In the year of grace 1417, about Martinmas (thus Nicolas begins), Queen
Isabeau fled with her daughter the Lady Katharine to Chartres. There
the Queen was met by the Duke of Burgundy, and these two laid their
heads together to such good effect that presently they got back into
Paris, and in its public places massacred some three thousand
Armagnacs. This, however, is a matter which touches history; the root
of our concernment is that when the Queen and the Duke rode off to
attend to this butcher's business, the Lady Katharine was left behind
in the Convent of Saint Scholastica, which then stood upon the
outskirts of Chartres, in the bend of the Eure just south of that city.
She dwelt a year in this well-ordered place.
There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint John the
Baptist, the fine August morning that starts the tale. Katharine the
Fair, men called her, with some show of reason. She was very tall, and
slim as a rush. Her eyes were large and black, having an extreme
lustre, like the gleam of undried ink--a lustre at odd times uncanny.
Her abundant hair, too, was black, and to-day doubly sombre by contrast
with the gold netting which confined it. Her mouth was scarlet, all
curves, and her complexion famous for its brilliancy; only a precisian
would have objected that she possessed the Valois nose, long and thin
and somewhat unduly overhanging the mouth.
To-day as she came through the orchard, crimson-garbed, she paused with
lifted eyebrows. Beyond the orchard wall there was a hodgepodge of
noises, among which a nice ear might distinguish the clatter of hoofs,
a yelping and scurrying, and a contention of soft bodies, and above all
a man's voice commanding the turmoil. She was seventeen, so she
climbed into the crotch of an apple-tree and peered over the wall.
He was in rusty brown and not unshabby; but her regard swept over this
to his face, and there noted how his eyes were blue winter stars under
the tumbled yellow hair, and the flash of his big teeth as he swore
between them. He held a dead fox by the brush, which he was cutting
off; two hounds, lank and wolfish, were scaling his huge body in
frantic attempts to get at the carrion. A horse grazed close at hand.
So for a heart-beat she saw him. Then he flung the tailless body to
the hounds, and in the act spied two black eyes peeping through the
apple-leaves. He laughed, all mirth to the heels of him.
"Mademoiselle, I fear we have disturbed your devotions. But I had not
heard that it was a Benedictine custom to rehearse aves in tree-tops."
Then, as she leaned forward, both elbows resting more comfortably upon
the wall, and thereby disclosing her slim body among the foliage like a
crimson flower green-calyxed: "You are not a nun--Blood of God! you are
the Princess Katharine!"
[Illustration: "SO FOR A HEARTBEAT SHE SAW HIM" _Painting by Howard
Pyle_]
The nuns, her present guardians, would have declared the ensuing action
horrific, for Katharine smiled frankly at him and demanded how he could
be certain of this.
He answered slowly: "I have seen your portrait. Hah, your portrait!"
he jeered, head flung back and big teeth glinting in the sunlight.
"There is a painter who merits crucifixion."
She considered this indicative of a cruel disposition, but also of a
fine taste in the liberal arts. Aloud she stated:
"You are not a Frenchman, messire. I do not understand how you can
have seen my portrait."
The man stood for a moment twiddling the fox-brush. "I am a harper, my
Princess. I have visited the courts of many kings, though never that
of France. I perceive I have been woefully unwise."
This trenched upon insolence--the look of his eyes, indeed, carried it
well past the frontier--but she found the statement interesting.
Straightway she touched the kernel of those fear-blurred legends
whispered about her cradle and now clamant.
"You have, then, seen the King of England?"
"Yes, Highness."
"Is it true that he is an ogre--like Agrapard and Angoulaffre of the
Broken Teeth?"
His gaze widened. "I have heard a deal of scandal concerning the man.
But never that."
Katharine settled back, luxuriously, in the crotch of the apple-tree.
"Tell me about him."
Composedly he sat down upon the grass and began to acquaint her with
his knowledge and opinions concerning Henry, the fifth of that name to
reign in England. Katharine punctuated his discourse with eager
questionings, which are not absolutely to our purpose. In the main
this harper thought the man now buffeting France a just king, and, the
crown laid aside, he had heard Sire Henry to be sufficiently jovial and
even prankish. The harper educed anecdotes. He considered that the
King would manifestly take Rouen, which the insatiable man was now
besieging. Was the King in treaty for the hand of the Infanta of
Aragon? Yes, he undoubtedly was.
Katharine sighed her pity for this ill-starred woman. "And now tell me
about yourself."
He was, it appeared, Alain Maquedonnieux, a harper by vocation, and by
birth a native of Ireland. Beyond the fact that it was a savage
kingdom adjoining Cataia, Katharine knew nothing of Ireland. The
harper assured her of anterior misinformation, since the kings of
England claimed Ireland as an appanage, though the Irish themselves
were of two minds as to the justice of these pretensions; all in all,
he considered that Ireland belonged to Saint Patrick, and that the holy
man had never accredited a vicar.
"Doubtless, by the advice of God," Alain said: "for I have read in
Master Roger de Wendover's Chronicles of how at the dread day of
judgment all the Irish are to muster before the high and pious Patrick,
as their liege lord and father in the spirit, and by him be conducted
into the presence of God; and of how, by virtue of Saint Patrick's
request, all the Irish will die seven years to an hour before the
second coming of Christ, in order to give the blessed saint sufficient
time to marshal his company, which is considerable." Katharine
admitted the convenience of this arrangement, as well as the neglect of
her education. Alain gazed up at her for a long while, as in
reflection, and presently said: "Doubtless the Lady Heleine of Argos
also was thus starry-eyed and found in books less diverting reading
than in the faces of men." It flooded Katharine's cheeks with a
livelier hue, but did not vex her irretrievably; yet, had she chosen to
read this man's face, the meaning was plain enough.
I give you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is
trivial. But it was a day when one entered love's wardship with a
splurge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by bit, as
though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a long while,
with laughter mutually provoked and shared, with divers eloquent and
dangerous pauses. The harper squatted upon the ground, the Princess
leaned over the wall; but to all intent they sat together upon the
loftiest turret of Paradise, and it was a full two hours before
Katharine hinted at departure.
Alain rose, approaching the wall. "To-morrow I ride for Milan to take
service with Duke Filippo. I had broken my journey these three days
past at Châteauneuf yonder, where this fox has been harrying my host's
chickens. To-day I went out to slay him, and he led me, his murderer,
to the fairest lady earth may boast. Do you not think this fox was a
true Christian, my Princess?"
Katharine said: "I lament his destruction. Farewell, Messire Alain!
And since chance brought you hither--"
"Destiny brought me hither," Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his
eyes. "Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she
continue so." But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be,
Alain shook his tawny head. "Presently you shall know, Highness, but
not now. I return to Châteauneuf on certain necessary businesses;
to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti's livery.
Farewell!" He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the
hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat.
Thus Tristran de Léonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall,
thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him.
She went to her apartments, singing,
"_El tems amoreus plein de joie,
El tems où tote riens s'esgaie,--_"
and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were hosts of
women-children born every day, she reflected, who were not princesses
and therefore compelled to marry ogres; and some of them were
beautiful. And minstrels made such an ado over beauty.
Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a
cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant
trees. In the slaty twilight the garden's verdure was lustreless,
grass and foliage uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed like
beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere a
vista unblurred; but in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith,
two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers
swaddled by their ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional
scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest
as much; and presently came a singing, less meritorious than that of
many a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it,
heart in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely.
Sang Alain:
"_O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,
Be not too obdurate the while we pray
That this the fleet, sweet time of youth be spent
In laughter as befits a holiday,
From which the evening summons us away,
From which to-morrow wakens us to strife
And toil and grief and wisdom--and to-day
Grudge us not life!_
"_O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,
Why need our elders trouble us at play?
We know that very soon we shall repent
The idle follies of our holiday,
And being old, shall be as wise as they,
But now we are not wise, and lute and fife
Seem sweeter far than wisdom--so to-day
Grudge us not life!_
"_O Madam Destiny, omnipotent,
You have given us youth--and must we cast away
The cup undrained and our one coin unspent
Because our elders' beards and hearts are gray?
They have forgotten that if we delay
Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife
Or cord or fever mocks the prayer we pray--
'Grudge us not life!'_
"_Madam, recall that in the sun we play
But for an hour, then have the worm for wife,
The tomb for habitation--and to-day
Grudge us not life!_"
Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the crotch
of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but the
Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort.
"You came!" this harper said, transfigured; and then again, "You came!"