James Cabell - Chivalry

"To die!" she said.

He shrugged his broad shoulders. "In the end we necessarily die."

Dame Meregrett turned and passed back into the hut without faltering.

And when he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, Sire Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation. "Presently come your brother and his tattling lords. To be discovered here with me at night, alone, means infamy. If Philippe chance to fall into one of his Capetian rages it means death."

"Nay, lord, it means far worse than death." And she laughed, though not merrily.

And now, for the first time, Sire Edward regarded her with profound consideration, as may we. To the fingertips this so-little lady showed a descendant of the holy Lewis he had known and loved in old years. Small and thinnish she was, with soft and profuse hair that, for all its blackness, gleamed in the lamplight with stray ripples of brilliancy, as you may see a spark shudder to extinction over burning charcoal. The Valois nose she had, long and delicate in form, and overhanging a short upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious in tint, and her skin the very Hyperborean snow in tint. As for her eyes, say, gigantic onyxes—or ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. They were too big for her little face; and they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which nervously endured each incident of life—invariably acquiescent, as a foreigner must necessarily be, to the custom of the country. In fine, this Meregrett was strange and brightly colored; and she seemed always thrilled with some subtle mirth, like that of a Siren who notes how the sailor pauses at the bulwark and laughs a little (knowing the outcome), and does not greatly care. Yet now Dame Meregrett's countenance was rapt.

And Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. "Madame, I do not understand."

Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. "It means that I love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for presently you die. Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may hearten me to live."

The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming to Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful haze of forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes a god and transmutes whatever in corporeal man had been a defect into some divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must tell you in this place, since no other occasion offers, that even until the end of her life it was so. For to her what in other persons would have seemed but flagrant dulness showed, somehow, in Sire Edward, as the majestic deliberation of one that knows his verdict to be decisive, and hence appraises cautiously; and if sometimes his big, calm eyes betrayed no apprehension of the jest at which her lips were laughing, and of which her brain very cordially approved, always within the instant her heart convinced her that a god is not lightly moved to mirth.

And now it was a god— O deus certè! —who had taken a woman's paltry face between his hands, half roughly. "And the maid is a Capet!" Sire Edward mused.

"Never has Blanch desired you any ill, beau sire. But it is the Archduke of Austria that she loves, beau sire. And once you were dead, she might marry him. One cannot blame her," Meregrett considered, "since he wishes to marry her, and she, of course, wishes to make him happy."

"And not herself, save in some secondary way!" the big King said. "In part I comprehend, madame. And I, too, long for this same happiness, impotently now, and much as a fevered man might long for water. And my admiration for the Death whom I praised this morning is somewhat abated. There was a Tenson once—Lord, Lord, how long ago! I learn too late that truth may possibly have been upon the losing side—" He took up Rigon's lute.

Sang Sire Edward:

ay, the song ran thus. Now listen, madame—listen, while for me Death waits without, and for you ignominy."

Sang Sire Edward:

Sire Edward put aside the lute. "Thus ends the Song of Service," he said, "which was made not by the King of England but by Edward Plantagenet—hot-blooded and desirous man!—in honor of the one woman who within more years than I care to think of has attempted to serve but Edward Plantagenet."

"I do not comprehend," she said. And, indeed, she dared not.

But now he held both tiny hands in his. "At best, your poet is an egotist. I must die presently. Meantime I crave largesse, madame! ay, a great largesse, so that in his unending sleep your poet may rehearse our present love." And even in Rigon's dim light he found her kindling eyes not niggardly.

So that more lately Sire Edward strode to the window and raised big hands toward the spear-points of the aloof stars. "Master of us all!" he cried; "O Father of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the Scourge of France, the conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and the flail of the accursed race that slew Thine only Son! the King of England am I who have made of England an imperial nation and have given to Thy Englishmen new laws! And to-night I crave my hire. Never, O my Father, have I had of any person aught save reverence or hatred! never in my life has any person loved me! And I am old, my Father—I am old, and presently I die. As I have served Thee—as Jacob wrestled with Thee at the ford of Jabbok—at the place of Peniel—" Against the tremulous blue and silver of the forest she saw in terror how horribly the big man was shaken. "My hire! my hire!" he hoarsely said. "Forty long years, my Father! And now I will not let Thee go except Thou hear me."

And presently he turned, stark and black in the rearward splendor of the moon. " As a prince hast thou power with God, " he calmly said, " and thou hast prevailed . For the King of kings was never obdurate, m'amye.