Such sights and scenes as these will show the chivalrous army with whom I served in but an indifferent light. And ill it would beseem me, who remember this time with pride, and the gloomy pleasure of my latter life, to stain the fair fame of English chivalry or to discredit with the foul life of its outer remnant our gallant army or that Royal person who shone in the white light of his day, the bravest knight and the gentlest king of any then living.
This Sovereign was, above everything, a soldier. He observed all that passed in his camp with extraordinary acumen. It was my chance, soon after we joined the army, to catch his eye by some small deed of prowess in a mêlée near his standard, and that shrewd Sovereign called me to him, and asked my name and fame—the which I answered plausibly enough, for my tongue was never tied to the cold sterility of truth—and then, pointing to where there lay on his shield a famous dead English captain of mercenaries, asked me if I would do duty for that soldier. I knew the troops he had led. They were grizzled veterans, rough old dogs every one of them, who had rode their close-packed chargers, shoulder to shoulder, through the thick tangles of a hundred fights. I had seen them alone, those stern old fellows, put down their lances and, altogether, like the band of close-united brothers that they were, go thundering over the dusty French campagnas, and, to the music that they loved so well, of ringing bits and hollow-sounding scabbards, of steel martingale and harness—delighting in the dreadful odds—charge ten times their number, and burst through the reeling enemy, and override and trample him down, and mow great swathes from his seething ranks, and revel in that thunderous carnage, as if the red dust of the mêlée were the sweetest air that had ever fanned their aged beards!
“Ah! Prince!” I said, speaking out boldly as that remembrance came before me, “by Thor! if those good fellows will take so young a one as I for leader, in place of a better, I will gladly let it be a compact.”
“They will have you readily enough,” replied the King, “even if it were not mine by right to name their captain, according to their rules.” And, mounting the gray palfrey, he rode in camp, the better to spare his roan war-horse, he took me to where the troops were ranged up after the charge that had cost them their leader, and gave them over to me.
Thus was I provided with a lordly following, and the King’s gratitude for my poor service expressed; but still I appeared strangely to haunt the Sovereign’s memory. He looked back at me once or twice as though I were something most uncommon, and not long afterward he would have me sup with him.
It happened as we fell back from the farthest limit of our raid, burning and plundering as we went along the Somme. One evening a fair French chateau on a hill, bending down by grassy slopes to the slow stream below, had fallen to our assault. In truth, that fair pile had found us rude visitors. Twice in the storm the red flames had burst out of its broad upper corridors, and twice had been subdued. Its doors and gateways were beaten in, its casements burst and empty, the moat about it was full of dead men, the ivy hung in unsightly tatters from its turrets, and on the smooth grass glacis copingstone and battlements—hurled on us by the besieged as we swarmed up the ladders—lay in crumbling ruins. Yet it was, as I say, a stately place, even in its new-made desolation; and I was standing at the close of a long, dusty autumn day by my tent door, watching the yellow harvest moon come over the low French hills, and shedding as it rose a pale light over the English camp and that lordly place a little set back from it, when down through the twilight came a page who wore on sleeve and tunic-breast the royal cognizance. Was I, he questioned, the stranger knight new come from England? and, that being answered, he gave his message: “King Edward would be glad if that knight would take his evening meal with him.”
I went—how could I else?—and there in the great torn and disordered hall of the castle we had taken was a broad table spread and already laid with rough magnificence. Page and squire were hurrying here and there in that stately pillared chamber, spreading on the tables white linens that contrasted most strangely with the black, new-made smoke-stains on the ceiling; piling on them gold and silver basins and ewers and plates bent and broken, just as our men-at-arms had saved them from pillaged crypts or rifled treasure-cells. Others were fixing a hundred gleaming torches to the notched, scarred columns of that banquet-place, and while one would be wiping half-dried blood of French peer and peasant from floor and doorway, or sprinkling rushes or sawdust on those gory patches, another was decanting redder burgundy—the which babbled most pleasantly to thirsty soldier ears as it passed in gushing streams from the cellar skins to supper flagon! It was an episode full of quaint contradictions!
But it was not at the feast I looked—not at the gallant table already flashing back the gleaming crimson lights from its stored magnificence. There round that hall in groups and two and threes, chatting while they waited, laughing and talking over the incidents of the day, were some hundred warlike English nobles. And amid them, the most renowned warrior where all were famous, the tallest and most resolute-looking in a circle of heroes, stood the King. His quick, restless eye saw me enter, and he came toward me, slighting my reverence, and taking my hand like one good soldier welcoming another. He led me round that glittering throng, making me known to prince and captain, and knight and noble, and ever as we went a hush fell upon those gallant groups. Maybe ’twas all the King’s presence, but I doubt it. It was not on him all eyes were fixed so hard, it was not for him those stern soldiers were silent a spell and then fell to whisper and wondering among themselves as we passed down the pillared corridor—ah! nor was it all on account of that familiar, knightly host that the page-boys in gaping wonder upset the red wine, and the glamoured servers forgot to set down their loaded dishes as they stood staring after us! No matter! I was getting accustomed to this silent awe, and little regarded it. It was but the homage, I thought, their late-born essences paid unwitting to my older soul.
Well! we talked and laughed a spell, seeming to wait for something, the while the meat grew cold, and then the arras over the great arch at the bottom of the hall lifted, and with hasty strides, like those late to a banquet, came in two knights. The first was black from top to toe—black was his dancing plume, black was his gleaming armor, black were his gloves and gyves, and never one touch of color on him but the new golden spurs upon his heels and the broad jewel belt that held his cross-handled sword.
As this dusky champion entered a smile of pleasure shone over the King’s grave face. He ran to him and took his hand, the while he put his other affectionately on his shoulder.
“My dear boy!” he said, forgetting monarch in father, “I have been thinking of thee for an hour. You are working too hard; you must be weary. Are there no tough captains in my host that you must be in the saddle early and late, and do a hundred of the duties of those beneath you, trying with that young hand of yours each new-set stake of our evening palisades, sampling the rude soldiers’ supper-rations, seeing the troop go down to water, and counting and conning the lay of the Frenchman’s twinkling watch-fire? My dear hungry lad, you are over-zealous—you will make me grieve for that new knighthood I have put upon you!”[3]
“Oh, ’tis all right, father! I am but trying to infuse a little shame of their idle ways into this silken company of thine. But I do confess I am as hungry as well can be—hast saved a drink of wine and a loaf for me?”
“Saved a loaf for thee, my handsome boy! Why, thou shouldst have a loaf though it were the last in France and though the broad stream of England’s treasure were run dry to buy it. We have waited—we have not e’en uncovered.”
“Why, then, father, I will set the example. Here! some of you squires discover me; I have been plated much too long!” and the ready pages ran forward, and with willing fingers rid the young prince of his raven harness. They unbuckled and unriveted him, until he stood before us in the close-fitting quilted black silk that he wore beneath, and I thought, as I stood back a little way and watched, that never had I seen a body at once so strong and supple. Then he ran his hands through his curly black hair, and took his place midway down the table; the King sat at the head; and when the chaplain had muttered a Latin grace we fell to work.
It was a merry meal in that ample hall, still littered under the arches with the broken rubbish of the morning’s fight. The courteous English King sat smiling under the stranger canopy, and overhead—rocking in the breeze that came from broken casements—were the tattered flags our dead foeman’s hands had won in many wars. Our table shone with heaped splendor shot out from the spoil-carts at the door; the King’s seneschal blazed behind his chair in cloth of gold; while honest rough troopers in weather-stained leather and rusty trappings (pressed on the moment to do squires’ duty) waited upon us, and ministered, after the fashion of their stalwart inexperience, to our needs. Amid all those strange surroundings we talked of wine, and love, and chivalry; we laughed and drank, tossing off our beakers of red burgundy to the health of that soldier Sovereign under the daïs, and drank deep bumpers to the gray to-morrow that was crimsoning the eastern windows ere we had done. Indeed, we did that night as soldiers do who live in pawn to chance, and snatch hasty pleasures from the brink of the unknown while the close foeman’s watch-fires shine upon their faces, and each forethinks, as the full cups circle, how well he may take his next meal in Paradise. Of all the courtly badinage and warrior-mirth that ran round the loaded table while plates were emptied and tankards turned, but one thing lives in my mind. Truth, ’twas a strange chance, a most quaint conjunction, that brought that tale about, and put me there to hear it!
I have said that when the Black Prince entered the banquet hall there came another knight behind him, a strong, tall young soldier in glittering mail, something in whose presence set me wondering how or where we two had met before. Ere I could remember who this knight might be, the King and Prince were speaking as I have set down, and then the trumpets blew and we fell to meat and wine with soldier appetites, and the unknown warrior was forgotten, until—when the feast was well begun, looking over the rim of a circling silver goblet of malmsey I was lifting, at a youth who had just taken the empty place upon my right—there—Jove! how it made me start!—unhelmeted, unharnessed, lightly nodding to his comrades and all unwotting of his wondrous neighborhood, was that same Lord Codrington, that curly-headed gallant who had leaned against me in the white moonlight of St. Olaf’s cloisters when I was a blessed relic, a silent, mitered, listening, long-dead miracle!
Gods! you may guess how I did glare at him over the sculptured rim of that great beaker, the while the red wine stood stagnant at my lips—and then how my breath did halt and flag as presently he turned slow and calm upon me, and there—a foot apart—the living and the dead were face to face, and front to front! I scarce durst breathe as he took the heavy pledge-cup from my hand—would he know me? would he leap from his seat with a yell of fear and wonder, and there, from some distant vantage-point among the shadowy pillars, with trembling finger impeach me to that startled table? Hoth! I saw in my mind’s eye those superstitious warriors tumbling from their places, the while I alone sat gloomy and remorseful at the littered tressels, and huddling and crowding to the shadows—as they would not for a thousand Frenchmen—while that brave boy with chattering teeth and white fingers clutched upon the kingly arm did, incoherent, tell my tale, and with husky whisper say how ’twas no soldier of flesh and blood who sat there alone at the long white table, under the taper lights, self-damned by his solitude! I waited to see all this, and then that soldier, nothing wotting, glanced heedlessly over me—he wiped his lips with his napkin, and took a long draught of the wine within the cup. Then smiling as he handed it on, and turning lightly round as he laughed, “A very good tankard, indeed, Sir Stranger—such a one as is some solace for eight hours in a Flemish saddle! But there was just a little too much nutmeg in the brew this time—didst thou not think so?”
I murmured some faint agreement, and sat back into my place, watching the great beaker circle round the table, while my thoughts idly hovered upon what might have chanced had I been known, and how I might have vantaged or lost by recognition. Well! the chance had passed, and I would not take it back. And yet, surely fate was sporting with me! The cup had scarcely made the circle and been drained to the last few drops among the novices at the farther end, when I was again in that very same peril!
“You are new from England, Lord Worringham,” the young Earl said across me to a knight upon my other hand: “is there late news of interest to tell us?”
“Hardly one sentence. All the news we had was stale reports of what you here have done. Men’s minds and eyes have been all upon you, and each homeward courier has been rifled of his budget at every port and village on his way by a hundred hungry speculators, as sharply as though he were a rich wanderer beset by footpads on a lonely heath. The common people are wild to hear of a great victory, and will think of nothing else. There is not one other voice in England—saving, perhaps, that some sleek city merchants do complain of new assessments, and certain reverend abbots, ’tis said, of the havoc you have played with this year’s vintage.”
“Yes,” answered the Earl with a laugh, “one can well believe that last. Sanctity, I have had late cause to know, is thirsty work. Why, the very Abbot of St. Olaf’s himself, usually esteemed a right reverend prelate, did charge me at my last confessional to send him hence some vats of malmsey! No doubt he shrewdly foresaw this dearth that we are making.”
“What!” exclaimed the other Knight, staring across me. “Hast thou actually confessed to that bulky saint? Mon Dieu! but you are in luck! Why, Lord Earl, thou hast disburdened thyself to the wonder of the age—to the most favored son of Mother Church—the associate of beatified beings—and the particularly selected of the Apostles! Dost not know the wonder that has happened to St. Olaf’s?”
“Not a whit. It was ordinary and peaceful when I was there a few weeks back.”
“Then, by my spurs, there is some news for you! You remember that wondrous thing they had, that sleeping image that men swore was an actual living man, and the holy brothers, who, no doubt, were right, declared was a blessed saint that died three hundred years ago? You too must know him, Sir,” he said, turning to me, and looking me full in the face: “you must know him, if you ever were at St. Olaf’s.”
“Yes,” I answered, calmly returning his gaze. “I have been at St. Olaf’s at one time or another, and I doubt if any man living knows that form you speak of better than I do myself.”
“And I,” put in the devout young Earl, “know him too. A holy and very wondrous body! Surely God’s beneficence still shields him in his sleep?”
“Shields him! Why, Codrington, he has been translated; removed just as he was to celestial places; ’tis on the very word of the Abbot himself we have it, and, where good men meet and talk in England, no other tale can compete for a moment with this one.”
“Out with it, bold Worringham! Surely such a thing has not happened since the time of Elijah.”
“’Tis simple enough, and I had it from one who had it from the Abbot’s lips. That saintly recluse had spent a long day in fast and vigils amid the cloisters of his ancient abbey—so he said—and when the evening came had knelt after his wont an hour at the shrine, lost in holy thought and pious exercise. Nothing new or strange appeared about the Wonder. It lay as it had ever lain, silent, in the cathedral twilight, and the good man, full of gentle thoughts and celestial speculations, if we may take his word for it—and God forfend I should do otherwise!—the holy father even bent over him in fraternal love and reverence the while, he says, the beads ran through his fingers as Ave and Paternoster were told to the sleeping martyr’s credit by scores and hundreds. Not a sign of life was on the dead man’s face. He slept and smiled up at the vaulted roof just as he had done year in and out beyond all memory, and therefore, as was natural, the Abbot thought he would sleep on while two stones of the cathedral stood one upon another.
“He left him, and, pacing down the aisles, wended to the refectory, where the brothers had near done their evening meal, and there, still in holy meditation, sat him down to break that crust of dry bread and drink that cup of limpid water which (he told my friend) was his invariable supper.”
“Hast thou ever seen the reverend father, good Worringham?” queried a young knight across the table as the story-teller stopped for a moment to drink from the flagon by his elbow.
“Yes, I have seen him once or twice.”
“Why, so have I,” laughed the young soldier—“and, by all the Saints in Paradise, I do not believe he sups on husks and water.”
“Believe or not as you will, it is a matter between thyself and conscience. The Abbot spoke, and I have repeated just what he said.”
“On with the story, Lord Earl,” laughed another: “we are all open-mouthed to hear what came next, and even if his Reverence—in holy abstraction, of course—doth sometime dip fingers into a venison pasty by mistake for a bread trencher, or gets hold of the wine-vessel instead of the water-beaker—’tis nothing to us. Suppose the reverent meal was ended—as Jerome says it should be—in humble gladness, what came then?”
“What came then?” cried Worringham. “Why, the monks were all away—the tapers burned low—the Abbot sat there by himself, his praying hands crossed before him—when wide the chancery door was flung, and there, in his grave-clothes, white and tall, was the saint himself!”
Every head was turned as the English knight thus told his story, and, while the younger soldiers smiled disdainfully, good Codrington at my side crossed himself again and again, and I saw his soldier lips trembling as prayer and verse came quick across them.
“Ah! the saint was on foot without a doubt, and it might have chilled all the breath in a common man to see him stand there alive, and witful, who had so long been dead and mindless, to meet the light of those sockets where the eyes had so long been dull! But ’tis a blessed thing to be an abbot!—to have a heart whiter than one’s mother’s milk, and a soul of limpid clearness. That holy friar, without one touch of mortal fear—it is his very own asseveration—rose and welcomed his noble guest, and sat him in the daïs, and knelt before him, and adored, and, bold in goodness, waited to be cursed or canonized—withered by a glance of those eyes no man could safely look on, or hoist straight to St. Peter’s chair, just as chance should have it.”
“Wonderful and marvelous!” gasped Codrington, “I would have given all my lands to have knelt at the bottom of that hall whose top was sanctified by such a presence.”
“And I,” cried another knight, “would have given this dinted suit of Milan that I sit in, and a tattered tent somewhere on yonder dark hillside (the which is all I own of this world), to have been ten miles away when that same thing happened. Surely it was most dread and grim, and may Heaven protect all ordinary men if the fashion spreads with saints!”
“They will not trouble you, no doubt, good comrade. This one rose in no stern spirit to rebuke, but as the pale commissioner of Heaven to reward virtue and bless merit. Ill would it beseem me to tell, or you, common, gross soldiers of the world, to listen to what passed between those two. ’Twere rank sacrilege to mock the new-risen’s words by retailing them over a camp table, even though the table be that of the King himself; and who are we, rough, unruly sons of Mother Church, that we should submit to repetition the converse of a prelate with one we scarce dare name!” Whereon Worringham drank silently from his goblet, and half a dozen knights crossed themselves devoutly.
“And there is another reason why I should be silent,” he continued. “The Abbot will not tell what passed between them. Only so much as this: he gives out with modest hesitance that his holy living and great attainments had gone straighter to Heaven than the smoke of Abel’s altar-fire, and thus, on these counts and others, he had been specially selected for divine favors, and his ancient Church for miracle. The priest, so the Wonder vowed, must be made a cardinal, and have next reversion of the Papal chair. Meanwhile pilgrims were to hold the wonder-shrine of St. Olaf’s no less holy tenantless than tenanted, to be devout, and above all things liberal, and pray for the constant intercession of that Messenger who could no longer stay. Whereon, quoth the Abbot, a wondrous light did daze the watcher’s sight—unheard, unseen of other men the walls and roof fell wide apart—and then and there, amid a wondrous hum of voices and countless shooting stars, that Presence mounted to the sky, and the Abbot fell fainting on the floor!”
“Truly a strange story, and like to make St. Olaf’s coffers fuller than King Edward’s are.”
“And to do sterling service to the reverend Prior! What think you, Sir?” said one, turning to me, who had kept silent all through this strange medley of fact and cunning fiction. “Is it not a tale that greatly redounds to the holy father’s credit, and like to do him material service?”
“No doubt,” I answered, “it will serve the purpose for which ’twas told. But whether the adventure be truly narrated or not only the Abbot and he who supped with him can know.”
“Ah!” they laughed, “and, by Our Lady! you may depend upon it the priest will stick to his version through thick and thin.”
“And by all oaths rolled in one,” I fiercely cried, striking my first upon the table till the foeman’s silver leaped (for the lying Abbot’s story had moved my wrath), “by Thor and Odin, by cruel Osiris, by the bones of Hengist and his brother, that saint will never contradict him!”
Shortly after we rose, and each on his rough pallet sought the rest a long day’s work had made so grateful.
Yes! we sought it, but to one, at least, it would not come for long! Hour after hour I paced in meditation about my tent with folded arms and bent head, thinking of all that had been or might have been, and, after that supper of suggestions, the last few weeks rose up strongly before me. Again and again all that I had seen and done in that crowded interval swept by my eyes, but the one thing that stayed while all others faded, the one ever-present shadow among so many, was the remembrance of the fair, unhappy girl Isobel. Full of rougher thoughts, I have not once spoken of her, yet, since we landed on this shore, her winning presence had grown on me every day I lived, and now to-night, here, close on the eve, as we knew it, of a desperate battle, wherefrom no man could see the outcome, the very darkness all about me, after the flickering banquet lights, were full of Isobel. I laughed and frowned by turn to myself in my lonely walk that evening, to find how the slighted girl was growing upon me. Was I a silly squire at a trysting-place, decked out with love-knots and tokens, a green gallant in a summer wood, full of sighs and sonnets, to be so witched by the bare memory of a foolish white wench who had fallen enamored of my swart countenance? It was idle nonsense; I would not yield. I put it behind me, and thought of to-morrow—the good King and my jolly comrades—and then there again was the outline of Isobel’s fair face in the yellow rift of the evening sky; there were Isobel’s clear eyes fixed, gentle and reproachful, on me, and the glimmer of her white draperies amid the shifting shadow of the tent, and even the evening wind outside was whispering as it came sighing over the wild grass lands—“Isobel!” Ah! and there was something more behind all that thought of Isobel. There were eyes that looked from Isobel’s shadowy face, wherever in my fancy I saw it, that filled me with a strange unrest, and a whisper behind the whispers of that maiden voice that was hers and yet was not—a fine thin music that played upon the fibers of my heart; a presence behind a haunting presence; a meaning behind a meaning that stirred me with the strangest fancies. And before another night was over I understood them!
Well, in fact and in deed, I was in love like many another good soldier, and long did I strive to find a specific for the gentle malady, but when this might not be—why, I laughed!—the thing itself must needs be borne; ’twas a common complaint, and no great harm; when the war was over, I would get back to England, and, if the maid were still of the same way of thinking—had I not stood a good many knocks and buffets in the world?—a little ease would do me good. Ah! a very fair maid—a fair maid, indeed! And her dower some of the fattest land you could find in a dozen shires!
Thus, schooling myself to think a due entertainment of the malady were better than a churlish cure, I presently decided to write to the lady; for, I argued, if to-morrow ends as we hope it may, why, the letter will be a good word for a homeward traveling hero crowned with new-plucked bays; and if to-morrow sees me stiff and stark, down in yon black valley, among to-morrow’s silent ones, still ’twill be a meet parting, and I owe the maid a word or two of gentleness. I determined, therefore, to write to her at once a scroll, not of love—for I was not ripe for that—but of compassion—of just those feelings that one has to another when the spark of love trembles to the kindling but is not yet ablaze. And because I did not know my own mind to any certainty, and because that youth Flamaucœur was both shrewd and witty—as ready-witted and as nimble, indeed, with tongue and pen as though he were a woman—I determined it should be he who should indite that epistle and ease my conscience of this duty which had grown to be so near a pleasure.
I sent forthwith for Flamaucœur, and he came at once, as was his wont, sheathed in comely steel from neck to heel, his close-shut helm upon his head, but all weaponless as usual, save for a toy dagger at his side.
“Good friend,” I said, “you carry neither sword nor mace. That is not wise in such a camp as this, and while the Frenchman’s watchfires smoke upon the eastern sky. But, never mind, I will arm thee myself for the moment. Here”—passing him the things a writer needs—“here is a little weapon wherewith they say much mischief has been done at one time or another in the world, and some sore wounds taken and given; wield it now for me in kinder sort, and write me the prettiest epistle thou canst—not too full of harebrained love or the nonsense that minstrels deal in—but friendly, suave and gentle, courteous to my lady-love!”
“To whom?” gasped Flamaucœur, stepping back a pace.
“Par Dieu, boy!” I laughed. “I spoke plain enough! Why, thou consumèd dog in the manger, while thy own heart is confessedly in condition of eternal combustion, may not another knight even warm himself by a spark of love without your glowering at him so between the bars of thine iron muzzle? Come! Why should not I love a maid as well as you—ah! and write to her a farewell on the eve of battle?”
“Oh! write to whom you will, but I cannot—will not—help you”; and the youth, who knew nothing of my affections, and to whom I had never spoken of a woman before, walked away to the tent door and lifting the flap, looked out over the dim French hills, seeming marvelous perturbed.
Poor lad, I thought to myself, how soft he is! My love reminds him of his own, and hence he fears to touch a lover pen. And yet he must. He can write twice as ingenious, shrewd as I, and no one else could do this letter half so well. “Come, Flamaucœur! indeed, you must help me. If you are so sorry over your own reflections, why, the more reason for lending me thy help. We are companions in this pretty grief, and should render to each the help due between true brothers in misfortune. I do assure you I have near broken a maiden heart back in England.”
“Perhaps she was unworthy of thy love—why should you write?”
“Unworthy! Gods! She was unhappy, she was unfortunate—but unworthy, never! Why, Flamaucœur, here, as I have been chewing the cud of reflection all these days, I have begun to think she was the whitest, sweetest maid that ever breathed.”
“Some pampered, sickly jade, surely, Sir Knight,” murmured the young man in strange jealous-sounding tones whereof I could not fail to heed the bitterness; “let her by, she has forgotten thee mayhap, and taken a new love—those pink-and-white ones were ever shallow!”
“Shallow! you wayward boy! By Hoth! had you seen our parting you would not have said so. Why, she wept and clung to me, although no words of love had ever been between us——”
“A jade, a wanton!” sobbed that strange figure there by the shadowy tent-flap, whereon, flaming up, “God’s death!” I shouted, “younker, that goes too far! Curb thy infernal tongue, or neither thy greenness nor unweaponed state shall save thee from my sword!”
“And I,” quoth Flamaucœur, stepping out before me—“I deride thy weapon—I will not turn one hair’s breadth from it—here! point it here, to this heart, dammed and choked with a cruel affection! Oh! I am wretched and miserable, and eager against all my instincts for to-morrow’s horrors!”
Whereat that soft and silly youth turned his gorget back upon me and leaned against the tent-pole most dejectedly. And I was grieved for him, and spun my angry brand into the farthest corner, and clapped him on the shoulder, and cheered him as I might, and then, half mindful to renounce my letter, yet asked him once again.
“Come! thou art steadier now. Wilt thou finally write for me to my leman?”
“By every saint in Paradise,” groaned the unhappy Flamaucœur, “I will not!”
“What! not do me a favor and please thy old friend, Isobel of Oswaldston, at one and the same time?”
“Please whom?” shrieked Flamaucœur, starting like a frightened roe.
“Why, you incomprehensible boy, Isobel of Oswaldston, thy old playmate, Isobel. Surely I had told thee before it was of her I was thus newly enamored?”
What passed then within that steel casque I did not know, though now I well can guess, but that slim gallant turned from me, and never a word he spoke. A gentle tremor shook him from head to heel, and I saw the steel plates of his harness quiver with the throes of his pent emotion, while the blue plumes upon his helmet-top shook like aspen-leaves in the first breath of a storm, and over the bars of his cruel visor there rippled a sigh such as surely could only have come from deep down in a human heart.
All this perplexed me very much and made me thoughtful, but before I could fashion my suspicions, Flamaucœur mastered his feelings, and came slowly to the little table, and, saying in a shy, humble voice, wondrously altered, “I will write to thy maid!” drew off his steel gauntlet and took up the pen. That smooth, fine hand of his trembled a little as he spread the paper on the table, and then we began.
OUR CAMP BY THE SOMME.
August 24, 1376.
To the Excellent Lady Isobel of Oswaldston this brings greeting and salutation.
Madam: May it please you to accept the homage of the humblest soldier who serves with King Edward?
“That,” said Flamaucœur, stopping for a moment to sharpen his pen, “is not a very amorous beginning.”
“No,” I answered, “and I have a mind first only to tell her how we fare. You see, good youth, our parting was such she weeps in solitude, I expect, hoping nothing from me, and therefore, I would wish to break my amendment to her gently. Faith! she may be dying of love for aught I know, and the shock of a frank avowal of my new-awakened passion might turn her head.”
“Why yes, Sir Knight,” quoth my comrade, taking a fresh dip of ink, “or, on the other hand, she may now be footing it to some gay measure on those polished floors we wot of, or playing hide-and-seek among the tapestries with certain merry gallants!”
“Jove! If I thought so!”
“Well, never mind. Get on with thy missive, and I will not interrupt again.”
After leaving your father’s castle, Madam, I fell in about nightfall with that excellent youth, Flamaucœur, according to your Ladyship’s supposition. We crossed the narrow sea; and since, have scarcely had time to dine or sleep, or wipe down our weary chargers, or once to scour our red and rusty armor. We joined King Edward, Madam, just as his Highness unfurled the lions and fleur de lys upon the green slopes of the Seine, and thence, right up to the walls of Paris, we scoured the country. We turned then, Queen of Tournaments, northward, toward Flanders.
At this Flamaucœur lay down his pen for a moment, and, heaving a sigh, exclaimed, “That ‘Queen of Tournaments’ does not come well from thee, Sir Knight! Thou slighted this very girl once in the lists when the prize was on thy spear-point.”
“Par Dieu! and so I did. I had clean forgotten it! But how, in Heaven’s name, came you to know of that, who were not there?”
“Some one told me of it,” replied the boy, looking away from me, as though he were lying.
“Well, cross it out!”
“Not I! The maid already knows, no doubt, the fickleness of men, and this will surprise her no more than to see a weathercock go round when the wind doth change. Proceed!”
Heavily laden with booty, we turned toward Flanders. We gained two days ago the swelling banks of the Somme, and down this sluggish stream, taking what we listed as we went with the red license of our revengeful errand, we have struggled until here, fair lady. But each hour of this adventurous march has seen us closer and more closely beset. The broad stream runs to north of us, the burgher levies of Amiens are mustering thick upon our right and behind, Gods! so close, that now as this is penned the black canopy of the night is all ruddy where his countless watchfires glimmer on the southern sky; behind us comes the pale respondent in this bloody suit that we are trying—Philip, who says that France is his by Salic law, and no rod of it, no foot or inch on this side of the salt sea, ever can or shall be Edward’s. And for jurors, Madam, to the assize that will be held so shortly he has gathered from every corner of his vassal realm a hundred thousand footmen and twenty thousand horse; a score of perjured Princes make his false quarrel doubly false by bearing witness to it, and here, to-morrow at the farthest, we do think, they will arraign us, and put this matter to the sharp adjustment of the sword. Against that great host that threatens us we are but a handful, four thousand men at arms all native to the English shires, ten thousand archers, as many light-armed Welshmen, and four thousand wild Irish.
“There!” I said with pride, as Flamaucœur’s busy pen came to a stop—“There! she will know now how it goes with King Edward’s gallant English.”
“Why, yes, no doubt she may,” responded my friend; “but maids are more apt to be interested in the particular than in the general. You have addressed her so far like the presiding captain of a warlike council. Is there nothing more to come?”
“Gads! that’s true enough! I have left out all the love!”
“Yet that is what her hungry eyes will look for when her fingers untie this silk.”
“Why, then, take up your pen again and write thus:
‘And, Madam, to-morrow’s battle, if it comes, will be no light affair. He who sends this to thee may, ere it reaches thy hand, be numbered among the things that are past. Therefore he would also that all negligence of his were purged by such atonement as he can make, and all crudeness likewise amended. And in particular he offers to thee, whose virtues and condescension late reflection have brought lively to his mind, his most dutiful and appreciative homage. You, who have so good a knowledge of his poor taste, will pardon his ineloquence, but he would say to thee, in fact, that thy gentleness and worth were never so conscious to him as here to-night, when the red gleam of coming battle plays along the evening sky, and, if he wears no token in his helmet in to-morrow’s fray, ’tis because he has none of thine.’
“There, boy! ’tis not what I meant to say—and very halting, yet she will guess its meaning. Dost thou not think so?”
“Guess its meaning! Oh, dear comrade, she will live again and feed upon it—wake and sleep upon it, and wear it next her heart, just as I should were I she and you were he.”
“But it is so beggarly and poor expressed,” I said, with pleased humility.
“She will not think so,” cried Flamaucœur. “If I know aught of maids, she will think it the most blessed vellum that ever was engrossed, she will like its style better than the wretched culprit likes the style of the reprieve the steaming horseman flaunts before him. She’ll con each line and letter, and puncture them with tears and kisses—thou hast had small ken of maids, I think, sweet soldier!”
“Well! well! It may be so. Do up the letter, since it will read so well, and put it in the way to be taken by the first messenger who sails for England. Then we will ride round the posts and see how near the Frenchman’s watchfires be. And so to sleep, good friend, and may the many-named Powers which sit on high wake us to a happy to-morrow!”