James Cabell: Chivalry

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:

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?"

He rose. "And yet, for all that, you love me."

She could not find words with which to answer him at the first effort, but presently she said, quite simply, "To see you lying in your coffin I would willingly give up my hope of heaven, for heaven can afford no sight more desirable."

"You loved Alain."

"I loved the husk of a man. You can never comprehend how utterly I loved him."

Now I have to record of this great king a piece of magnanimity which bears the impress of more ancient times. "That you love me is indisputable," he said, "and this I propose to demonstrate. You will observe that I am quite unarmed save for this dagger, which I now throw out of the window—" with the word it jangled in the courtyard below. "I am in Troyes alone among some thousand Frenchmen, any one of whom would willingly give his life for the privilege of taking mine. You have but to sound the gong beside you, and in a few moments I shall be a dead man. Strike, then! for with me dies the English power in France. Strike, Katharine! if you see in me but the King of England."

She was rigid; and his heart leapt when he saw it was because of terror.

"You came alone! You dared!"

He answered, with a wonderful smile, "Proud spirit! how else might I conquer you?"

"You have not conquered!" Katharine lifted the baton beside the gong, poising it. God had granted her prayer—to save France. Now might the past and the ignominy of the past be merged in Judith's nobler guilt. But I must tell you that in the supreme hour, Destiny at her beck, her main desire was to slap the man for his childishness. Oh, he had no right thus to besot himself with adoration! This dejection at her feet of his high destiny awed her, and pricked her, too, with her inability to understand him. Angrily she flung away the baton. "Go! ah, go!" she cried, as one strangling. "There has been enough of bloodshed, and I must spare you, loathing you as I do, for I cannot with my own hand murder you."

But the King was a kindly tyrant, crushing independence from his associates as lesser folk squeeze water from a sponge. "I cannot go thus. Acknowledge me to be Alain, the man you love, or else strike upon the gong."

"You are cruel!" she wailed, in her torture.

"Yes, I am cruel."

Katharine raised straining arms above her head in a hard gesture of despair. "You have conquered. You know that I love you. Oh, if I could find words to voice my shame, to shriek it in your face, I could better endure it! For I love you. Body and heart and soul I am your slave. Mine is the agony, for I love you! and presently I shall stand quite still and see little Frenchmen scramble about you as hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill you. And after that I shall live! I preserve France, but after I have slain you, Henry, I must live. Mine is the agony, the enduring agony." She stayed motionless for an interval. "God, God! let me not fail!" Katharine breathed; and then: "O fair sweet friend, I am about to commit a vile action, but it is for the sake of France that I love next to God. As Judith gave her body to Holofernes, I crucify my heart for France's welfare." Very calmly she struck upon the gong.