Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (412 page)

“Please God, it might!” the Young Knight said. “I will help it all I can with my prayers if I may have the dowry. For this would be a miracle of wonder beyond all the cross.”

“Well then, may it so turn out,” the King said. He glanced down at the letter again. “‘Touching the Lady Blanche,’” he read —

The Knight of Coucy exclaimed: “Ha!” and the Lord Mortimer grinned.

“‘I cannot discover that she has done deeds of sin with this slave. Maybe she waits till he shall tire of the other lady. I cannot read her heart. She occupies herself much with the little page Jehan, having him in her bower and buying him fine clothes. Aye, he hath a hawk of his own. But I think he is too young and simple to do deeds of love, and the servants say he declares himself to love only his mother and the Virgin. So of that I will say no more.

‘‘‘Thus much have I reported to you, gentle knights, for it is my duty, being Abbess and the highest religious person now in these parts, and I think we have only half done our duty when we have stopped at uttering prayers. But though I have the will to stop this infamous disorder of a tournament, I have no power. Hasten, then, hasten upon your swift horses and come — purge this country of its disorders. Your friend in God.’”

The King ceased reading and looked over the letter. His hearers were all silent, and he exclaimed:

“I think this is a very masterful Abbess. I am glad she sits near no castle of mine.”

“Ah, gentle knight,” the Queen said darkly and insultingly to the Knight of Coucy, “did I not say that this was a treasonable letter? This is all the lies that you have had written to you to have a colourable excuse to be gone.”

The young King looked up at his mother with candid eyes.

“Ah, gentle Queen,” he said, “I do not think that that is so. It is too great a story to have invented, nor do I think the Knight of Coucy is the man to invent these things. I think his motto is like mine: Keep troth! And he will keep it. But yet I do not see that this letter should call these knights away, for of them we have great need.”

The Knight of Coucy looked at the little King with pleasant eyes. During the reading of the letter he had not spoken, save when the question of his wife’s honour had been broached. But being, appeased on that point — for he knew that had the Abbess had any grounds she would have known of them, being a very skilful spy — being appeased on this point, he had sunk into listening silence again.

“Gentle Queen,” he said, “I think the King, being English, shoots nearer the mark. You are a French woman, and the French are always over clever, so that they miss the truth because it lies too near them. Now, if you will hear me speak I will deliver my thoughts as far as they have gone.”

“Speak on,” the little King said.

“Now, I will not hear them,” the Queen called out. “Come away, my son. Stay you, Lord Mortimer, and hear this fellow!”

“Nay, I will not get me gone,” the little King maintained. “I will stay with the Lord Mortimer.”

The Queen clenched her fists with rage: she wavered for a moment, and then brushed through the door, taking leave of nobody.

“Ah, gentle King,” the Large Knight said, “hear, then, all that I will speak truly.” He cleared his throat and breathed deep. “To the King, your father, I was a true servant; but he we have heard is dead. Upon the news of his death, my cousin and I and many knights that you know of, came together and consulted as to our duty. And so we made it out that our duty was towards you. Had the King lived we would have fought for him, for we are men made for fighting and for little else. But your mother was too quick with us, and had him down and dead before we could rise, as you know. So he was dead, and it was perhaps as well. As for this talk of wrangling with the Hainaulters, that is folly. But it was natural that my men should fall upon them. For it was they who landed with your mother from France and did the King to death. That might have been well. But now they give themselves great airs of how they rule this our country of England: they are loud about it in the market-place and in all the inns. This my men will not stand. I did not will them to set upon the Flemings: I have honourably punished them when it was to be done. But my men and I are as of one family, after the old fashion of things. I cannot keep them from the Flemings; they will always be about their ears, so that our marches are hindered and our strategies come to nothing. And, since my men are as of my family, I will not punish them any more. So I must needs get me gone, if you will not send away the Flemings.”

“And if that be declared a treason?” the Lord Mortimer asked.

“In the first place it is no treason,” the Knight answered, “for my cousin and I came here of our free will and without summons, since by law and custom no knight south of the Trent can be summoned to serve in a Scots war; but, if you will call it a treason, then we will quarrel upon it. I am a man for fighting, and so are many of my friends. To me it is little odds against whom I fight, and I had rather fight you than many others.”

“But that would be to fight against me!” the King said.

“Not so, little King,” the Knight answered, “for I think it would be all one to you whether we or the Lord Mortimer counselled you, and I think it would be better for your realm if we did.”

“This is monstrous free talking,” the Lord Mortimer brought out. His mouth grinned, and he was white about the nostrils.

“It is well that it has come to free talking,” the Knight answered, “for it was time!”

He paused, and continued after a moment:

“I will speak my thoughts roughly, and do you consider them at leisure. It is evident to me that no good can come of this Scots’ quarrel whilst the Flemings are of the army. If you will send them home, this I will do. With the Flemings we can do nothing, and they are of no avail against the Scots. They are heavy armed men upon great horses, and time out of mind it has been proved that what is needed against the Scots are bowmen. If you will send them home we shall be the stronger; for as it is, whilst we wait for their heavy horses to stumble amongst the rocks, the Scots break camp and are away, so that we never come at them. In this way great discredit has come, as the gentle Queen said, upon her and the Lord Mortimer. But it is because of the Flemings. I do not say that without them we can do much, but we can do more.”

“I think you have the right of it,” the King said. “I have often observed that whilst we waited for Sir John of Hainault the Scots got them gone.”

“Sir John of Hainault,” the Knight of Coucy continued, “is a great knight and a famous captain. I have never known a better. But for this enterprise he is a hindrance. I am not at one with you when you say that there is nothing in the Abbess’s letter to call us back. I think this tournament of women is a disaster, and if I may catch my wife sword in hand, so I will lay my sword upon her that she will not again be as froward for many years, or never again at all. But it is six weeks to the day for that tournament. Now this I will do. Let us leave the Flemings, and for ten days let us ride straight into Scotland, burning and harrying. Let us ride ten days back by another road, burning and harrying still. If the Scots will meet us, so much the better. I do not think that they will; then shame will fall upon them because they have let their land be harried.

If you will, you may leave the Flemings for the protection of the Queen and of this city of the New Castle. It is all one to me, so they ride not with us. But in three weeks’ time I will be back here, and next day I will ride to Louth, so that in another three weeks I may come to Stapleton.”

The Knight of Egerton exclaimed:

“Oh! oh!”

“I think this is a very gentle offer,” the King said.

“Then devise upon it with the gentle Queen, and tomorrow by day I will come and devise more,” the Knight of Coucy said.

“I do not like this freedom of the tongue,” the Lord Mortimer said.

“Ah, gentle lord,” the Knight answered, “let me tell you this in your ear. All lessons of honourable chivalry teach us this: It is good to fight; it is good to lay on the hard blows of gentle prowess. But it is bad to have bad blood against a gentle knight. Fighting is the day’s work, as revelry is the work of the night. If so you will observe the rules, you may yet die well. But I think you will yet die by the headsman, as the wise woman has foretold. So God keep you.”

The little King was gone down the stairway, having made his greetings modestly; but before the Lord Mortimer had made his exit the Knight of Coucy had sat himself heavily upon the hutch. He breathed with a heavy satisfaction, and, pulling his fair leman to him, he sat her upon his knee and squeezed her waist. Of this leman he was very fond. She had been the wife of a goldsmith of Viay, and alter the sack of that town he had bought her of a bowman, who had, with others, plundered her house, and was leading her through the streets naked, and with her hands tied. And since that time he had seldom been without her company upon his campaigns. In the winter she lived very virtuously in the city of Salisbury, where many of the clergy came to eat at her table, for she was too stately and proud to consort with the wives of the citizens of that town.

“Ma mie!” the Knight said. He tweaked her chin, which was like a peach for fair softness, and he smiled as if at a foolish thought. “Almost I have it in me to say that I will so maim my wife that through all this winter you shall live in my castle of Stapleton whilst my wife lies abed. So the Knight of Egerton would do for his Gertrude.”

“In God’s name, castle me no castle,” the leman said. “I am much better when the winter howls in my little fair house in a cosy city, and I have windows of buttered paper and lie warm.”

“Aye, so thou does,” the Large Knight said; and she kissed him on the lips, for she liked him very well.

“Ah, gentle knight,” the Young Knight said, “that is your resolution upon this letter?”

“That is my resolution,” the Knight of Coucy said over his leman’s shoulder. “In six weeks, upon the day of the tournament, we will ride into their lists to challenge, and, if my wife will ride against me, I will throw her very ill. And if she will not, I will so belabour her with heavy blows as she flies that she will not again rise from her bed in many days. And this, I think, is her due. For whilst she made life unendurable for me at home, she was acting like most wives. But now that she has written a fool’s letter to this Queen, meddling with my affairs abroad — for she will always be with her nose in things — now that she has taken a man’s part she must ensue a man’s burden. For this is intolerable and past bearing. Or so I think, and this is my plan. If you have a better you shall tell me it,”

The Young Knight looked at Gertrude, but upon her sulky face there was no inspiration.

“Ah, gentle knight,” the Young Knight answered, “it is a very good plan, and I see none better. But I would it had been a plan that had kept us away a year or more. For you have perceived from this Abbess’s letter that my wife has an amourette for this slave, and would break our marriage. Heartily I wish it were done; but this will take some time, for there must be messages to Rome on their part about it. And I cannot, within the rules of chivalry, sit in my castle with my wife in my castle and her paramour in my castle and all. I must of duty kill the one or the other, or both.” —

“That is even so,” the Large Knight said gravely.

“Yet I bear them no ill will,” the Young Knight continued to muse. “I am a very unfortunate man. For if I slay my wife her dowry passes back to her father. And if I slay the slave, I remove that which should make my wife desire not to be my wife. And yet again, I cannot, by all the rules, go wandering houseless through the winter months. That would be an unheard-of thing!”

“That truly you cannot do,” the Knight of Coucy agreed. He lifted his leman from his knee and gathered up most of his armour upon his right arm. His left he set round Griselda’s waist.

“Well, we will go eat and do gentler things,” he said. “If you can think upon a better plan I shall be very glad. But I see none better. I pray you send Henry the page after me with the rest of my armour.” And he padded from the room in his stockinged feet.

The Young Knight sat mournfully himself down upon the hutch, and called Gertrude to sit upon his knee.

“Why will you not be to me as Griselda is to her paramour?” he asked mournfully. “You see how I cudgel my brains for you.” And he kissed her for a long time. She withdrew her cheek patiently when he was finished.