper-world. East and north they had gone yearly, for so
many centuries, these dumb peasants, like herded sheep, so that in the
outcome their carcasses might manure the soil of France yonder or of
more barren Scotland. Give these serfs a king, now, who (being
absolute), might dare to deal in perfect equity with rich and poor, who
with his advent would bring Peace into England as his bride, as
Trygaeus did very anciently in Athens--"And then," the priest
paraphrased, "may England recover all the blessings she has lost, and
everywhere the glitter of active steel will cease." For everywhere men
would crack a rustic jest or two, unhurriedly. The vivid fields would
blacken under their sluggish ploughs, and they would find that with
practice it was almost as easy to chuckle as it was to cringe.
Meanwhile on every side the nobles tyrannized in their degree, well
clothed and nourished, but at bottom equally comfortless in condition.
As illuminate by lightning Maudelain saw the many factions of his
barons squabbling for gross pleasures, like wolves over a corpse, and
blindly dealing death to one another to secure at least one more
delicious gulp before that inevitable mangling by the teeth of some
burlier colleague. The complete misery of England showed before him
like a winter landscape. The thing was questionless. He must tread
henceforward without fear among frenzied beasts, and to their ultimate
welfare. On a sudden Maudelain knew himself to be strong and admirable
throughout, and hesitancy ebbed.
True, Richard, poor fool, must die. Squarely the priest faced that
stark and hideous circumstance; to spare Richard was beyond his power,
and the boy was his brother; yes, this oncoming king would be in effect
a fratricide, and after death irrevocably damned. To burn, and
eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the torment was
eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of one ignoble life and
one inconsiderable soul, to win so many men to manhood bedazzled his
every faculty, in anticipation of the exploit.
The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden he knew so
well which adjoined Dame Anne's apartments. He found the Queen there,
alone, as nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused to wonder
at her bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd it was, he
reflected, too, how alien in its effect to that of any other woman in
sturdy England, and how associable it was, somehow, with every wild and
gracious denizen of the woods which blossomed yonder.
In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but undiluted.
They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short to ripple,
which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and left birds
sang as in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint and radiant blue
throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the zenith, so that the
Queen's brows cast honey-colored shadows upon either cheek. The priest
was greatly troubled by the proud and heatless brilliancies, the shrill
joys, of every object within the radius of his senses.
She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, tinted
like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and over all a gown of
white, cut open on either side as far as the hips. This garment was
embroidered with golden leopards and trimmed with ermine. About her
yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein emeralds glowed. Her blue
eyes were as large and bright and changeable (he thought) as two oceans
in midsummer; and Maudelain stood motionless and seemed to himself but
to revere, as the Earl Ixion did, some bright and never stable wisp of
cloud, while somehow all elation departed from him as water does from a
wetted sponge compressed. He laughed discordantly; but within the
moment his sun-lit face was still and glorious, like that of an image.
"Wait--! O my only friend--!" said Maudelain. Then in a level voice
he told her all, unhurriedly and without any sensible emotion.
She had breathed once, with an aweful inhalation. She had screened her
countenance from his gaze what while you might have counted fifty.
More lately the lithe body of Dame Anne was alert, as one suddenly
aroused from dreaming. "This means more war, for de Vere and
Tressilian and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons know
that the King's fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands die
to-morrow."