Part 14

"If you call him my lord again," she cried, "I shall hate you. He is my servant, my slave, my puppet; he shall believe what I please when he wakes. Why, he will not know that he has slept at all, and as for this trinket, how can he know what riches I hold in my treasury at Thebes? Give me my gift, sweet minion."

Argathona looked straight into the face of Esclaramonde, and her eyes were bright and stern.

"Do you love this man?" she asked, and she pointed with the hand that held the desirable apple to where Rainouart lay huddled on the table. Esclaramonde made a face of disdain.

"Love is a word of many meanings. He is a prince and he is rich; he is young and he is comely. He is different from the others I have loved, and for the time he pleases me."

Argathona's face was set and her voice was cold as she spoke again, asking the fateful question,

"How did you come to care for this man?"

The duchess gave a little laugh that brimmed with malicious memories.

"I knew him first a while ago in France, when he was counted a cold monster, and indeed I failed to melt his ice, though I tried my liveliest. Then fate flung him at my feet the other day in the haunted wood."

"And he loved you at once," Argathona asked, "loved you with all his heart and soul?"

Esclaramonde flung back her crowned head and laughed mockingly at her questioner.

"Am I not comely enough to be so loved?" she retorted, and Argathona, seizing sudden chance, bent her head in acquiescence.

"If he love you so well," she sighed, "were it not shame for us to do him wrong? Let us part now in honor, and when he wakes you will rejoice to be worthy of his loyal love."

And Argathona made as if she would go from the room, but she was cunning, and the golden apple gleamed through the net of her fingers. Rage flamed hotly in the eyes and cheeks of Esclaramonde.

"You question like a cold priest," she complained, "when you should clasp like a warm lover. But you can go if you please when you give me the trinket."

And she held out her hand imperiously, but Argathona still kept the apple. Now Esclaramonde was very loath to lose her lover though she professed indifference, and she was firmly determined to gain the apple.

"Nay," said Argathona, craftily, "I am a Greek and give nothing for nothing. But I would your lord were not so single-hearted a lover, for my vows deny me to wrong him."

Esclaramonde clinched her hands so tightly that the nails of her fingers hurt her palms.

"You are a precise fool," she raged; "but you can send your fastidious conscience to sleep. For though my husband loves me now and thinks he never loved other woman, he gave his great heart like a baby to some country girl in the woods."

Argathona held out the globe of gold alluringly, just out of reach of the duchess, while she asked, "Are you sure of this?" and Esclaramonde, her hungry eyes fixed on the apple and her hungry senses fixed upon the youth, answered vehemently:

"Most sure, for in truth it was not I who saved him from the robbers. When I came he was senseless on the grass, and a tall fellow that stood by told me a tale of some forest girl who scared away the thieves, and to whom my love-calf promptly gave his heart. Indeed, when he came to his senses I had much ado to persuade him that this girl was the trick of a fevered dream, and that I was his rescuer, I his promised wife."

The dryad watched her with firm, unchanging eyes. So, long ago, her mother in the woodland might have watched unfearing the dangerous presence of a snake.

"Why did you do this?" Argathona asked. "Did you love him so very dearly?"

The duchess laughed impatiently, for the apple proved harder to win than she had deemed, and the telling of the tale vexed her a little.

"I love very dearly the gift that he can give. Though I be a great lady he makes me a greater. It is much to be Duchess of Thebes to-day; it is more to be Duchess of Athens to-morrow."

There was a little pause, and Argathona's eyes travelled from the duchess to the man at the table and back again.

"Come," cried Esclaramonde, "are you content? Think nothing of him. I will wear him as the rich cloak of my loves."

The duchess was looking eagerly at Argathona, and Argathona, glancing aside, saw that the man at the table stirred and seemed about to move, and she saw that the prince's fingers were gripping the hilt of his dagger.

"I am content," Argathona answered, and tossed the golden apple to Esclaramonde, who caught it in the cup of her joined hands joyously. "Yet I think there were a better gift for you."

"What is that?" Esclaramonde questioned, greedily, and as she spoke the young Prince of Athens sprang to his feet, and came towards her with his drawn dagger in his hand.

"A true blade in your false heart," Rainouart said, and raised his weapon on high.

Esclaramonde fell at his feet and grovelled on the floor, letting the apple roll away. It was as horridly amazing to her that her bridegroom could rise from the cup she had qualified as it would have been horridly amazing if her old spouse had risen from the dead. Both were catastrophes of nature too appalling to understand, and her courage went from her in a breath and her blood was as water. She could do nothing but crouch upon the ground and moan to her master not to kill her.

Rainouart looked down upon her abjection with a sick spirit, and slowly lowered his weapon.

"You have a woman's body that must be pitied," he said, in sorrowful scorn, "but the devil it shelters must be hid. We will find cloisters for you. But you must give me back my ring."

He bent and caught at her up-stretched, appealing hands, and drew from her finger the ring that had been his mother's. He plucked from his finger the ruby that Esclaramonde had set there and cast it at her feet, while he set his own ring in its old place. Then he turned from her sprawling to Argathona, where she stood impassive with folded arms. He was all himself again; the woman's confession had unspelled him; his spirit seemed like a clean mirror waiting to reflect the face of a liberated memory. He would see the face soon, he was sure of it, the face of his beloved, but in the meanwhile there was knightly work to do.

"You are a man," he said. "You have unsealed my soul, but you have snared a woman to her shame. We fought to-day in sport; we fight to-night in earnest."

Argathona moved a pace nearer to the angry prince, looking straight into his eyes.

"Oh, Phœnix of knighthood," she said, smiling, and tenderly reproachful, "where is your fidelity? Think of the greenwood, knight; think of your vows of love, and tell me where is the maid who heard them. Think of your proffered ring, and tell me where it should be now."

Rainouart looked at her in amazement. Though he knew now that he had been deceived, the shadow of that deception still lay heavy upon him and he saw as in a mist. The woman on the ground, freed for the instant from her fear of death, lifted her head unheeded by the others and listened intently with a growing hope in her eyes. But even while she cowered and listened she snatched greedily at her ruby and put it quickly on her finger. The apple lay out of her reach.

"Who are you?" the prince cried, in a great wonder, and let the dagger fall clattering from his hand upon the floor. Argathona came near to him and put her face close to his.

"Look in my eyes, lover, my lover. Though I wear a boy's coat, it covers a girl's heart that was given to you in the greenwood the night you fell among thieves."

She caught both his hands in hers as she spoke and pressed them fondly upon her bosom, and so he was very sure that it was a woman who spoke to him.

"Remember my face," Argathona chanted. "Remember the song of the forest. Remember the greenwood dappled with the moonlight. Remember my face bending over you."

It was to Rainouart as if a curtain had been drawn aside and he looked through an open window on the rose-garden of his dreams.

"I remember the greenwood," he cried; "I remember you. I thank God for my memory. My eyes were sealed so that I could not see, but the spell is lifted from my spirit and my vision is clear. Can you forgive me, my love?"

Argathona looked into his beseeching face with infinite tenderness and infinite love.

"What is there to forgive?" she whispered. "You were snared; you were betrayed; you believed me no more than the sweet-seeming of a dream. But because I was sure that you loved me, who loved you with all my heart, I came to set you free."

"Dear love," said Rainouart, "you are the bravest and the fairest of women, and I worship you with my soul. Your life is mine, my life is yours from now to the end of ends."

"Come from here," wooed Argathona softly; "quit the desecrated city, quit its shameful, shameless citizens. Come to the sweet, clean greenwood, my lover, for there we shall dwell together, free from ache and care, skilled in the secrets of the seasons, the promise of spring, and the gladness of summer, and the rapture of autumn; and the sun shall be our comfort by day, and the stars shall be our torches by night, and the green grass shall be our couch, and the leaves our curtains, and the free air our friend. And when winter comes with its snows and its rains, and its fury of winds, we shall hide in caves or the ruins of temples, and build us fires to warm us, and I will sing you songs of the world before the flight of the gods, and tell you tales of the days of gold. And we shall feed on the fruits of the earth, and all the beasts and birds of the forest shall be our companions, and the glory and the holiness of love shall be our inheritance for all our days."

Now while she spoke it seemed to the charmed senses of Rainouart that his spirit had achieved its best, and that he had passed forever from the mystic rose-garden holding the noble rose to his heart. And the rose of the world was a maiden, and her face was the face of Argathona.

"I will come with you to the greenwood," Rainouart answered, exultant. "Honor and truth and purity and the simple life abide there, and there we shall live and love till our pulses cease to beat. I love you forever."

And Argathona echoed him, radiant, "I love you forever," and she forgot that he was mortal and she immortal, and her face was near to his, and the lips of the lovers met. Them seemed they were already in the greenwood; them seemed they were alone; in their joy they had forgotten Athens; in their joy they had forgotten Esclaramonde.

Slowly the woman on the floor had edged her way nearer and nearer to the pair, and now her fingers closed upon the hilt of the fallen dagger. Argathona, her first kiss taken and given, released herself from her lover's clasp, and holding him by the hand turned and made to lead him towards the turret door. At that moment Esclaramonde gripped the dagger, and, leaping to her feet, sprang forward and stabbed the Prince of Athens in the side. Rainouart, taken unawares, under the impact of the duchess's body flung so fiercely against him, reeled, and, making to turn, tripped and fell towards the table, striking his head against it and dropping thence to the ground. Esclaramonde stooped over him to repeat her stroke, but she had not time. Argathona was upon her, eagle-swift, eagle-fierce, eagle-strong. She plucked the dagger from the duchess's clutch, and flung her across the room to fall in a heap by the door. Then Argathona, paying no more heed to her enemy, bent over Rainouart. He was unconscious from the head stroke; his wound was bleeding freely, and Argathona busied herself to stanch the flow, making little moans over him the while, like a mother over an ailing child. Their second meeting, like their first, was stained with blood. As for Esclaramonde, when she found herself unheeded she crawled to her feet and beat furiously upon the gong.

"Help! help! help!" she cried, and the sound of her screaming voice and the sound of the beaten brass reverberated horridly through the night.

XXIII

SIMON'S CHARGE

While the duchess was hammering at the gong and screaming furiously for help, and while from the rooms below, where revelry was toward, came now the noise of answering cries and clamor, the arras that masked the door of the turret was dashed aside and Simon sprang into the room. From where he waited for Argathona, below in the shadow of the tower, the shrieking of the duchess had reached his ears, and he lost no time in leaping up the turret stairs to see what had happened. In a moment his eyes took in the scene--the blood-stained weapon on the floor, the duchess screaming and beating on the gong, the young Lord of Athens stretched his length in blood, and Argathona bowed in care above him. Simon sprang to her side.

"Heaven's pity, maiden," he ejaculated, anxiously. "How are you betrayed?"

Argathona looked up at him with calm, melancholy eyes.

"My love is wounded," she answered quietly, "and he has swooned from his fall, being still weakened by the onslaught in the wood, but there is no fear for him."

The dryad had to speak close into Simon's ear, for the continued calling of the duchess and the growing clamor in the now aroused palace made it hard for him to hear.

From her bosom she drew a handful of leaves, and pressed them into Simon's palms.

"These are leaves of the herb of healing," she whispered. "I have set some on his hurt to stop the blood. Renew them soon, bruise them in his drink, and he will be whole within a day. I think it may prove that I cannot wait here, so you must tend him."

"I have sworn to serve you and stay with you--" Simon began, but Argathona stopped him.

"You serve me best in serving him," she remonstrated, "and when he is hale you must bring him to me safe and sound in the greenwood."

Simon promised with his heart, and would have promised with his lips but there was no time to say more. The billows of sound in the palace had swelled to a mighty rush and trampling of feet, and in another instant the door was flung open, and many knights came into the room--Count Ernault, Sir Guy, Sir Jaufre, Fernand Ximenes, and others who had been tasting the duke's cheer.

"Who calls for help?" Count Ernault asked, looking around him in amazement.

The Duchess Esclaramonde was standing full height with her hands extended in appeal.

"I call for help," she cried. "Where is the Duke of Athens?"

Count Ernault sprang forward to where Rainouart lay with Argathona and Simon supporting him.

"What ails the prince?" he asked, and as Simon growled back, "The she-devil from Thebes has stabbed him," Ernault turned to the knights who were hot upon his heels and bade them keep back and let the prince have air. The gentlemen of Thebes among the throng separated themselves from the others and ranged themselves behind their duchess, questioning her and whispering together. Fernand Ximenes was already by her side.

"Fear nothing," he said, softly, "I am your friend," and then he stood apart, silent and watchful. Along the corridor came the thunder of heavy feet.

"Here is the duke," cried Jaufre de Brabant, and even as he spoke Duke Baldwin staggered into the room. He had been eating hugely, he had been drinking deeply, he was flushed with meat and wine, and furious at the interruption which had taken him from table. He glared around him like a baited bull, seeing little at first, for his eyes swam with the drink he carried and the confusion of the shifting lights.

"What is the matter?" he bellowed, his raging face turning from one to other of those about him. Then catching sight of his son upon the ground, and the duchess standing apart, and the blood-stained dagger upon the floor between them, he veered to her in a hot fury.

"Woman, what have you done?" he vociferated. Esclaramonde fell on her knees and stretched out her hands to him, but her voice was full of menace, though her words were words of entreaty.

"Justice, great duke," she shrilled, "justice on my false lord. Although he is your son, he is still your subject, and amenable to all the laws of chivalry and honor."

The duke moved upon the kneeling woman, lifting his great hands as if to strike her, whereat there was murmur among the Thebans and many hands set to sword-hilts.

"Woman, what have you done?" he asked again, and again she answered him defiantly, conscious of her backing, conscious of the neighborhood of Fernand Ximenes, conscious of the chivalry of the duke.

"Justice," she answered again, "justice on my false lord, who sought to drug my senses on my wedding night that he might entertain his paramour."

The duke stood instantly still, rigid as an image. "His paramour!" he echoed, glancing round the room, for to him, as to all the others, the only woman present was the Duchess of Esclaramonde herself, and by his son he only saw as all the others saw Simon the soldier of fortune and the young knight of Eleusis. The duke strode to where his son lay.

"Is my son dead?" he asked. Argathona, kneeling by Rainouart's seeming lifeless body, whispered to Count Ernault that he was little hurt, although stunned by his fall, and would soon recover, and Count Ernault, turning to the duke, repeated her message.

"Bear him to his chamber and summon my physician," the duke ordered, and in a moment the strong arms of the young prince's friends--Guy, Jaufre, Ambrose, and Raymond--lifted him unconscious from the floor and bore him to the adjoining room and laid him on the marriage bed. Then glaring round him with the face that all men feared who saw it so, Baldwin commanded:

"Tell me what has happened?"

Esclaramonde rose to her feet and pointed at Argathona, who was standing, now tranquil, with Simon by her side.

"That is a woman," she cried. "That cup contains the wine of sleep. It was poured that I might drink it and might sleep while he gave his false love the kisses due to me. But I was warned and did not drink, and when this woman came I stabbed him in her arms to avenge my honor."

Baldwin turned to Argathona.

"Are you a woman?" he asked, with wonder in his drunken voice. Argathona answered him calmly:

"I am no man, great duke."

The duke clinched and unclinched his great fists. He was sobering rapidly in his rage. "Are you my son's lover?" he questioned.

The dryad answered simply:

"I love him as a maid should love her bachelor, true heart and true soul, and he loved me ere he was stolen from me."

"Do not listen to her," Esclaramonde clamored; "she is a filthy witch and she has ensorcelled him."

Duke Baldwin lifted up his hand to command silence. Drunk or sober he was the master here. Whatever had happened he was the judge. If his son had sinned his son should suffer, but it was for Baldwin of the Rock to sit in judgment. Some dim memory of an ancient tale of Brutus, a Roman, troubled his muddled mind. While Esclaramonde was speaking, Fernand Ximenes had moved a little nearer to her and lightly touched her on the arm with a touch that meant reassurance, a touch that convinced her of a friend.

"Silence, lady," Baldwin ordered, not uncivilly; then he turned again to Argathona: "Boy, woman, witch," he demanded, "whatever you be, what is your story?"

Argathona answered him as tranquilly as if she were telling an old tale to old friends in the forest. Simon gaped in wonder at her, with his hand ever at the hilt of his sword to help her.

"Your son was wounded by robbers in the wood. I tended his hurt, and we changed loves and vows. While I went for healing herbs, in my absence this lady came and bore him to Athens, persuading his sick senses that it was she who had succored him."

The duke frowned horridly. "A strange tale!" he thundered. "A lying tale!" the duchess cried eagerly. Then Simon came forward and faced her, and in a clap she knew that he was the man that had escaped from her in the wood, and she went pale for an instant and caught her breath.

"It is a true tale, by your leave," Simon asserted, "for I was by from first to last."

The duke waved woman-interrupter and man-interrupter impatiently aside, and still addressed Argathona.

"How came you here?" he asked, and again the dryad answered him as calmly as if she had been singing a country-side song.

"In a boy's coat I came hither; in a man's mail I rode in the jousts, and afterwards wooed and won that lady with a golden apple to send her lord to sleep with a drowsy draught and welcome me as her lover to-night." She stooped and picked the apple up as she spoke.

The duke's grim frown grew grimmer. "Why did not my son drink?" he asked.

Argathona answered: "I warned him not to drink, but to make believe, for I wished him to know the worth of the woman he had wedded."

The face of the duke was an ugly sight to see, as he glanced from the slender girl in the boy's garb to the woman who had married his son that day and striven to murder him that night.

"This is a tangled tale," he snarled, "and some here are lying their way to hell at a hand-gallop, but this is no hour and this no mood for judgment."

He pawed at his forehead with his huge hands as he spoke, as if he hoped by physical effort to dispel the sudden troubles of the night. Then he turned to Esclaramonde:

"Lady," he said, "if it be proved that my son has wronged you, you shall have justice, for no man is son of mine who swerves in aught from his knightly fealty, but it may prove that you have slandered my son, in which case I shall deal justice upon you."