"Yes," she answered, "for I am your pretext. I can well believe,
messire, that you love your pretext for theft and murder."
Neither spoke after this, and presently the Earl of Warwick having come
to his peroration, the matter was adjourned till the next day. The
party separated. It was not long before Katharine had informed her
mother that, God willing, she would never again look upon the King of
England's face uncoffined. Isabeau found her a madwoman. The girl
swept opposition before her with gusts of demoniacal fury, wept,
shrieked, tore at her hair, and eventually fell into a sort of
epileptic seizure; between rage and terror she became a horrid,
frenzied beast. I do not dwell upon this, for it is not a condition in
which the comeliest maid shows to advantage. But, for the Valois,
insanity always lurked at the next corner, expectant, and they knew it;
to save the girl's reason the Queen was forced to break off all
discussion of the match. Accordingly, the Duke of Burgundy went next
day to the conference alone. Jehan began with "ifs," and over these
flimsy barriers Henry, already maddened by Katharine's scorn, presently
vaulted to a towering fury.
"Fair cousin," the King said, after a deal of vehement bickering, "we
wish you to know that we will have the daughter of your King, and that
we will drive both him and you out of this kingdom."
The Duke answered, not without spirit: "Sire, you are pleased to say
so; but before you have succeeded in ousting my lord and me from this
realm, I am of the opinion that you will be very heartily tired."
At this the King turned on his heel; over his shoulder he flung: "I am
tireless; also, I am agile as a fox in the pursuit of my desires. Say
that to your Princess." Then he went away in a rage.
It had seemed an approvable business to win love incognito, according
to the example of many ancient emperors, but in practice he had tripped
over an ugly outgrowth from the legendary custom. The girl hated him,
there was no doubt about it; and it was equally certain he loved her.
Particularly caustic was the reflection that a twitch of his finger
would get him Katharine as his wife, for in secret negotiation the
Queen-Regent was soon trying to bring this about; yes, he could get the
girl's body by a couple of pen-strokes; but, God's face! what he wanted
was to rouse the look her eyes had borne in Chartres orchard that
tranquil morning, and this one could not readily secure by fiddling
with seals and parchments. You see his position: he loved the Princess
too utterly to take her on lip-consent, and this marriage was now his
one possible excuse for ceasing from victorious warfare. So he
blustered, and the fighting recommenced; and he slew in a despairing
rage, knowing that by every movement of his arm he became to her so
much the more detestable.
He stripped the realm of provinces as you peel the layers from an
onion. By the May of the year of grace 1420 France was, and knew
herself to be, not beaten but demolished. Only a fag-end of the French
army lay entrenched at Troyes, where the court awaited Henry's decision
as to the morrow's action. If he chose to destroy them root and
branch, he could; and they knew such mercy as was in the man to be
quite untarnished by previous usage. He drew up a small force before
the city and made no overtures toward either peace or throat-cutting.
This was the posture of affairs on the evening of the Sunday after
Ascension day, when Katharine sat at cards with her father in his
apartments at the Hôtel de Ville. The King was pursing his lips over
an alternative play, when there came the voice of one singing below in
the courtyard.
Sang the voice:
"_I get no joy of my life
That have weighed the world--and it was
Abundant with folly, and rife
With sorrows brittle as glass,
And with joys that flicker and pass
As dreams through a fevered head,
And like the dripping of rain
In gardens naked and dead
Is the obdurate thin refrain
Of our youth which is presently dead._
"_And she whom alone I have loved
Looks ever with loathing on me,
As one she hath seen disproved
And stained with such smirches as be
Not ever cleansed utterly,
And is loth to remember the days
When Destiny fixed her name
As the theme and the goal of my praise,
And my love engenders shame,
And I stain what I strive for and praise._
"_O love, most perfect of all,
Just to have known you is well!
And it heartens me now to recall
That just to have known you is well,
And naught else is desirable
Save only to do as you willed
And to love you my whole life long--
But this heart in me is filled
With hunger cruel and strong,
And with hunger unfulfilled._
"_O Love, that art stronger than we,
Albeit not lightly stilled,
Thou art less cruel than she._"
Malise came hastily into the room, and, without speaking, laid a
fox-brush before the Princess.
Katharine twirled it in her hand, staring at the card-littered table.
"So you are in his pay, Malise? I am sorry. But you know that your
employer is master here. Who am I to forbid him entrance?" The girl
went away silently, abashed, and the Princess sat quite still, tapping
the brush against the table.
"They do not want me to sign another treaty, do they?" her father asked
timidly. "It appears to me they are always signing treaties, and I
cannot see that any good comes of it. And I would have won the last
game, Katharine, if Malise had not interrupted us. You know I would
have won."
"Yes, father, you would have won. Oh, he must not see you!" Katharine
cried, a great tide of love mounting in her breast, the love that draws
a mother fiercely to shield her backward boy. "Father, will you not go
into your chamber? I have a new book for you, father--all pictures,
dear. Come--" She was coaxing him when Henry appeared in the doorway.
"But I do not wish to look at pictures," Charles said, peevishly; "I
wish to play cards. You are an ungrateful daughter, Katharine. You
are never willing to amuse me." He sat down with a whimper and began
to pinch at his dribbling lips.
Katharine had moved a little toward the door. Her face was white.
"Now welcome, sire!" she said. "Welcome, O great conqueror, who in
your hour of triumph can find no nobler recreation than to shame a maid
with her past folly! It was valorously done, sire. See, father; here
is the King of England come to observe how low we sit that yesterday
were lords of France."
"The King of England!" echoed Charles, and rose now to his feet. "I
thought we were at war with him. But my memory is treacherous. You
perceive, brother of England, I am planning a new mouse-trap, and my
mind is somewhat preëmpted. I recall now you are in treaty for my
daughter's hand. Katharine is a good girl, messire, but I suppose--"
He paused, as if to regard and hear some insensible counsellor, and
then briskly resumed: "Yes, I suppose policy demands that she should
marry you. We trammelled kings can never go free of policy--ey, my
compère of England? No; it was through policy I wedded her mother; and
we have been very unhappy, Isabeau and I. A word in your ear,
son-in-law: Madame Isabeau's soul formerly inhabited a sow, as
Pythagoras teaches, and when our Saviour cast it out at Gadara, the
influence of the moon drew it hither."
Henry did not say anything. Always his calm blue eyes appraised Dame
Katharine.
"Oho, these Latinists cannot hoodwink me, you observe, though by
ordinary it chimes with my humor to appear content. Policy again,
messire: for once roused, I am terrible. To-day in the great
hall-window, under the bleeding feet of Lazarus, I slew ten flies--very
black they were, the black shrivelled souls of parricides--and
afterward I wept for it. I often weep; the Mediterranean hath its
sources in my eyes, for my daughter cheats at cards. Cheats, sir!--and
I her father!" The incessant peering, the stealthy cunning with which
Charles whispered this, the confidence with which he clung to his
destroyer's hand, was that of a conspiring child.
"Come, father," Katharine said. "Come away to bed, dear."
"Hideous basilisk!" he spat at her; "dare you rebel against me? Am I
not King of France, and is it not blasphemy a King of France should be
thus mocked? Frail moths that flutter about my splendor." He
shrieked, in an unheralded frenzy, "beware of me, beware! for I am
omnipotent! I am King of France, God's regent. At my command the
winds go about the earth, and nightly the stars are kindled for my
recreation. Perhaps I am mightier than God, but I do not remember now.
The reason is written down and lies somewhere under a bench. Now I
sail for England. Eia! eia! I go to ravage England, terrible and
merciless. But I must have my mouse-traps, Goodman Devil, for in
England the cats o' the middle-sea wait unfed." He went out of the
room, giggling, and in the corridor began to sing:
"_Adieu de fois plus de cent mile!
Aillors vois oïr l'Evangile,
Car chi fors mentir on ne sait...._"
All this while Henry remained immovable, his eyes fixed upon Katharine.
Thus (she meditated) he stood among Frenchmen; he was the boulder, and
they the waters that babbled and fretted about him. But she turned and
met his gaze squarely.
"And that," she said, "is the king whom you have conquered! Is it not
a notable conquest to overcome so sapient a king? to pilfer renown from
an idiot? There are pickpockets in Troyes, rogues doubly damned, who
would scorn the action. Now shall I fetch my mother, sire? the
commander of that great army which you overcame? As the hour is late
she is by this tipsy, but she will come. Or perhaps she is with some
paid lover, but if this conqueror, this second Alexander, wills it she
will come. O God!" the girl wailed, on a sudden; "O just and
all-seeing God! are not we of Valois so contemptible that in conquering
us it is the victor who is shamed?"
"Flower o' the marsh!" he said, and his big voice pulsed with many
tender cadences--"flower o' the marsh! it is not the King of England
who now comes to you, but Alain the harper. Henry Plantagenet God has
led hither by the hand to punish the sins of this realm and to reign in
it like a true king. Henry Plantagenet will cast out the Valois from
the throne they have defiled, as Darius Belshazzar, for such is the
desire and the intent of God. But to you comes Alain the harper, not
as a conqueror but as a suppliant--Alain who has loved you
whole-heartedly these two years past and who now kneels before you
entreating grace."
Katharine looked down into his countenance, for to his speech he had
fitted action. Suddenly and for the first time she understood that he
believed France his by a divine favor and Heaven's peculiar
intervention. He thought himself God's factor, not His rebel. He was
rather stupid, this huge handsome boy; and realizing it, her hand went
to his shoulder, half maternally.
"It is nobly done, sire. I know that you must wed me to uphold your
claim to France, for otherwise in the world's eyes you are shamed. You
sell, and I with my body purchase, peace for France. There is no need
of a lover's posture when hucksters meet."
"So changed!" he said, and he was silent for an interval, still
kneeling. Then he began: "You force me to point out that I no longer
need a pretext to hold France. France lies before me prostrate. By
God's singular grace I reign in this fair kingdom, mine by right of
conquest, and an alliance with the house of Valois will neither make
nor mar me." She was unable to deny this, unpalatable as was the fact.
"But I love you, and therefore as man wooes woman I sue to you. Do you
not understand that there can be between us no question of expediency?
Katharine, in Chartres orchard there met a man and a maid we know of;
now in Troyes they meet again--not as princess and king, but as man and
maid, the wooer and the wooed. Once I touched your heart, I think.
And now in all the world there is one thing I covet--to gain for the
poor king some portion of that love you would have squandered on the
harper." His hand closed upon hers.
At his touch the girl's composure vanished. "My lord, you woo too
timidly for one who comes with many loud-voiced advocates. I am
daughter to the King of France, and next to my soul's salvation I
esteem France's welfare. Can I, then, fail to love the King of
England, who chooses the blood of my countrymen as a judicious garb to
come a-wooing in? How else, since you have ravaged my native land,
since you have besmirched the name I bear, since yonder afield every
wound in my dead and yet unburied Frenchmen is to me a mouth which
shrieks your infamy?"