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"THEY WERE OVERTAKEN BY FALMOUTH HIMSELF"

"IN AN INSTANT THE PLACE RESOUNDED LIKE A SMITHY"

"SHE HAD VIEWED THE GREAT CONQUEROR"

"'MY PRISONER!' SHE SAID"

"'DO YOU FORSAKE SIRE EDWARD, CATHERINE?'"

"'HAIL YE THAT ARE MY KINSMEN!'"

"IN THE LIKENESS OF A FAIR WOMAN"

"'YOU DESIGN MURDER?' RICHARD ASKED"

"'TAKE NOW YOUR PETTY VENGEANCE!'"

"SO FOR A HEART-BEAT SHE SAW HIM"

"NICOLAS: A SON LIVRET"

The Prologue

THE DIZAIN OF QUEENS OF THAT NOBLE MAKER IN THE FRENCH TONGUE, MESSIRE NICOLAS DE CAEN, DEDICATED TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS ISABELLA OF PORTUGAL, OF THE HOUSE OF THE INDOMITABLE ALFONSO HENRIQUES, AND DUCHESS DOWAGER OF BURGUNDY. HERE BEGINS IN AUSPICIOUS WISE THE .

Chivalry

The Prologue

It is a little book wherein I treat of divers queens and of their love-business; and with necessitated candor I concede my chosen field to have been harvested, and even scrupulously gleaned, by many writers of innumerable conditions. Since Dares Phrygius wrote of Queen Heleine and Virgil of Queen Dido, a preponderating mass of clerks, in casting about for high and serious matter, have chosen, as though it were by common instinct, to dilate upon the amours of royal women. Even in romance we scribblers must contrive it so that the fair Nicolette shall be discovered in the end to be no less than the King's daughter of Carthage, and that Sir Doon of Mayence shall never sink in his love-affairs beneath the degree of a Saracen princess; and we are backed in this old procedure not only by the authority of Aristotle but, oddly enough, by that of reason as well.

Kings have their policies and wars wherewith to drug each appetite. But their consorts are denied these makeshifts; and love may rationally be defined as the pivot of each normal woman's life, and in consequence as the arbiter of that ensuing life which is eternal. Because--as of old Horatius Flaccus demanded, though not, to speak the truth, of any woman,--

And a dairymaid, let us say, may love whom she will, and nobody else be a penny the worse for her mistaking of the preferable nail whereon to hang her affections; whereas with a queen this choice is more portentous. She plays the game of life upon a loftier table, ruthlessly illuminated, and stakes by her least movement a tall pile of counters, some of which are, of necessity, the lives and happiness of persons whom she knows not, unless it be by vague report. Grandeur sells itself at this hard price, and at no other. A queen must always play, in fine, as the vicar of destiny, free to choose but very certainly compelled to justify that choice in the ensuing action; as is strikingly manifested by the authentic histories of Brunhalt, and of Guenevere, and of swart Cleopatra, and of many others that were born to the barbaric queenhoods of a now extinct and dusty time.

It is of ten such moments that I treat within this little book.

You alone, I think, of all persons living have learned, as you have settled by so many instances, to rise above mortality in such a testing, and unfailingly to merit by your conduct the plaudits and the adoration of our otherwise dissentient world. You have sat often in this same high chair of Chance; and in so doing have both graced and hallowed it. Yet I forbear to speak of this, simply because I dare not seem to couple your well-known perfection with any imperfect encomium.

The Story of the Sestina

THE FIRST NOVEL.--ALIANORA OF PROVENCE, COMING IN DISGUISE AND IN ADVERSITY TO A CERTAIN CLERK, IS BY HIM CONDUCTED ACROSS A HOSTILE COUNTRY; AND IN THAT TROUBLED JOURNEY ARE MADE MANIFEST TO EITHER THE SNARES WHICH HAD BEGUILED THEM AFORETIME.

The Story of the Sestina

In this place we have to do with the opening tale of the Dizain of Queens. I abridge, as afterward, at discretion; and an initial account of the Barons' War, among other superfluities, I amputate as more remarkable for veracity than interest. The result, we will agree at outset, is that to the Norman cleric appertains whatever these tales may have of merit, whereas what you find distasteful in them you must impute to my delinquencies in skill rather than in volition.

Within the half-hour after de Giars' death Dame Alianora thus stood alone in the corridor of a strange house. Beyond the arras the steward and his lord were at irritable converse.

First, "If the woman be hungry," spoke a high and peevish voice, "feed her. If she need money, give it to her. But do not annoy me."

"This woman demands to see the master of the house," the steward then retorted.

He presently said, "You may go, Yeck." He had risen, the magisterial attitude with which he had awaited her advent cast aside. "O God!" he said; "you, madame!" His thin hands, scholarly hands, were plucking at the air.

Dame Alianora had paused, greatly astonished, and there was an interval before she said, "I do not recognize you, messire."

"And yet, madame, I recall very clearly that some thirty years ago Count Berenger, then reigning in Provence, had about his court four daughters, each one of whom was afterward wedded to a king. First, Margaret, the eldest, now regnant in France; then Alianora, the second and most beautiful of these daughters, whom troubadours hymned as La Belle. She was married a long while ago, madame, to the King of England, Lord Henry, third of that name to reign in these islands."

Dame Alianora's eyes were narrowing. "There is something in your voice," she said, "which I recall."

He answered: "Madame and Queen, that is very likely, for it is a voice which sang a deal in Provence when both of us were younger. I concede with the Roman that I have somewhat deteriorated since the reign of good Cynara. Yet have you quite forgotten the Englishman who made so many songs of you? They called him Osmund Heleigh."

"He made the Sestina of Spring which my father envied," the Queen said; and then, with a new eagerness: "Messire, can it be that you are Osmund Heleigh?" He shrugged assent. She looked at him for a long time, rather sadly, and afterward demanded if he were the King's man or of the barons' party. The nervous hands were raised in deprecation.

"I have no politics," he began, and altered it, gallantly enough, to, "I am the Queen's man, madame."

"Then aid me, Osmund," she said; and he answered with a gravity which singularly became him:

"You have reason to understand that to my fullest power I will aid you."

"You know that at Lewes these swine overcame us." He nodded assent. "And now they hold the King my husband captive at Kenilworth. I am content that he remain there, for he is of all the King's enemies the most dangerous. But, at Wallingford, Leicester has imprisoned my son, Prince Edward. The Prince must be freed, my Osmund. Warren de Basingbourne commands what is left of the royal army, now entrenched at Bristol, and it is he who must liberate him. Get me to Bristol, then. Afterward we will take Wallingford." The Queen issued these orders in cheery, practical fashion, and did not admit opposition into the account, for she was a capable woman.

"But you, madame?" he stammered. "You came alone?"

"I come from France, where I have been entreating--and vainly entreating--succor from yet another monkish king, the pious Lewis of that realm. Eh, what is God about when He enthrones these cowards, Osmund? Were I a king, were I even a man, I would drive these smug English out of their foggy isle in three days' space! I would leave alive not one of these curs that dare yelp at me! I would--" She paused, the sudden anger veering into amusement. "See how I enrage myself when I think of what your people have made me suffer," the Queen said, and shrugged her shoulders. "In effect, I skulked back to this detestable island in disguise, accompanied by Avenel de Giars and Hubert Fitz-Herveis. To-night some half-dozen fellows--robbers, thorough knaves, like all you English,--suddenly attacked us on the common yonder and slew the men of our party. While they were cutting de Giars' throat I slipped away in the dark and tumbled through many ditches till I spied your light. There you have my story. Now get me an escort to Bristol."

"I shall regret de Giars," the Queen said, "for he made excellent songs. But Fitz-Herveis?--foh! the man had a face like a horse." Then again her mood changed. "Many men have died for me, my friend. At first I wept for them, but now I am dry of tears."

He shook his head. "Cato very wisely says, 'If thou hast need of help, ask it of thy friends.' But the sweet friend that I remember was a clean-eyed girl, joyous and exceedingly beautiful. Now you appear to me one of those ladies of remoter times--Faustina, or Jael, or Artemis, the King's wife of Tauris,--they that slew men, laughing. I am somewhat afraid of you, madame."

She was angry at first; then her face softened. "You English!" she said, only half mirthful. "Eh, my God! you remember me when I was happy. Now you behold me in my misery. Yet even now I am your Queen, messire, and it is not yours to pass judgment upon me."

"You? singly?" the Queen demanded.

"My plan is this: Singing folk alone travel whither they will. We will go as jongleurs, then. I can yet manage a song to the viol, I dare affirm. And you must pass as my wife."

He said this with a very curious simplicity. The plan seemed unreasonable, and at first Dame Alianora waved it aside. Out of the question! But reflection suggested nothing better; it was impossible to remain at Longaville, and the man spoke sober truth when he declared any escort other than himself to be unprocurable. Besides, the lunar madness of the scheme was its strength; that the Queen would venture to cross half England unprotected--and Messire Heleigh on the face of him was a paste-board buckler,--was an event which Leicester would neither anticipate nor on report credit. There you were! these English had no imagination. The Queen snapped her fingers and said: "Very willingly will I be your wife, my Osmund. But how do I know that I can trust you? Leicester would give a deal for me,--any price in reason for the Sorceress of Provence. And you are not wealthy, I suspect."

"You may trust me, mon bel esper"--his eyes here were those of a beaten child,--"since my memory is better than yours." Messire Osmund Heleigh gathered his papers into a neat pile. "This room is mine. To-night I keep guard in the corridor, madame. We will start at dawn."

When he had gone, Dame Alianora laughed contentedly. "Mon bel esper! my fairest hope! The man called me that in his verses--thirty years ago! Yes, I may trust you, my poor Osmund."

So they set out at cockcrow. He had procured a viol and a long falchion for himself, and had somewhere got suitable clothes for the Queen; and in their aging but decent garb the two approached near enough to the similitude of what they desired to be esteemed. In the courtyard a knot of servants gaped, nudged one another, but openly said nothing. Messire Heleigh, as they interpreted it, was brazening out an affair of gallantry before the countryside; and they appeared to consider his casual observation that they would find a couple of dead men on the common exceedingly diverting.

When the Queen asked him the same morning: "And what will you sing, my Osmund? Shall we begin with the Sestina of Spring"? Osmund Heleigh grunted.

Followed silence.

One sees them thus trudging the brown, naked plains under a sky of steel. In a pageant the woman, full-veined and comely, her russet gown girded up like a harvester's, might not inaptly have prefigured October; and for less comfortable November you could nowhere have found a symbol more precise than her lank companion, humorously peevish under his white thatch of hair, and so constantly fretted by the sword tapping at his ankles.

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