MONTMAURE

There came into the hall, ushered by the seneschal and walking with Stephen the Marshal to whom had been confided his entertainment, a knight banneret, very good-looking, very sumptuously attired, with an air of confidence verging on audacity. Behind and attending him were two other knights, lesser men; behind these, three esquires. All were dressed with a richness; all, indefinably, stood in a debatable strip between friend and foe.

The envoy came before the dais. On yesterday welcome had been given him, and to-day set to hear the desires of Count Savaric of Montmaure. Now, Gaucelm being, by virtue of three castles, his lord’s lord, the envoy just bent the knee, then straightened himself and stood prepared to give that forth which the count had preferred to send by word of mouth rather than by written letter. There occurred, however, some delay. A wider audience than had gathered to the town’s hearing would come to hear what Savaric of Montmaure had to say. Lord and lady, knight and squire, were entering, and now came Alazais, clad in white bordered with ermine. Her lord made her welcome; the Princess Audiart, rising, stood until she was seated. Her ladies, fair and gaily dressed, made about her a coloured cloud. Two that were Audiart’s came and stood behind that princess.

At last, quiet falling, the prince once more gave to Montmaure’s envoy words of welcome, then, “We should have been glad,” he said, “to have greeted in friendly wise Count Savaric himself! His son, too, who is said to be a puissant knight.”

“So please you, they may come some day to Roche-de-FrÊne, the one and the other,” answered the envoy. “But now my master, the great count, is busy at home where he makes a muster of lords who are his men. At Autafort, with Duke Richard, is the young count, Sir Jaufre, red-gold, shining and mighty, like a star of high fortune!”

“The ‘great count,’” said Gaucelm, with suavity, “is well employed. And you grow a poet, Sir Guiraut of the Vale, when you speak of the young count.”

“Sir,” said Guiraut of the Vale, “he is poet himself and theme of poets! He is the emerald of knights, the rose of chivalry! That lady counts herself fortunate for whom he rides in tournament. His lance unhorses the best knights, and behind him, in his quarrels, are the many spears of Montmaure—I will be highly bold and say the spears, for number like the trees in the forest, of Duke Richard of Aquitaine!”

Gaucelm smiled. “Duke Richard,” he said, “hath just now, I think, need of his spears before Toulouse.”

Guiraut of the Vale waved his hand. “Count Raymond will come to terms, and the Duke’s spears be released. But all this, sir, is not the matter of my message! Truly, when I think of Count Jaufre I forget myself in praises!”

“Guiraut, Guiraut!” thought the Princess Audiart. “You forget not one word of what you have been taught to say!”

Gaucelm the Fortunate spoke with serenity. “A servant so devoted is as a sack of gold in the count’s treasury!—Now your message, sir envoy, and the matter upon which you were sent?”

Guiraut of the Vale breathed deep, lifted his chest beneath bliaut and robe of costly stuffs, made his shoulders squarer, included now in the scope of his look alike Gaucelm and his daughter.

“Prince of Roche-de-FrÊne,” he said, “it is to my point—though the Blessed Virgin is my witness I am not so commissioned!—to cause you and this priceless lady, the princess your daughter, to see Sir Jaufre de Montmaure as the glass of the world shows him, the brightest coal upon the hearth of chivalry! The world hears of the wisdom of the Princess Audiart—well wot I that did she see and greet him, she would value this knight aright! As for him, like his sword to his side, he would wear there this wisdom! Fair prince, my master, the great count, would see Montmaure and Roche-de-FrÊne one in wedlock. Count Savaric of Montmaure offers his son, Count Jaufre, for bridegroom to the Princess Audiart!”

The great hall rustled loudly. Only the dais seemed quiet, or only the two figures immediately fronting Sir Guiraut of the Vale. Out of the throng seemed to come a whisper, electric and flowing, “Here is a suitor that would hang Roche-de-FrÊne at his belt!” It lifted and deepened, the whispering and muttering. It took the tone of distant thunder.

Gaucelm the Fortunate raised his hand for quiet. When it was attained he spoke courteously to Guiraut of the Vale. “Count Savaric echoes my soul when he would have peace and friendliness and not enmity between Roche-de-FrÊne and Montmaure. Certes, that may be brought about, or this way or that way! For the way that he advances, it must be considered, and that with gravity and courteousness. But, such is the plenitude of life, the same city may be reached by many roads.”

“Beseeching your pardon,” said Guiraut of the Vale, “that is true of many cities, but not, according to the count my master, of this one!”

The hall rustled again. The lord of Roche-de-FrÊne sat quietly in his great chair, but he bent upon Montmaure’s envoy a look profound and brooding. At last he spoke. “We are not to be threated, Sir Guiraut of the Vale, into a road whatsoever! Nor is this city, that is only to be reached so, of such importance, perhaps, to Roche-de-FrÊne as imagineth the ‘great count.’” Wherewith he ceased to deal with Guiraut and spoke aside to his daughter.

The Princess Audiart rose from her chair. She stood in long, flowing red shading from the cherry of her under-robe through the deepened crimson of the bliaut to the almost black of her mantle. At the base of her bare throat glowed on its chain of gold the pear-shaped ruby.

“To-day, Sir Guiraut of the Vale,” she said, “we receive the count your master’s fair proffer of his son for my bridegroom. For my part, I thank the count for his courtesy and good-will and fair words to me-ward. The prince my father consenting, one week from to-day, here in the hall, you shall have answer to bear back. Until then, the prince my father, and the princess my fair and good step-dame, and myself, who must feel the honour your master does me, and all the knights and ladies of this court give you fair welcome! An we may, we will make the days until then pass pleasantly for a knight of whose valiancy this castle is not ignorant.”

She spoke without pride or feeling in her voice, simply, in the tone of princely courtesy. A stranger could not have told if she liked that proffer or no. Guiraut of the Vale made obeisance. Prince Gaucelm rose, putting an end to the audience.

Two hours later he came to the chamber of the ugly princess. It was a room set in a tower, large, with narrow windows commanding three directions. A curtained archway showed a smaller, withdrawing room. Rugs lay upon the oaken floor and the walls were hidden by hangings worked with the wanderings of Ulysses. The bed had silken curtains and a rich coverlet. Jutting from the hearth came a great cushioned settle. There were chairs, carven chests for wardrobe, a silver image of the Virgin, nearby a row of books. Present in the room when the prince came were the Lady Guida and the girl who had told in hall the story of Arthur’s knights. These, upon his entrance, took embroidery-frame and book, and disappeared into the smaller room.

Prince Gaucelm sat in the corner of the settle by the hearth. The Princess Audiart now stood before him, and now walked with slow steps to one or another window and back again. The prince watched her.

“Audiart, Audiart!” he said at last; “I doubt me that the hey-day and summer of peace has passed for Roche-de-FrÊne!”

“Winter is the time between summers.”

“Have it so.... It was wise to delay this knight the week out.”

“Ah, where is Wisdom? Even the hem of her mantle turns out to be a stray light-beam in shadow. But it seemed wiser. So one may think a little.”

“Now, by God Almighty!” said Gaucelm, “it needs not much thinking!”

“No. But still one may take time and speak Montmaure fair, while we study what will come and how we meet and defeat it.... Let us deal first with Thibaut Canteleu and Roche-de-FrÊne.”

Gaucelm the Fortunate, leaning forward, warmed his hands at the fire which was burning with a singing sound. “Aye, my burghers—Child, all over the green earth they cease to be mine or another’s burghers!”

“They grow to be their own men. Yes.”

“Gaucelm of the Star thought that idea the strangest, most abhorrent!—and his father before him—and so backward into time. It outraged them, angering the very core of the heart within them! Late and soon they would have fought the town!”

“Or late or soon they would have lost.—Does it in truth anger us that Thibaut Canteleu and the others should wish to choose their magistrates?”

“No. Montmaure angers me, but not Thibaut.”

“Then let us act toward the town from our own thought and mind, and not from that of our fathers.”

She paced the floor. “I sorrow for Bishop Ugo’s disappointment. It will be a sword thrust if we and the town embrace!”

“Aye. Ugo desires that quarrel for us.... Well, then we say to Thibaut Canteleu, ‘Burgher, grow your own man!’”

“I counsel it,” said Audiart. “It is right.”

“And wise?”

She turned from the window. “Pardieu! If war is upon us Montmaure’s self might say that it were wise!”

The prince pondered it. “Yes—Put, then, Thibaut Canteleu and the town to one side. Now Montmaure—Montmaure—Montmaure!”

The princess came to the settle and sat down, leaning her elbow upon a small table drawn before it. Upon the table lay writing materials, together with a number of small counters and figures of wood. There was also a drawing, a rude map as it were, of the territory of Roche-de-FrÊne, bordered by the names of contiguous great fiefs. She drew this between them, and the two, father and daughter, studied it as they talked. With her left hand she moved the little pieces of wood to and fro. Upon each was painted a name—names of castles, towns, villages, abbeys that held from Gaucelm. One piece had the name of that fief for which Montmaure had been wont to give homage.

Gaucelm looked at the long space upon the drawing marked “Aquitaine.” “Guiraut of the Vale is a braggart. I know not if he bragged beyond reason of Richard’s great help.”

“It is like enough that he did. But Richard Lion-Heart has often backed another’s quarrel. Pity he looks not to see if it be stained or clean!”

“Toulouse still holds him.... Stephen the Marshal must go quickly to King Philip at Paris.”

“Yes. Before Guiraut of the Vale’s week is gone by—or right upon that departure? Right upon it, I think.”

“Yes. No need to show Guiraut what you expect.” He touched the wooden pieces with his finger, running over the names of his barons. “Letters must be written and heralds sent. Madonna Alazais and Guida. Raimon Seneschal and Aimeric the Gay, had best plan shining and dazzling entertainment for Guiraut and his following.... I know well that the ‘great count’ is making his muster.”

“He makes no secret of it.... But one road to peace for Roche-de-FrÊne.”

“That is not a road,” said Prince Gaucelm, “or it is a road of dishonour. Savaric of Montmaure and his son have in them a demon. Waste no words upon a way that we are not going!”

He took a quill from the table, dipped it into ink, and began to write upon a bit of paper, making a computation of strength. He put down many lords whose suzerain he was, and beneath each name its quota of knights, sergeants, and footmen, the walled towns besides Roche-de-FrÊne that called him lord, the villages, the castles, manors, and religious houses, Roche-de-FrÊne itself, and this great castle that had never been taken. He added allies to the list, and the sum of gold and silver he thought he could command, and with part of it purchase free companies. He paused, then added help—an uncertain quantity—from his suzerain, King Philip. “It is a fair setting-forth,” said Gaucelm the Fortunate. “Once, and that not so long ago, Montmaure would not in his most secret dream have dared—. But he has made favour and wily bargains, and snapping up this fief and that, played the great carp in the pool! And now drifts by this fancy of Aquitaine for Count Jaufre, and he seizes it.”

“Aye, it is Richard that gives sunshine to his war!”

Gaucelm rose from the settle. “I love not war, though we live in a warring world. Little by little, child, it may change.”

The day passed, the evening of courtly revel, of paces woven around Guiraut of the Vale. The Princess Audiart was again in her chamber, her women dismissed, the candles extinguished, the winter stars looking in at window, fresh logs upon the hearth casting tongues of light. These struck in places the pictured hangings. Here Ulysses dallied with Calypso and here he met Circe. Here Nausicaa threw the ball, and here Penelope wove the web and unravelled it, and here Minerva paced with shield and spear. The figures were as rude as the hues were bright, but a fresh and keen imagination brought them into human roundness and proportion.

Audiart lay in her bed, and they surrounded her as they had done since early girlhood when at her entreaty this chamber in the White Tower had been given her. She was glad now to be alone with the familiar figures and with the fitful firelight and the stars that, when the hearth-blaze sank, she could see through the nearest window. She was read in the science of her time; those points of light, white or bluish or golden, had for her an interest of the mind and of the spirit. Now, through the window, there gleamed in upon her one of the astrologers’ “royal” stars. She by no means believed all that the astrologers said. She was sceptic toward much that was preached, doubted the usefulness of much that was done, and yet could act though she doubted. When doubt, growing, became a sense of probability, then—swerve her as it might from her former course—she would act, as forthright as might be, in the interest of that sense.

The star shone in the western window—red Aldebaran. “You look like war, Aldebaran, Aldebaran!” thought the princess. “Come, tell me if Gaucelm, the good man, will win over Savaric, the wicked man—You tell naught—you tell naught!”

She turned on her side and spread her arms and buried her face between them, and lay so for some minutes. Then she rose from the bed, and taking from a chair beside it a long and warm robe of fine wool, slipped her arms into its great hanging sleeves, girded it around her and crossed to the southward-giving window. She looked forth and down upon wall and moat, and beyond upon the roofs of Roche-de-FrÊne. A warder pacing the walk below, passed with a gleam of steel from her sight. A convent bell rang midnight. There was no moon, but the night burned with stars. One shot above the town, leaving a swiftly fading line of light. She saw all the roofs that lay this way and knew them. Castle and town, river and bridge, and the country beyond, felt not seen to-night—they were home, bathed, suffused, coloured by the profound, the inmost self, part of the self, dissolving into it. She stood before the window, a hand upon either wall, and her heart yearned over Roche-de-FrÊne. Again a star shot, below her the warder passed again. Suddenly she thought of Jaufre de Montmaure, and much disliked the thought. She spoke to the stars. “Ah,” she said, “it is much misery at times to be a woman!”

A week from that day, in the castle hall, crowded from end to end,—Bishop Ugo here to-day with churchmen behind him, ranks of knights, Gaucelm’s great banner spread behind the dais, and against it his shield blazoned with the orbs and wheat-sheafs of Roche-de-FrÊne and the motto I build; everywhere a richness of spectacle, an evidenced power, a high vitality, a tension as of the bow string before the skilled arrow flies,—Thibaut Canteleu received the answer for the town, and Guiraut of the Vale the answer for Count Savaric of Montmaure. Behind Thibaut was the deputation that had attended before, the same blues and greens and reds, bright as stained glass, the same faces swarthy, or lacking blood, or pink and white of hue. Thibaut knelt in his blue tunic and grey hosen, his cap beside him on the pavement.

Henceforth the town of Roche-de-FrÊne should choose its own officers—mayor, council and others. Likewise it should give judgement through judges of its election upon its own offenders—always excepting those cases that came truly before its lord’s bailiff-court. Prince Gaucelm gave decision gravely, without haughtiness, or warning against abuse of kindness, or claim upon increased loyalty, and without many words. Roche-de-FrÊne took it, first, in a silence complete and striking, then with a long breath and fervent exclamation.

Thibaut Canteleu lifted his cap and stood up. He faced the dais squarely. “My lord the prince and my Lady Audiart, give you thanks! As you deal justly, so may this town deal justly! As you fight for us so may we fight for you! As you give us loving-kindness, so may we give you loving-kindness! As you measure to us, so may we measure to you! May you live long, lord, and be prince of us and of our children! And you, my Lady Audiart, may you stay with us, here in Roche-de-FrÊne!”

Whereby it might be guessed that Thibaut and Roche-de-FrÊne knew well enough of Guiraut of the Vale’s errand. Probably they did. The time was electric, and Montmaure had been seen for some time, looming upon the horizon. Roche-de-FrÊne, nor no town striving for liberties, cared for Montmaure. He was of those who would strangle in its cradle the infant named Middle Class.

Gaucelm thanked the burghers of Roche-de-FrÊne, and the Princess Audiart said, “I thank you, Thibaut Canteleu, and all these with you.”

The fifty were marshalled aside. They did not leave the hall; it behooved them to stay and hear the answer to Montmaure.

All the gleaming and coloured particles slightly changed place, the bowstring tension grew higher. Here was now Guiraut of the Vale, the accompanying knights behind him, standing to hear what answer he should take to the Count of Montmaure. The answer given him to take was brief, clothed in courtesy, and without a hint in its voice or eye of the possibility of untoward consequences. Roche-de-FrÊne thanked Montmaure for the honour meant, but the Princess Audiart was resolved not to wed.

Guiraut of the Vale, magnificent in dress and air, heard, and towered a moment in silence, then flung out his hands, took a tone, harsh and imperious. “You give me, Prince of Roche-de-FrÊne, an ill answer with which to return to the great count, my master! You set a bale-fire and a threat upon the one road of peace between your land and Montmaure! And for that my master was foretold by a sorceress that so would you answer him, I am here not unprovided with an answer to your answer!” With that he made a stride forward and flung down a glove upon the dais, at Gaucelm’s feet. “Gaucelm the Fortunate, Montmaure will war upon you until he and his son shall sit where now you and your daughter are seated! Montmaure will war upon you until men know you as Gaucelm the Unhappy! Montmaure will war upon you until the Princess Audiart shall kneel for mercy to Count Jaufre—”

The hall shouted with anger. The ranks of knights slanted toward the envoy. Gaucelm’s voice at last brought quiet. “The man is a herald and sacred!—My lord Stephen the Marshal, take up the Count of Montmaure’s glove!”

So began the war between Roche-de-FrÊne and Montmaure.