I awoke next morning with the music of the horn in my ears, and leaping
out of the ancient bed, went to a curtained window where the sunlight
filtered through little deep-set panes. The horn ceased as I looked
into the court below.
A man who might have been brother to the two falconers of the night
before stood in the midst of a pack of hounds. A curved horn was
strapped over his back, and in his hand he held a long-lashed whip. The
dogs whined and yelped, dancing around him in anticipation; there was
the stamp of horses, too, in the walled yard.
“Mount!” cried a voice in Breton, and with a clatter of hoofs the two
falconers, with falcons upon their wrists, rode into the courtyard
among the hounds. Then I heard another voice which sent the blood
throbbing through my heart: “Piriou Louis, hunt the hounds well and
spare neither spur nor whip. Thou Raoul and thou Gaston, see that the
_epervier_ does not prove himself _niais_, and if it be best in your
judgment, _faites courtoisie à l’oiseau. Jardiner un oiseau_, like
the _mué_ there on Hastur’s wrist, is not difficult, but thou, Raoul,
mayest not find it so simple to govern that _hagard_. Twice last week
he foamed _au vif_ and lost the _beccade_ although he is used to the
_leurre_. The bird acts like a stupid _branchier_. _Paître un hagard
n’est pas si facile._”
Was I dreaming? The old language of falconry which I had read in
yellow manuscripts—the old forgotten French of the middle ages was
sounding in my ears while the hounds bayed and the hawks’ bells tinkled
accompaniment to the stamping horses. She spoke again in the sweet
forgotten language:
“If you would rather attach the _longe_ and leave thy _hagard au bloc_,
Raoul, I shall say nothing; for it were a pity to spoil so fair a day’s
sport with an ill-trained _sors_. _Essimer abaisser_,—it is possibly
the best way. _Ça lui donnera des reins._ I was perhaps hasty with the
bird. It takes time to pass _à la filière_ and the exercises _d’escap_.”
Then the falconer Raoul bowed in his stirrups and replied: “If it be
the pleasure of Mademoiselle, I shall keep the hawk.”
“It is my wish,” she answered. “Falconry I know, but you have yet to
give me many a lesson in _Autourserie_, my poor Raoul. Sieur Piriou
Louis mount!”
The huntsman sprang into an archway and in an instant returned, mounted
upon a strong black horse, followed by a piqueur also mounted.
“Ah!” she cried joyously, “speed Glemarec René! speed! speed all! Sound
thy horn, Sieur Piriou!”
The silvery music of the hunting-horn filled the courtyard, the hounds
sprang through the gateway and galloping hoof-beats plunged out of the
paved court; loud on the drawbridge, suddenly muffled, then lost in the
heather and bracken of the moors. Distant and more distant sounded the
horn, until it became so faint that the sudden carol of a soaring lark
drowned it in my ears. I heard the voice below responding to some call
from within the house.
“I do not regret the chase, I will go another time. Courtesy to the
stranger, Pelagie, remember!”
And a feeble voice came quavering from within the house, “_Courtoisie_.”
I stripped, and rubbed myself from head to foot in the huge earthen
basin of icy water which stood upon the stone floor at the foot of
my bed. Then I looked about for my clothes. They were gone, but on a
settle near the door lay a heap of garments which I inspected with
astonishment. As my clothes had vanished, I was compelled to attire
myself in the costume which had evidently been placed there for me to
wear while my own clothes dried. Everything was there, cap, shoes, and
hunting doublet of silvery grey homespun; but the close-fitting costume
and seamless shoes belonged to another century, and I remembered
the strange costumes of the three falconers in the courtyard. I was
sure that it was not the modern dress of any portion of France or
Brittany; but not until I was dressed and stood before a mirror between
the windows did I realize that I was clothed much more like a young
huntsman of the middle ages than like a Breton of that day. I hesitated
and picked up the cap. Should I go down and present myself in that
strange guise? There seemed to be no help for it, my own clothes were
gone and there was no bell in the ancient chamber to call a servant; so
I contented myself with removing a short hawk’s feather from the cap,
and, opening the door, went downstairs.
By the fireplace in the large room at the foot of the stairs an old
Breton woman sat spinning with a distaff. She looked up at me when
I appeared, and, smiling frankly, wished me health in the Breton
language, to which I laughingly replied in French. At the same
moment my hostess appeared and returned my salutation with a grace
and dignity that sent a thrill to my heart. Her lovely head with its
dark curly hair was crowned with a head-dress which set all doubts
as to the epoch of my own costume at rest. Her slender figure was
exquisitely set off in the homespun hunting-gown edged with silver,
and on her gauntlet-covered wrist she bore one of her petted hawks.
With perfect simplicity she took my hand and led me into the garden in
the court, and seating herself before a table invited me very sweetly
to sit beside her. Then she asked me in her soft quaint accent how I
had passed the night, and whether I was very much inconvenienced by
wearing the clothes which old Pelagie had put there for me while I
slept. I looked at my own clothes and shoes, drying in the sun by the
garden-wall, and hated them. What horrors they were compared with the
graceful costume which I now wore! I told her this laughing, but she
agreed with me very seriously.
“We will throw them away,” she said in a quiet voice. In my
astonishment I attempted to explain that I not only could not think of
accepting clothes from anybody, although for all I knew it might be the
custom of hospitality in that part of the country, but that I should
cut an impossible figure if I returned to France clothed as I was then.
She laughed and tossed her pretty head, saying something in old French
which I did not understand, and then Pelagie trotted out with a tray on
which stood two bowls of milk, a loaf of white bread, fruit, a platter
of honey-comb, and a flagon of deep red wine. “You see I have not yet
broken my fast because I wished you to eat with me. But I am very
hungry,” she smiled.
“I would rather die than forget one word of what you have said!” I
blurted out, while my cheeks burned. “She will think me mad,” I added
to myself, but she turned to me with sparkling eyes.
“Ah!” she murmured. “Then Monsieur knows all that there is of
chivalry—”
She crossed herself and broke bread. I sat and watched her white hands,
not daring to raise my eyes to hers.
“Will you not eat?” she asked. “Why do you look so troubled?”
Ah, why? I knew it now. I knew I would give my life to touch with my
lips those rosy palms—I understood now that from the moment when I
looked into her dark eyes there on the moor last night I had loved her.
My great and sudden passion held me speechless.
“Are you ill at ease?” she asked again.
Then, like a man who pronounces his own doom, I answered in a low
voice: “Yes, I am ill at ease for love of you.” And as she did not
stir nor answer, the same power moved my lips in spite of me and I
said, “I, who am unworthy of the lightest of your thoughts, I who abuse
hospitality and repay your gentle courtesy with bold presumption, I
love you.”
She leaned her head upon her hands, and answered softly, “I love you.
Your words are very dear to me. I love you.”
“Then I shall win you.”
“Win me,” she replied.
But all the time I had been sitting silent, my face turned toward her.
She, also silent, her sweet face resting on her upturned palm, sat
facing me, and as her eyes looked into mine I knew that neither she nor
I had spoken human speech; but I knew that her soul had answered mine,
and I drew myself up feeling youth and joyous love coursing through
every vein. She, with a bright colour in her lovely face, seemed as
one awakened from a dream, and her eyes sought mine with a questioning
glance which made me tremble with delight. We broke our fast, speaking
of ourselves. I told her my name and she told me hers, the Demoiselle
Jeanne d’Ys.
She spoke of her father and mother’s death, and how the nineteen of
her years had been passed in the little fortified farm alone with her
nurse Pelagie, Glemarec René the piqueur, and the four falconers,
Raoul, Gaston, Hastur, and the Sieur Piriou Louis, who had served her
father. She had never been outside the moorland—never even had seen a
human soul before, except the falconers and Pelagie. She did not know
how she had heard of Kerselec; perhaps the falconers had spoken of it.
She knew the legends of Loup Garou and Jeanne la Flamme from her nurse
Pelagie. She embroidered and spun flax. Her hawks and hounds were her
only distraction. When she had met me there on the moor she had been
so frightened that she almost dropped at the sound of my voice. She
had, it was true, seen ships at sea from the cliffs, but as far as
the eye could reach the moors over which she galloped were destitute
of any sign of human life. There was a legend which old Pelagie told,
how anybody once lost in the unexplored moorland might never return,
because the moors were enchanted. She did not know whether it was true,
she never had thought about it until she met me. She did not know
whether the falconers had even been outside, or whether they could go
if they would. The books in the house which Pelagie, the nurse, had
taught her to read were hundreds of years old.
All this she told me with a sweet seriousness seldom seen in any one
but children. My own name she found easy to pronounce, and insisted,
because my first name was Philip, I must have French blood in me. She
did not seem curious to learn anything about the outside world, and
I thought perhaps she considered it had forfeited her interest and
respect from the stories of her nurse.
We were still sitting at the table, and she was throwing grapes to the
small field birds which came fearlessly to our very feet.
I began to speak in a vague way of going, but she would not hear of it,
and before I knew it I had promised to stay a week and hunt with hawk
and hound in their company. I also obtained permission to come again
from Kerselec and visit her after my return.
“Why,” she said innocently, “I do not know what I should do if you
never came back;” and I, knowing that I had no right to awaken her with
the sudden shock which the avowal of my own love would bring to her,
sat silent, hardly daring to breathe.
“You will come very often?” she asked.
“Very often,” I said.
“Every day?”
“Every day.”
“Oh,” she sighed, “I am very happy. Come and see my hawks.”
She rose and took my hand again with a childlike innocence of
possession, and we walked through the garden and fruit trees to a
grassy lawn which was bordered by a brook. Over the lawn were scattered
fifteen or twenty stumps of trees—partially imbedded in the grass—and
upon all of these except two sat falcons. They were attached to the
stumps by thongs which were in turn fastened with steel rivets to their
legs just above the talons. A little stream of pure spring water flowed
in a winding course within easy distance of each perch.
The birds set up a clamour when the girl appeared, but she went from
one to another, caressing some, taking others for an instant upon her
wrist, or stooping to adjust their jesses.
“Are they not pretty?” she said. “See, here is a falcon-gentil. We call
it ‘ignoble,’ because it takes the quarry in direct chase. This is a
blue falcon. In falconry we call it ‘noble’ because it rises over the
quarry, and wheeling, drops upon it from above. This white bird is a
gerfalcon from the north. It is also ‘noble!’ Here is a merlin, and
this tiercelet is a falcon-heroner.”
I asked her how she had learned the old language of falconry. She did
not remember, but thought her father must have taught it to her when
she was very young.
Then she led me away and showed me the young falcons still in the nest.
“They are termed _niais_ in falconry,” she explained. “A _branchier_ is
the young bird which is just able to leave the nest and hop from branch
to branch. A young bird which has not yet moulted is called a _sors_,
and a _mué_ is a hawk which has moulted in captivity. When we catch a
wild falcon which has changed its plumage we term it a _hagard_. Raoul
first taught me to dress a falcon. Shall I teach you how it is done?”
She seated herself on the bank of the stream among the falcons and I
threw myself at her feet to listen.
Then the Demoiselle d’Ys held up one rosy-tipped finger and began very
gravely.
“First one must catch the falcon.”
“I am caught,” I answered.
She laughed very prettily and told me my _dressage_ would perhaps be
difficult, as I was noble.
“I am already tamed,” I replied; “jessed and belled.”
She laughed, delighted. “Oh, my brave falcon; then you will return at
my call?”
“I am yours,” I answered gravely.
She sat silent for a moment. Then the colour heightened in her cheeks
and she held up her finger again, saying, “Listen; I wish to speak of
falconry—”
“I listen, Countess Jeanne d’Ys.”
But again she fell into the reverie, and her eyes seemed fixed on
something beyond the summer clouds.
“Philip,” she said at last.
“Jeanne,” I whispered.
“That is all,—that is what I wished,” she sighed,—“Philip and Jeanne.”
She held her hand toward me and I touched it with my lips.
“Win me,” she said, but this time it was the body and soul which spoke
in unison.
After a while she began again: “Let us speak of falconry.”
“Begin,” I replied; “we have caught the falcon.”
Then Jeanne d’Ys took my hand in both of hers and told me how with
infinite patience the young falcon was taught to perch upon the wrist,
how little by little it became used to the belled jesses and the
_chaperon à cornette_.
“They must first have a good appetite,” she said; “then little by
little I reduce their nourishment; which in falconry we call _pât_.
When, after many nights passed _au bloc_ as these birds are now, I
prevail upon the _hagard_ to stay quietly on the wrist, then the bird
is ready to be taught to come for its food. I fix the _pât_ to the end
of a thong, or _leurre_, and teach the bird to come to me as soon as
I begin to whirl the cord in circles about my head. At first I drop
the _pât_ when the falcon comes, and he eats the food on the ground.
After a little he will learn to seize the _leurre_ in motion as I whirl
it around my head or drag it over the ground. After this it is easy
to teach the falcon to strike at game, always remembering to _‘faire
courtoisie á l’oiseau’_, that is, to allow the bird to taste the
quarry.”
A squeal from one of the falcons interrupted her, and she arose to
adjust the _longe_ which had become whipped about the _bloc_, but the
bird still flapped its wings and screamed.
“What _is_ the matter?” she said. “Philip, can you see?”
I looked around and at first saw nothing to cause the commotion, which
was now heightened by the screams and flapping of all the birds. Then
my eye fell upon the flat rock beside the stream from which the girl
had risen. A grey serpent was moving slowly across the surface of the
boulder, and the eyes in its flat triangular head sparkled like jet.
“A couleuvre,” she said quietly.
“It is harmless, is it not?” I asked.
She pointed to the black V-shaped figure on the neck.
“It is certain death,” she said; “it is a viper.”
We watched the reptile moving slowly over the smooth rock to where the
sunlight fell in a broad warm patch.
I started forward to examine it, but she clung to my arm crying,
“Don’t, Philip, I am afraid.”
“For me?”
“For you, Philip,—I love you.”
Then I took her in my arms and kissed her on the lips, but all I could
say was: “Jeanne, Jeanne, Jeanne.” And as she lay trembling on my
breast, something struck my foot in the grass below, but I did not heed
it. Then again something struck my ankle, and a sharp pain shot through
me. I looked into the sweet face of Jeanne d’Ys and kissed her, and
with all my strength lifted her in my arms and flung her from me. Then
bending, I tore the viper from my ankle and set my heel upon its head.
I remember feeling weak and numb,—I remember falling to the ground.
Through my slowly glazing eyes I saw Jeanne’s white face bending close
to mine, and when the light in my eyes went out I still felt her arms
about my neck, and her soft cheek against my drawn lips.
* * * * *
When I opened my eyes, I looked around in terror. Jeanne was gone. I
saw the stream and the flat rock; I saw the crushed viper in the grass
beside me, but the hawks and _blocs_ had disappeared. I sprang to my
feet. The garden, the fruit trees, the drawbridge and the walled court
were gone. I stared stupidly at a heap of crumbling ruins, ivy-covered
and grey, through which great trees had pushed their way. I crept
forward, dragging my numbed foot, and as I moved, a falcon sailed from
the tree-tops among the ruins, and soaring, mounting in narrowing
circles, faded and vanished in the clouds above.
“Jeanne, Jeanne,” I cried, but my voice died on my lips, and I fell
on my knees among the weeds. And as God willed it, I, not knowing,
had fallen kneeling before a crumbling shrine carved in stone for our
Mother of Sorrows. I saw the sad face of the Virgin wrought in the cold
stone. I saw the cross and thorns at her feet, and beneath it I read:
“PRAY FOR THE SOUL OF THE
DEMOISELLE JEANNE D’Ys,
WHO DIED
IN HER YOUTH FOR LOVE OF
PHILIP, A STRANGER.
A.D. 1573.”
But upon the icy slab lay a woman’s glove still warm and fragrant.