THE WHITE TOWER

Upon the wide steps that led to the door he found Pierol, who, turning, went before him through a hall or general room to a flight of stone steps winding upward. From this he was brought into a small room where were ladies and pages. Pierol, motioning to him to wait, vanished through an opposite door, then in a moment reappeared. Garin, answering his sign, went forward and, passing beneath the lintel, found himself in the princess’s chamber.

She sat beside a table placed for the better light before the southern window. She had been writing; as she looked up, the light behind her made a kind of aureole for her head and long throat and slender, energetic form. “Give you good day, Sir Garin de Castel-Noir!” She nodded to Pierol and the girl Maeut, who left the room. Near her stood a middle-aged, thin, scholarly-appearing man in a plain dress—her secretary, Master Bernard. She spoke to him, giving directions. He answered, gathered up papers from the table, and bowing low, followed Pierol and Maeut. The princess sat on for a few moments in silence, her forehead resting upon her hand. To Garin, standing between table and door, the whole fair, large room, the figured hangings, the beamed ceiling, the deep-set windows, the floor where were strewn autumn buds and shoots from the garden, seemed a rich casket filled with a playing light. The light had a source. Garin felt a madness, a desire to sink wholly into the light, a wish to unclasp once and forever the hold of the past, accompanied by a dizzying sense that in no wise might it be done. The inner man put steadying hands upon himself, forced himself to look into the eye of the day and of duty.

The princess let fall her hand, turned slightly in her chair, and faced him. Her look was still and intent; behind it stood a strong will, an intelligence of wide scope. There might seem, besides, a glow, a tension, an urging as of something that would bloom but was held back, postponed, dominated. She spoke and her voice had a golden and throbbing quality. “I have sent for you, Sir Knight, because I wish to ask of some one great service, and it has seemed to me that you would answer to my asking”—

Garin came nearer to her. “I answer, my lady.”

“You will be, and that for long days, in great peril. Peril will begin this very eve. I do not wish now to tell you the nature of your adventure—or to tell you more than that it is honourable.”

“Tell me what you will, and no more than that.”

“Then listen, and keep each step in mind—and first of all, that the matter is secret.”

“First, it is secret.”

“At dusk a jongleur will come to your lodging, bringing with him a dress like his own, his lute and other matters. Clothe yourself like him, cut your hair closer, somewhat darken your face. Let him aid you; he is faithful. Wear a dagger, but no other arms nor armour. You will go, too, afoot. Knightly courage you will need, but keen wit must do for hauberk and destrier, sword and lance. When you are dressed you are henceforth, for I know not how many days or weeks, the jongleur Elias of Montaudon.”

“Thus far, I have it in mind.—Elias of Montaudon.”

“You know the postern called the rock-gate, on the northern face, between Black Tower and Eagle Tower?”

“Yes.”

“When the bells are ringing complin you will go there alone. You will wait, saying naught to any who may come or go. If you are challenged you will say that you are there upon the princess’s errand, and you will give the word of the night. It is Two Falcons.”

“At complin. Two Falcons.”

“You will wait until there comes to you one mantled. That one will give you a purse, and will say to you, ‘Saint Martin’s summer.’ You will answer ‘Dreams may come true.’”

“‘Saint Martin’s summer.’—‘Dreams may come true.’”

“The purse you will take and keep—keep hidden. It will be for need. That mantled one you are to follow, and, without question, obey.—Now tell over each direction.”

Garin told, memory making no slip. He ended, “I am to follow that one who, giving me a purse, says Saint Martin’s summer. He commands and I obey—”

“As you would myself,” said the princess.

She turned in her chair, looked beyond him out of the window upon tower and roof and wall and the November sky of a southern land. “I hold you true knight, true poet, true man,” she said. “Else never should I give you this charge! Keep that likewise in memory, Sir Garin de Castel-Noir, Sir Garin de l’Isle d’Or!—And now you will go. Tell Sir Aimar de Panemonde that you have been set a task and given an errand full of danger, but that, living, he may see you again by Christmas-tide. Tell no one else anything.”

“Going on such an errand and so long,” said Garin, “and one from which there may be no returning, I would kiss your hands, my liege—”

She gave her hand to him. He knelt and kissed the slender, long, embrowned fingers. As they rested, that moment, upon his own hand, there came into his mind some association. It came and was gone like distant lightning, and he could not then give it name or habitation. He rose and stepped backward to the door. “God be with you, my Lady Audiart—”

“And with you,” the princess answered gravely.

Outside the White Tower he paused a moment and looked about him, his eyes saying farewell to a place that in actuality he might not see again. It was the same with the garden through which he presently passed. Now it was sunshine, but he thought of it in dusk, the eve when he had been there with the princess. Later in the day he found Aimar, and told him as much as he had been told to tell and no more. The two brothers-in-arms spent an hour together, then they embraced and Aimar went to the men of both, defending the city wall. When the sun hung low in the west, Garin sent there also his squire Rainier. The sun sank and he stood at his window watching.

Around the corner came a man in brown and yellow like autumn leaves. Slung from his neck by a red ribbon he had a lute, and under his arm a bundle wrapped in cloth. He reached the entrance below, spoke to the porter and vanished within. Garin, turning from the window, answered presently to a knock at the door. “Enter!” There came in, the room being yet lit by the glow from the western sky, the brown and yellow man. He proved to be a slender, swarthy person, with long, narrow eyes and a Moorish look. “I speak,” he asked, “to the right noble knight and famed troubadour Sir Garin of the Black Castle—also called of the Golden Island?”

“I am Sir Garin. I know you for the jongleur, Elias of Montaudon.”

“That poor same, fair sir!—Moreover I have here that which will make in the castle of Roche-de-FrÊne two of me!” He laid the bundle on a bench, and slipping the ribbon from his neck placed there the lute as well. “When I think that from so famous a troubadour I am set to make a poor jongleur, I know not how to take my task! But princesses are to be obeyed, and truly I would do much for this one! And for your comfort, lord,—only for that and never for vain-glory,—I would have you to wit that Elias of Montaudon hath a kind of fame of his own!” As he spoke he untied the bundle. “It is an honour that you should deign to wear me, so to speak, in whatever world you are repairing to—and Saint Orpheus my witness, I know not where that world may be! So, noble sir, here is, at your pleasure, a holiday suit—only a little worn—and a name no more frayed than is reasonably to be expected!”

“Gramercy for both,” answered Garin. “How have you fared between the days of Guy of Perpignan and now?”

He took the lute from the bench, swept the strings, and sang, though not loudly:—

“In the spring all hidden close,
Lives many a bud will be a rose!
In the spring ’tis crescent morn,
But then, ah then, the man is born!
In the spring ’tis yea or nay,
Then cometh Love makes gold of clay!
Love is the rose and truest gold,
Love is the day and soldan bold—”

He owned a golden voice. The notes throbbed through the room. The last died and he laughed. “That song of Guy of Perpignan!—I heard it first from you.”

The jongleur stood staring. “I have been in many a castle hall and bower, at an infinity of tournaments, and two or three times where baron and knight were warring in earnest. Up and down and to and fro in the world I practice my art, riding when I can and walking when I must! But when I had the honour of striking viol, lute or harp before you, sir, I do not recall. Being so famous a knight and poet, I should remember—. And then men say that you have been long years in the land over the sea!”

“It was before I went to the land over the sea.—But come! the sky is fading, it is growing dusk. Light the candles there, and begin to turn me into your other self!”

The candles lighted, the jongleur shook out the clothing he had brought. “Earth-brown and leaf-green,” he said, “with a hooded mantle half the one and half the other.—Now, noble sir, I can play the squire as well as the squire himself!”

He took from Garin the garments which the latter put off, gave him piece by piece those that were to transform. The two, jongleur and knight and troubadour, were much of a height. Garin was the more strongly built, but the garb of the time had amplitude of line and fold and Elias of Montaudon’s holiday dress fitted him well enough. “Of deliberation and answering to command,” said the jongleur, “it has been slightly rent and patched here and discoloured there. If the Blessed Virgin herself asked me why, I could not tell her! I have also a phial of a brown stain which, lightly used, makes for a darker complexion than the sun has painted you with.... Sir Garin of the Golden Island, in hall and bower and wherever chivalry gathers, I have sung songs of your making. But when and where have I sung to you? I have curiosity, without which life would be a dull dream! Give largesse, sir, in the coin of a wiser world—that is to say, give knowledge!”

Garin smiled. “I was esquire then, and you sat by a boulder in the forest, not so many miles from Roche-de-FrÊne and discoursed of jongleur merits and of an ingrate master, to wit, Guy of Perpignan! Also you sang certain lines of his, and spoke sapiently of Lord Love. That, too, was an autumn day, and when I was a squire I wore brown and green.”

The jongleur lifted both hands and beat a measure upon his brow. “Ha! and by Saint Arion and his dolphin you did! A proper squire, singing a hunting stave—Ha!” cried Elias of Montaudon, “I have heard sing a master-poet before he was poet!

“‘In the spring ’tis crescent morn,
But then, ah then, the man is born!’

though, certainly, it was autumn!... I remember as clear as crystal! I was asleep, and you waked me, coming up on a great horse—”

“Just so. I left the saddle and let Paladin graze, and we talked.”

“Clearer than Saint Martha’s well!... The talk was of love, and that you had not yet a lady—By all the saints!” said Elias, “how soon must that have been remedied!”

Garin laughed, but there was rue in his laughter. He suddenly grew grave, the rock-gate before his mind’s eye. “Come! let us have this stain. Shorten, too, my hair.” He took up Elias’s lute and tried its strings. “Play the jongleur—play the jongleur. Every man has in his garde-robe every dress! The king can play the beggar, and the beggar play the king. Be quick, courageous, and certain in the change—so is the trumpet answered!” He put the lute’s ribbon over his head. “It falls night. Hasten, Elias of Montaudon, and while you work tell me your own life these six years! If I make another of you, I will make it like!”

The man in brown and yellow worked.... At last there stood in the lighted room, not a knight and crusader and troubadour, but a jongleur with a brown face, with a somewhat tarnished brown and green attire, with a lute slung by a red ribbon, on his head a cap with a black cock’s feather, at his belt a dagger and sheath of the best Italian make. Dagger and sheath the knight had supplied. It was now full night, and not so long before, from every house of the religious in Roche-de-FrÊne, complin would ring. The jongleur in brown and yellow took his leave. He had his fee, he said; likewise a command as to a bridled tongue. The jongleur in brown and green saw him go, then put out the candles, pushed a bench to the window, and sitting down waited for the signal next in order.... At last the bells spoke.

Garin, rising, left the room and descended the stair. The passage below was in darkness, at the exit but one smoky torch. He drew the wide mantle closely about him, pulling the hood over head and face. His step said to the man at the door, “Sir Garin.” He passed, an unquestioned inmate, not clearly seen in the light blown by the autumn wind.