The Essential James Branch Cabell Collection - James Branch Cabell

Скачать книгу

"it is lamentably true that after to-night we are as different persons, you and I."

      He said: "Jehane, do you not love me any longer? Remember old years and do not break your oath with me, Jehane, since God abhors nothing so much as unfaith. For your own sake, Jehane,--ah, no, not for your sake nor for mine, but for the sake of that blithe Jehane, whom, so you tell me, time has slain!"

      Once or twice she blinked, as if dazzled by a light of intolerable splendor, but otherwise she stayed rigid. "You have dared, messire, to confront me with the golden-hearted, clean-eyed Navarrese that once was I! and I requite." The austere woman rose. "Messire, you swore to me, long since, eternal service. I claim my right in domnei. Yonder--gray-bearded, the man in black and silver--is the Earl of Worcester, the King of England's ambassador, in common with whom the wealthy dowager of Brittany has signed a certain contract. Go you, then, with Worcester into England, as my proxy, and in that island, as my proxy, become the wife of the King of England. Messire, your audience is done."

      Riczi said this: "Can you hurt me any more, Jehane?--no, even in hell they cannot hurt me now. Yet I, at least, keep faith, and in your face I fling faith like a glove--old-fashioned, it may be, but clean,--and I will go, Jehane."

      Her heart raged. "Poor, glorious fool!" she thought; "had you but the wit even now to use me brutally, even now to drag me from this das--!" Instead he went away from her smilingly, treading through the hall with many affable salutations, while the jongleur sang.

      Sang the jongleur:

      "There is a land those hereabout Ignore ... Its gates are barred By Titan twins, named Fear and Doubt. These mercifully guard That land we seek--the land so fair!-- And all the fields thereof, Where daffodils flaunt everywhere And ouzels chant of love,-- Lest we attain the Middle-Land, Whence clouded well-springs rise, And vipers from a slimy strand Lift glittering cold eyes.

      "Now, the parable all may understand, And surely you know the name of the land! Ah, never a guide or ever a chart May safely lead you about this land,-- The Land of the Human Heart!"

      And the following morning, being duly empowered, Antoine Riczi sailed for England in company with the Earl of Worcester; and upon Saint Richard's day the next ensuing was, at Eltham, as proxy of Jehane, married in his own person to the bloat King Henry, the fourth of that name to reign. This king was that same squinting Harry of Derby (called also Henry of Lancaster and Bolingbroke) who stole his cousin's crown, and about whom I have told you in the preceding story. First Sire Henry placed the ring on Riczi's finger, and then spoke Antoine Riczi, very loud and clear:

      "I, Antoine Riczi,--in the name of my worshipful lady, Dame Jehane, the daughter of Messire Charles until lately King of Navarre, the Duchess of Brittany and the Countess of Rougemont,--do take you, Sire Henry of Lancaster, King of England and in title of France, and Lord of Ireland, to be my husband; and thereto I, Antoine Riczi, in the spirit of my said lady"--the speaker paused here to regard the gross hulk of masculinity before him, and then smiled very sadly--"in precisely the spirit of my said lady, I plight you my troth."

      Afterward the King made him presents of some rich garments of scarlet trimmed with costly furs, and of four silk belts studded with silver and gold, and with valuable clasps, of which the owner might well be proud, and Riczi returned to Lyonnois. "Depardieux!" his uncle said; "so you return alone!"

      "I return as did Prince Troilus," said Riczi--"to boast to you of liberal entertainment in the tent of Diomede."

      "You are certainly an inveterate fool," the Vicomte considered after a prolonged appraisal of his face, "since there is always a deal of other pink-and-white flesh as yet unmortgaged--Boy with my brother's eyes!" the Vicomte said, in another voice; "I have heard of the task put upon you: and I would that I were God to punish as is fitting! But you are welcome home, my lad."

      So these two abode together at Montbrison for a long time, and in the purlieus of that place hunted and hawked, and made sonnets once in a while, and read aloud from old romances some five days out of the seven. The verses of Riczi were in the year of grace 1410 made public, not without acclamation; and thereafter the stripling Comte de Charolais, future heir to all Burgundy and a zealous patron of rhyme, was much at Montbrison, and there conceived for Antoine Riczi such admiration as was possible to a very young man only.

      In the year of grace 1412 the Vicomte, being then bedridden, died without any disease and of no malady save the inherencies of his age. "I entreat of you, my nephew," he said at last, "that always you use as touchstone the brave deed you did at Eltham. It is necessary for a gentleman to serve his lady according to her commandments, but you performed the most absurd and the most cruel task which any woman ever imposed upon her lover and servitor in domnei. I laugh at you, and I envy you." Thus he died, about Martinmas.

      Now was Antoine Riczi a powerful baron, but he got no comfort of his lordship, because that old incendiary, the King of Darkness, daily added fuel to a smouldering sorrow until grief quickened into vaulting flames of wrath and of disgust.

      "What now avail my riches?" said the Vicomte. "How much wealthier was I when I was loved, and was myself an eager lover! I relish no other pleasures than those of love. I am Love's sot, drunk with a deadly wine, poor fool, and ever I thirst. All my chattels and my acres appear to me to be bright vapors, and the more my dominion and my power increase, the more rancorously does my heart sustain its bitterness over having been robbed of that fair merchandise which is the King of England's. To hate her is scant comfort and to despise her none at all, since it follows that I who am unable to forget the wanton am even more to be despised than she. I will go into England and execute what mischief I may against her."

      The new Vicomte de Montbrison set forth for Paris, first to do homage for his fief, and secondly to be accredited for some plausible mission into England. But in Paris he got disquieting news. Jehane's husband was dead, and her stepson Henry, the fifth monarch of that name to reign in Britain, had invaded France to support preposterous claims which the man advanced to the crown of that latter kingdom; and as the earth is altered by the advent of winter, so was the appearance of France transformed by King Henry's coming, and everywhere the nobles were stirred up to arms, the castles were closed, the huddled cities were fortified, and on every side arose entrenchments.

      Thus through this sudden turn was the new Vicomte, the dreamer and the recluse, caught up by the career of events, as a straw is borne away by a torrent, when the French lords marched with their vassals to Harfleur, where they were soundly drubbed by the King of England; as afterward at Agincourt.

      But in the year of grace 1417 there was a breathing space for discredited France, and presently the Vicomte de Montbrison was sent into England, as ambassador. He got in London a fruitless audience of King Henry, whose demands were such as rendered a renewal of the war inevitable; and afterward got, in the month of April, about the day of Palm Sunday, at the Queen's dower-palace of Havering-Bower, an interview with Queen Jehane.[*]

      [*Nicolas unaccountably omits to mention that during the French wars she had ruled England as Regent with signal capacity,--although this fact, as you will see more lately, is the pivot of his chronicle.]

      A curled pert page took the Vicomte to where she sat alone, by prearrangement, in a chamber with painted walls, profusely lighted by the sun, and made pretence to weave a tapestry. When the page had gone she rose and cast aside the shuttle, and then with a glad and wordless cry stumbled toward the Vicomte. "Madame and Queen--!" he coldly said.

      His judgment found in her a quite ordinary, frightened woman, aging now, but still very handsome in these black and shimmering gold robes; but all his other faculties found her desirable: and with a contained hatred he had perceived, as if by the terse illumination of a thunderbolt, that he could never love any woman save the woman whom he most despised.

      She said: "I had forgotten. I had remembered only you, Antoine, and Navarre, and the clean-eyed Navarrese--" Now for a

Скачать книгу