Part 11

Thus said Captain Fox to his audience: "The black pale on a silver field proclaims the Prince of Epirus. The red bend on the gold enriched with three laurel wreaths on the field is the bearing of Andronicus Palæologus, who longs to wear the imperial laurels of Constantinople. The six gold lozenges on purple are the arms of Sir Jaufre de Brabant. The three boars' heads of silver on the black field assert Sir Ambrose of Blois. The golden stag at gaze on a green field stands for Sir Raymond of Provence. The golden dolphin on the orange field represents Sir Guy de Hainault. The shield divided per pale green and silver and charged with a scarlet castle, from whose summit emerges a black dragon, belongs to Fernand Ximenes, the aspiring Spaniard." Only one cognizance baffled the garrulity of Captain Fox that day. There was a shield bearing a golden acorn on a green field that was as unfamiliar to him as to his hearers. So he looked mighty wise, gabbled some patter about mysteries that might not be revealed, and went on to explain, what every one of course knew, that Prince Rainouart carried a golden shield with no charge upon it, and that the lord-marshal, Count Ernault, carried potent blue and silver. Of many another knight that day, of many more armorial bearings, Captain Fox discoursed learnedly enough to such as would listen to him, and generally succeeded while his tongue wagged in impoverishing his hearers of some jewel, purse, or button, dexterously nipped by his thievish fingers. But at least the plundered person, when he discovered his loss and Captain Fox had vanished into the sea of human beings, might console himself with the reflection that he had moved, as it were, for a season in a kind of intimacy with the great, and that this pleasure, like all others, had to be paid for.

The place which Duke Baldwin had appointed for the holding of the tournament was excellently well chosen. One of the greenest meadows of the Athenian plain facing the sea, with the Acropolis for a background, had been enclosed with great hoardings of painted wood, red and white, the duke's own colors. Under the shadow of the Acropolis a great gallery had been erected, glittering with gilding and brilliant with silk, to form a bower from which the Duchess of Thebes and the fair ladies of Baldwin's court might witness the encounters. Behind these, still within the enclosures, were two pavilions set apart, one for the use of the Duchess of Thebes and the other for Duke Baldwin, who took no part in that day's sport save as on-looker and arbiter. The pavilions of the knights were ranged inside the lists, and at the door of each a page in some fantastic habit stood holding his master's shield. Here and there in the wooden barrier encircling the lists were apertures guarded by mighty men-at-arms, brothers in size and strength to those that wardered the door of the ducal court-yard. At each of these doorways a herald was stationed to make sure that none entered the lists unprivileged.

The Duke Baldwin was a great stickler for custom, past-master of punctilio. He knew all that there was to know of the laws that had hitherto governed the gentle art of tourney, and thinking that nothing in the world exists so good that it could not be bettered, especially by Duke Baldwin of Athens, he had devised many novel regulations in gracious methods for mimic combat, which pleased him highly the more they rendered complicated and intricate the laws of the royal sport. He rejoiced to invent some new rule for the disqualification of a combatant who might to the unconcerned eye of the actual spectator appear to be the victor. His opponent might, indeed, lie sprawling on the grass, fairly pushed from his horse by the heavy impact of the blunt-headed spear, but if that spear had not struck in precisely the right place permissible at that very moment of the play, according to the laws of Duke Baldwin, or had struck in some place not permissible, again according to the laws of Duke Baldwin, it was the sprawler on the ground who received the laurel and not he who rode his horse victoriously amid the cheers of the multitude. It followed, naturally enough, that Duke Baldwin's regulations were not always and altogether popular with the knights who encountered under his eyes. But the duke was so deeply versed in the whole history of his sport, and always so readily recited precedents from this great tournament here and that noble jousting there, that it would have been difficult, even had it been profitable or even advisable, to argue a point with him, and as he was autocrat of Athens, strong of hand and choleric of nature, few ever did venture to argue with him.

On this occasion Duke Baldwin had taken special pains over the whole paraphernalia of the tournament. He had examined with his own hands and eyes the great barrier that ran down the middle of the lists to divide the encountering knights and prevent their horses from colliding. He had made sure by personal interrogation that each of the heralds was well acquainted with the arms, titles, lineage, and deeds of each of the nobles who offered themselves to take part in the combat. He saw to the pitching of the pavilions, the comfort of their furniture, the lodgings of the squires. He visited the stables where the horses were to dwell, the stithies where swarthy smiths were to wait ready with bellows working and fires burning for the mending of shattered mail, and he was at pains to see that the pavilion of the Duchess of Thebes was adorned with all the luxury that even a lovely woman could desire.

Duke Baldwin was so well satisfied with himself and with the world in general that he allowed himself the relaxation of idleness in one particular. He left to his lord-marshal, Count Ernault, all that belonged to the personal arrangement of the tourney, to the order of the encounters, and to the degree of those who might be permitted to take part in them. Thus it came about that when the hour struck, and the trumpets sounded for the beginning of battle, he knew nothing of the existence of a Prince of Eleusis to whom Count Ernault had given promise to ride in the fight.

All the meadow-land round the lists was thronged with a fantastic congregation of folk. Every square inch of standing room a-nigh the red and white palings was occupied by eager spectators hotly arguing the merits of their favorites, and when they could afford it going so far as to stake silver piece against silver piece on the issue of the conflicts. On the fringe of this multitude the speculative had erected a veritable village of wooden booths, wherein all kinds of foods and drinks, gross and dainty, were to be had for the asking and the paying by those whom the thoughts of martial prowess made hungry and the spring sunlight stung to thirst. Travelling glee-men, penniless enough, pushed their bold, sunburned faces hither and thither, ready at any moment for coin or cup to sing to the interested some song of the deeds of heroes--Charlemagne and his twelve peers, Arthur of Brittany and his knights of the Table Round, or the fortunes of the lord of Orange. Every tree in the meadow bore its load of human fruit; scarce any bough seemed too high or too slender for some adventurous spirit to assail, obtaining thereby a view of the tournament at greater peril to life and limb than any run by the knightly combatants.

In the delicate air of Athens, where sound travels far, the chattering of all this swarm of human beings came to the ears of those in the pavilions like the humming of a hive of monstrous bees, or the chattering of an incredible army of starlings, or the slappings of an angry sea. Inside the sacred enclosure the scene was less crowded, but more brilliant and many-colored. On the silk-swathed galleries which had been set up for the benefit of non-combatant courtiers and the ladies of the palace, the gallantest gentlemen vied with the loveliest women in the magnificence of their apparel. Cloth of gold and cloth of silver, all the dyes and jewels of the East, all the plumage of the brightest-hued birds, glittered and twinkled in the strong sunlight in a manner dazzling to the eye. Outside the lists the common folk chattered and gabbled. Inside the lists the noble lords and ladies chattered and gabbled, too, until, as Simon said to himself, it seemed as if the world might very well fear to be talked out of existence. But when the great trumpets sounded which told to every eager ear of all those thousands that the time had come and that the game was afoot, there fell upon the plain a silence as deep and still as the clamor had before been plangent. In that awful silence Duke Baldwin lifted his mighty bulk in the golden throne which groaned under his weight, and, raising his sceptre in his right hand, gave order, in a voice which would have honored a bull, to the lord-marshal that the sport might now begin. The lord-marshal in his turn spoke to the heralds. Again there came a blare of trumpets, and then again a silence pierced by the voices of the heralds calling upon the earliest combatants to begin the fray.

The first part of the tournament consisted of a series of single combats on horse between the allotted pairs of knights. Sir Jaufre de Brabant and Sir Raymond of Provence were the first to ride, and the episode was brief, for in the first encounter Sir Jaufre unhorsed his adversary and cantered to the end of the lists triumphant, while Sir Raymond of Provence scrambled to his feet and regained his tent with as much dignity as he could master under the pitying eyes of the ladies who liked him, the smiles of such lords as misliked him, and the grinning faces of the diverted multitude. Sir Guy de Hainault rode next against Sir Ambrose of Blois, and though Sir Guy looked as slender as a girl in armor and Sir Ambrose a thing of bulk, Sir Ambrose went down at the first push before the well-planted thrust of his adversary's lance. Fernand Ximenes rode against Demetrius of Epirus and overcame him. Andronicus Palæologus overcame Sir Gaston of Nîmes. Many knights rode, gaining good fortune or bad, and the praise or pity of ladies. The inquisitive may seek for their names and their bearings, and their share of that day's fame and shame, in the painted chronicle made later at Count Ernault's cost, from Count Ernault's memory, and now preserved in the University of Madrid, to which Fernand Ximenes presented it. Those who beheld the jousting averred loudly that it was the best and bravest that had ever been seen. In their hearts they were well aware that it was patently like all other tournaments that had ever been held under the laws of honor, and that all the tourneys that would follow through the years would be of like pattern for chance and valor, strength and skill, success or failure--ay, and would be witnessed by eyes as lovely, whether shining with the pride of triumph or shining through the mist of tears.

When a certain number of these courses had been run, then came the great business of the day, the general challenge of the Prince of Athens to all and sundry that were true knights to contend in arms against his declaration that his lady, the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes, was the rose of the world. As the prize of this contest he offered a wreath of golden violets, a glory of the goldsmith's art, which the victor was to offer to his queen of beauty, and which Esclaramonde was very confident to receive from the hands of her betrothed.

XVII

THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

A tumult of applause went up as Rainouart entered the lists, riding a black charger given him by Esclaramonde, and glittering in arms, while his handsome head, still unhelmeted, inclined to right and left in recognition of his greeting. For though Rainouart was too newly come to Athens to be very generally known of the populace, and though report, ever busy with tale-bearing from great places, had whispered something sneering of his bookish ways and his distaste for light ladies, he had endeared himself with the fickle Athenian public by his deeds on the preceding day of the tourney, when he had ridden from victory to victory. At the close of the first day there had been a general assault or mêlée between five-and-twenty Frankish knights, champions chosen by Duke Baldwin, and five-and-twenty of the picked chieftains of the Catalan Grand Company. The struggle was as fierce as brief. It seemed at first as if the Moorish-looking warriors from Spain were destined to gain the day under the angry eyes of Duke Baldwin, but Rainouart's individual deeds of prowess and the gallant manner in which he rallied the French force at the last redeemed the honor of Athens, and forced the Catalans from the field. Duke Baldwin's joy had been unbounded, and he had expressed it as exuberantly as he could to the young man who always listened so gravely when he spoke, and while he listened thought upon his mother's wrongs.

Now the heralds cried the challenge of the Prince of Athens, and as they did so, Rainouart, gripping his horse with limbs of steel, felt as if the brisk wind of battle blowing in his face drove from his senses something of that lethargy under which they had lain supine. His tormenting, denying, mysterious memories troubled him for the moment no more; he was just for that moment a good knight on a good horse, with a good lance in hand ready to do battle with all the world for the sake of a woman. Scarcely did he recall the familiar features of Esclaramonde; in his mind, as in his challenge, he was fighting for the rose of the world, but the rose was the rose of the lovely legend, the unfound flower.

Now knight after knight came forth from his pavilion and mounted his horse to do battle, and knight after knight went down before the conquering lance of young Athens. Guy de Hainault, Jaufre de Brabant, Ambrose of Blois, Gaston of Nîmes, Raymond of Provence, Demetrius of Epirus, and Andronicus Palæologus, each had his own fair lady, star of his life or star of the hour, to tilt for, and each in turn sustained defeat, and Rainouart remained invincible. The populace huzzaed, courtiers applauded demonstratively, Duke Baldwin grinned like a pleased hyena, the ladies of the discomfited tried to smile through tears, and the face of Esclaramonde shone with pride, for she had snared a rare mate. As for Rainouart, he thought not of her; his thoughts were only of the joy of strife and the delight of victory. He was fighting for an ideal; he could not give it name, but it seemed to fill the air with the scent and the color of roses.

Brimmed with the wine of exultation, he waited at his end of the lists after the overthrow of Andronicus Palæologus to see if any other champion would stand against his challenge. There was only one knight left of all the chivalry then in Athens who could hope to contend against him. That knight was Fernand Ximenes, and Rainouart hoped to see him advance. But Fernand Ximenes kept his tent, for he had his own thoughts and purposes concerning the Duchess of Thebes, and he wished to whisper later in her ear that he could not for the life of him challenge her supremacy. So Rainouart waited for a little in his place, a splendid image of steel upon a splendid horse, unquestioned master of the lists. All the spectators, gentle and simple, believed that the day was over, the field fought and won. Rainouart, thinking as they thought, was about to ride forward to receive the wreath of golden violets from the hand of Duke Baldwin when a great shout from the crowd without the barriers, and a murmur that ran along the galleries, stayed his purpose. Then he, with all the rest, became aware of the presence of a new challenger in the lists. A knight in gilded armor, with an acorn for his device, had emerged from a pavilion at the farthest end of the field, and after mounting a white horse which was held in waiting by a burly squire, had ridden slowly to the challenging station. The new-comer's visor was raised, and the spectators beheld a little of a young and beautiful face, very noble in an unfamiliar fairness of feature, of a pale favor delicately colored. But what most won all were the stranger's eyes of lively blue, which made many a woman wish to see her own countenance mirrored in them.

Duke Baldwin leaned forward on his throne in some surprise at the sudden presence; his rugged, bull face flushed with wonder. Count Ernault, after reading the new-comer's shield, whispered to a herald, and the herald proclaimed that the Prince of Eleusis desired to break a lance with the Prince of Athens on the question of his challenge. At this unexpected announcement Esclaramonde, who had bent forward to look at the new-comer and noted how slight he seemed, and youthful, leaned back again with a disdainful smile, though her ready senses quickened at the sight of the youth's beauty. Sympathetic smiles rippled all along the galleries, and many in the crowd beyond laughed derisively, though none that could see the stranger's face denied its marvellous grace. Duke Baldwin called to Count Ernault, who approached his throne.

"Who is this strange knight?" he said. "I have not heard of any Prince of Eleusis."

"Sire," the lord-marshal answered, "this is a young stripling of Greece who claims descent from an ancient Grecian line. For my own part, I know little or nothing of the race which it pleases your grace to rule, yet because he seemed of gentle blood and carried himself so fairly, I saw no reason to deny him a presence in the lists. Your grace, however, who, knowing all things, doubtless knows intimately the genealogy of every Greek his vassal, will be able to set me right if I have erred in this instance, but for myself I thought it better to stretch a point rather than perchance in denying to attain undoubted gentility."

Duke Baldwin frowned. His son was thus far the victor; the Lady Esclaramonde thus far proclaimed peerless. One never could tell what might come of an unexpected challenge. Yet Duke Baldwin, who, in spite of the omniscience attributed to him by his flattering marshal, was well aware in his heart that he knew nothing whatever about the people whom he held subject by an iron hand, was very unwilling to infringe courteous chivalry in the case of one who might be a gentleman of old descent. So with the ferocious distortion of countenance which was Duke Baldwin's conception of a smile, he approved the lord-marshal's action.

"It were shame," he declared, "if ever noble gentleman were denied to ride in lists opened by me. But here I think decision must rest with our son. If he elect to meet this stranger knight, your Prince of Eleusis has our willing leave to joust in this tourney. But tell our son that as he has fought to-day only with knights of known lineage and bearings, he is free if it please him to deny this Grecian, and to remain the unquestioned victor of the day."

The lord-marshal hastened to where Rainouart waited, and made him aware of the conditions under which a new player had come into the game, and of Duke Baldwin's decision in the matter. Rainouart answered instantly that he was in no way breathed or weakened by what had gone, that it would be strange, indeed, for him to deny any challenger, and that he would take the stranger's word for his gentility. Straightway Count Ernault sped to where Argathona waited, mounted on her white horse, and, after acquainting her with the cause of the delay, made her free of the duke's permission to tilt.

Nobody in all that vast concourse had watched these parleyings with more interest than the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes. Her heart had been dancing all manner of joyous measures at the success of her betrothed. As knight after knight went down before Rainouart, her eyes brightened and her spirits sang, for all was in her honor, and she knew, rejoicing in her knowledge, that every woman present envied her. The sudden apparition of an unexpected challenger could not affect her triumph. The cavalier who had so triumphantly overcome seven of the gallantest knights in Duke Baldwin's gallant court was scarcely like to have his supremacy menaced by a stripling of Greece. Yet in spite of herself, this apparition of this unexpected challenger, unknown to her, unknown to Athens, unknown to Athens's duke, seemed mysteriously to threaten her confidence, and her cheek burned with anger against the fair-faced stranger as she watched the preliminaries of the combat.

The trumpets sounded, and instantly the opposing knights rushed one against the other, swift as warring winds. In full centre of the tilt-yard the white horse and the black horse came wellnigh head to head. Rainouart's spear was aimed a thought too high as it seemed, and slid over the shoulder of his opponent while the lance of Eleusis struck fair and square at the breast-plate of the Athenian prince, and the next moment the black horse was sweeping riderless down the lists, and Duke Baldwin's son was lying on the grass. While a great groan came from all beholders at this fall, the Knight of Eleusis, galloping to the end of the lists, turned at the barrier and rode back again to draw rein with visor exalted in front of the royal pavilion.

When Duke Baldwin saw his son fall, he gripped his sceptre in both hands so fiercely that it bent in his fingers as if it had been a waxen candle, and his whole soul groaned in travail because he could think of no oath horrible enough with which to express his mortification. Esclaramonde for her part hid her burning face behind her fan and dreamed incredible tortures for the victor. However, there was nothing for it but acceptance of the result of the combat, and, while assiduous squires helped the fallen prince to his feet, Duke Baldwin took from the cushion held by a page at his side the golden wreath, and extended it to the Knight of Eleusis, who received it on the point of the lance. Hardly articulate, Duke Baldwin gasped out that the wreath was the victor's, and that his was the privilege to crown whom so he pleased in that presence queen of the day. Immediately the stranger, shifting a little in the saddle, extended the lance dexterously poised so that the golden wreath swung just in front of the face of Esclaramonde. A little sob of joy came from the duchess's lips.