Part 6

Rainouart, his senses hurriedly returning, gazed with wonder into her fair, familiar face, and for an instant deemed himself in France, in Paris, at the court of King Philip. He lifted himself a little on one arm, for he was stronger now with the strength given by deep sleep, and realized that he was in the forest, but that Esclaramonde was bending over him.

"I crave your pardon, lady," he said. "When came you here? I seek another, she who was here but now."

The dark eyes of the duchess swam in the sad waters of anxiety, and well-feigned amazement was painted on her face.

"Of what other do you speak, dear lord?" she asked. "I have been here by your side ever since those villains fell upon you."

Rainouart looked dully at her and overmuttered her words, trying to interpret their meaning.

"You have been by my side?" he asked.

The duchess wound her arms tightly about him and kissed his forehead hotly, and the kiss troubled him, for the woman was very beautiful and his flesh was strange to kisses. Esclaramonde spoke in his ear low and quick.

"I was journeying to Athens, travelling by night for my whim and pleasure, and by happy chance passed by here at the time when you were bested. The coming of my people frightened the knaves from you, and they fled, with some of mine in pursuit. We were alone together"--she lowered her eyelids for a moment, craftily modest--"and I tended your wounds."

The prince made to free himself bodily from those embracing arms, mentally from the net-work of those bewildering words. It was easy to free himself from her clasp, though he did so with all courtesy and rather as one unwilling and unworthy to be so greatly honored, but it was harder to free his spirit from the meshes of her lying tale.

"You speak strangely," he said, vaguely, wondering if this were parcel of a dream. "Surely you did not tend me? Where is she?"

His haggard eyes wandered over the moonlit space towards the darkling wood and marvelled at the solemn presence of the men-at-arms. Again Esclaramonde wound her arms around him, reluctant, and there was an agony of solicitude in the duchess's voice, an ecstasy of tenderness in her eyes, as she cried to him, clasping him tighter to her warm body:

"My lord, my dear lord, what trouble has come to you? It was but a few poor moments ago that you told me how you loved me."

The prince looked despairingly into that beautiful, sensual face, and he remembered how it had shone in its splendor over the festivals at Paris. It was very lovely to behold, alluring, commanding, yielding, insisting, but it was not the loveliness his white spirit had longed for then or the worshipped loveliness his memory longed for now.

"I told you that I loved you?" The sound of his voice was full of doubt, and yet it went hard with his knightly heart to doubt the word of a woman.

Esclaramonde's pale cheeks filled with flame.

"With words too flattering sweet for me to echo," she whispered, and she stooped, and her eager face was close to his and her dark hair brushed his forehead, and she kissed him on the mouth at once sharply and suavely, and the fire from her lips ran through his veins.

"You gave me a ring which I shall wear forever." She withdrew one clinging arm from about his neck and held a smooth hand before him, and he saw on her finger the ring that had been his own for so long, the ring that had been his mother's, that she had made him promise when she gave it to him never to part with save to the loveliest and the worthiest. "You took a ring from me." She lifted his hand a little and he stared stupidly at the great ruby.

"Have you forgotten?" Esclaramonde cried. "Can men forget so soon?" Her eyes swam in obedient tears.

The maze of the man's mind showed tragically in his eyes, and then he spoke, but rather to himself than to the woman by his side.

"Which is the dream?" he asked. "I thought when I fell that a white girl came from the woods and succored me, a divine child, the loveliest--"

Esclaramonde shifted her body a little away from him, though still she clasped him fast and he could not in courtesy release her clinging fingers.

"Dear my lord," she protested, pathetically, "my overvaunted beauty may be of little account; still it is not many seconds since you chose to call me passing fair."

The prince, looking at Esclaramonde, knew that she was very fair indeed. There was for the merely desirous no more desirable woman of all the French dames dwelling in Greece.

"You are very fair," he said, truly, "but you are not she whom I saw." And once again his anxious eyes looked longingly over the silver grass towards the implacable silence of the wood.

"She was some dream," Esclaramonde answered him, earnestly, her warm lips close to his flushed cheek, her soft breath fanning his troubled face. "She was a vision born of the quick fever of your wounds. You swooned again after our change of vows and change of rings, and in this swoon you must have dreamed this dream of another who was not I. Indeed, you murmured snatches of strange speech in your sleep which astounded me, but such delirium is common with men in your case. Will you stain your knightly faith and deny your honor for the sake of a sick dream?"

Great waves of doubt flooded the prince's struggling consciousness, overwhelming it, drowning it. Was she, in very fact, no more than a vision, that white child of the woods with her yellow hair and her haunting eyes and her perfect body? Did the help he had dreamed of really come to him from this splendid, voluptuous creature who had striven to allure him in France? Was it those insistent hands that had brought healing to his hurt? Was it those passionate lips that had soothed him to sleep? Was it those enticing eyes that had summoned love to take possession of his stainless soul? His thoughts were all a tangle, his fever burned bright as his eyes travelled vaguely from the unfamiliar ring upon his finger to his mother's ring upon the finger of Esclaramonde. One thing alone seemed plain to him where all was imbroglio. If in whatever bewildering way he had pledged his word to this lady, his word must be kept.

"If I gave you my knightly faith, lady," he said, faintly, "I may not take it again."

The eyes of the duchess were triumphant torches, success was throned in her smiling face. But the pallor of Rainouart's face grew greater, for the spiritual strife within him had weakened him more than his loss of blood, and Esclaramonde, watching him, believed he was about to swoon again. She turned and made a sign in the direction where her following stood, huddled together, a group of lances and flaring torches on the lip of the wood. The golden page quitted the little throng and ran to his mistress.

"Bring me some wine, Bohemond," she ordered.

The page sped back to the litter and returned to his mistress with a golden flagon and a golden cup. Esclaramonde took the cup and held it while Bohemond poured out red wine that glowed like dragon's blood in the moonlight. Then a gesture dismissed the page to his companions, and the duchess set the golden cup upon the grass. She was still supporting Rainouart with one arm, his eyes were closed, and his lips had lost their color. From the jewelled pouch that hung at her girdle the duchess drew with her free hand a tiny phial, and, cuddling it in her palm, drew the stopper with her finger and thumb. She poured the contents into the cup and thrust the empty phial back into her pouch. Then she lifted the cup and pressed it to the young man's pale lips.

"Drink, my lord, drink," she entreated, and her voice could implore and command with the same breath and charm the listener away from reason. She was eager that he should drink, for she knew that what he drank would make him sleep sound, and that when he woke he must needs think as she would have him think, and so she said again:

"Drink, my lord, drink."

Rainouart opened his eyes wearily and looked up. He had hoped that he might sleep, and, waking, find the coming of the duchess a fever's fantasy. But she was still with him, his imperial deliverer, and the white child only the picture of a dream. Esclaramonde tilted the cup a little at his lips, and he drank at it eagerly, sucking in surcease of memory, sucking in unconquerable sleep. It was delicious, that draught of dark and deep oblivion; the tired senses relaxed.

"I thank you, lady," he sighed, in relief, and then all knowledge slipped from him and he lay his length unconscious. The duchess called to her page, and Bohemond raced across the grass to her side. Him the duchess commanded:

"Let two of my people carry this lord to my litter. We will make sure of his safe convoy to Athens. I will ride for the rest of the journey."

Her orders were swiftly and instantly obeyed. Three tall fellows of her men-at-arms, picked by the knight who led the van of her escort, came to where Rainouart lay and carried him as easily and as gently as if he had been a sleeping child to their lady's litter. A servitor moved from the rear of the little army leading a white riding palfrey, valiantly caparisoned. As she made to mount she paused, missing something, and her quick eyes sought for Simon.

"Where is the braggart we talked with but now?" she asked, sharply, and her question proved hard to answer. The men-at-arms into whose charge Simon had been put looked at one another with dismay, for truly Simon had disappeared. The disappearance, very surprising to the soldiery, was not very surprising in itself. The fact of the matter was that Simon had decided some time back that it would be excellent well for him to be quite clear of the complication that the coming of the duchess had created. It was plain to the adventurer that the duchess had taken a fancy for the heir of Athens. It was also patent to his understanding that he himself existed an undesirable witness of that earlier passage between Rainouart and the woman of the wood, the story of which the duchess had so vehemently resented. Simon, who had something of the art of reading women's natures in their faces, imagined, not unwisely, that the Duchess of Thebes was not a woman to stick at much if the removal of a disagreeable witness might be convenient to her. Once Simon had made up his mind that it were well for him to go, he lost no time in making the experiment.

It was no very difficult enterprise. The men in whose custody he stood, occupied to their greater interest in watching the duchess's attentions to the wounded knight, though they could see little and hear less, paid scant heed to Simon, who, on his side, had done nothing to provoke watchfulness by any resistance to their guardianship. So, finding them thus indifferent, little by little he edged him away from their neighborhood, moving very cautiously and gradually as one who scarcely seemed to move at all till he backed against a tree, against which he leaned lazily for some seconds. Once in front of a tree it was but simple strategy to slip to the other side of its trunk, and this feat Simon, choosing his time wisely, accomplished dexterously and unnoticed. Had he been by misluck interrupted in his progress, he relied upon his mighty strength to overthrow any six who sought to restrain him, and to make a bolt for it into the thickness of the wood where he believed he might effectually evade pursuit. But he wished, if it might be, to glide away in quiet, and fortune favored the adventurer. A floating fleece of cloud, stray fragment of the shattered dragon that seemed to obey Argathona's incantation, had again muffled the moonlight. In the gloom Simon was on his hands and knees in the brushwood and threading his way on all-fours with amazing celerity among the trees into the deep of the forest. Thus it came to pass that when the duchess demanded Simon, Simon was not forthcoming.

"He was here a moment since," one man-at-arms asserted, lying hardily, as he stared into the vacant faces of his fellows.

"Belike he has slipped into the wood," another suggested, shading his eyes with his hands and peering into the impenetrable gloom behind him.

"Shall we search for him with torches?" Bohemond proposed, briskly, while the men-at-arms looked sheepish over their blunder and wished Simon at the devil. The duchess shook her head impatiently.

"No, it is no matter," she said.

She believed that she would recognize the man again if she saw him in Athens. She was confident, too, that the man could have little power, even if he had the inclination, to interfere with her plans. The immediate need was to carry Rainouart quickly to Athens and there to work her will upon his troubled wits. She mounted lightly into the saddle of her horse, her spirits were nimble, her heart gay, her brain elated. She had taken at last a prize that she had long desired, a prize that she would not lightly yield again. All was very well with her.

"Onward!" she commanded, "onward! Athens, ho!" So she and her company resumed their measured journey to Athens, a line of torches on the white highway, while the prince slept a dreamless sleep on the litter still warm with the pressure of the limbs of Esclaramonde.

X

SIMON BLOWS OUT HIS LANTERN

When Simon had made some little way into the wood he quitted the animal all-fours, irksome to one already stiff and weary, for the natural carriage of man, and made to think things over and to look about him. The latter was difficult to do, at least to any great advantage. More frequent clouds now scumbled the sky and huddled in dull clumps between moon and earth, wherefore in the dense wood the darkness was so thick that Simon felt as if he could pluck pieces out of it as out of a palpable pall or curtain. But Simon was not discomfited, Simon was not at a loss. "Here," he murmured, sagaciously, "comes in the wisdom of your philosophic lantern." Squatting cautiously in the darkness, after assuring himself by preliminary pattings of the absence of any hostile snags, he fumbled in his pouch till he found flint, steel, and tinder-box. Then after the habitual preliminary pains and failures that darkened the lives of those that sought illumination, he succeeded in getting a light and applying it gingerly to the candle in its iron house. When the wick began to burn freely he hasped the door and felt less lonely and astray. Through the thin plates of horn a pale yellow light flowed dimly, showing like some civic lamp of fish-oil seen through a fog. But it was at least bright enough to enable Simon to distinguish where he was for a few paces in any direction, and to protect himself when he started walking again from crashing with unnecessary vehemence into unexpected tree-trunks. What was less to the purpose was that the flickering wick seemed to stir from slumber all manner of moths and midges, which hustled in their myriads about lantern and lantern-carrier with a wholly unnecessary activity. But if their attentions called for a brave display of philosophy, this was all in the part of one who carried the lantern of Diogenes.

Having looked about him, Simon now proceeded to think things over. All the events that had followed upon the unexpected arrival of the duchess had passed so swiftly that he knew they had taken little time in the happening. He had not the least idea where he was or what he should do next. He wanted, in the second place, the road to Athens, but he did not know where to find it; also he wanted in the first place to see the woodland maid again, but he did not know where to find her. He was still more than three-quarters inclined to think her mad. A lonely life in the forest had no doubt unhinged her pretty wits, and led her to credit all sorts of gossamer nonsense about immortality and forgotten gods. But were she the maddest witch that ever straddled a broomstick she was as fair as fair, and it occurred to the lantern-carrier hopefully that perhaps now that her prince was thus beraped from her she might be more willing to let Master Simon from Corinth play lieutenant.

After a while he decided that the best thing for him to do was to try to find his way back to the glade whence young Athens had been carried, for thither the wood-maid was sure to come with the healing herbs for her lover, and Simon's strongest purpose was the wish to see her again. He groped his way slowly through the trees, oathing free at sundry awkward bumps and stumbles, and endeavoring painfully to retrace his steps over a soil that gave no indication of his passage. But he moved with fair confidence served by occasional glimpses of the moon, and sure that by this time the duchess would have vanished from the goal at which he aimed. Fortune rewarded him. He had not travelled very far when he caught a glimpse of a clearing through the trees, and hastening his speed he soon broke from the wood and found that he had, indeed, returned to the scene of the night's adventure. Here was the glade newly trampled with the coming and going of many feet, here were the marks of horses' hoofs on the grass, here was the slight hollow in the turf where the youth's body had lain. The place seemed strangely deserted now which had so short a while before been populous. Surely the girl would come soon, Simon thought. He lowered his lantern to the ground and humped himself beside it, resolved on waiting, and wishing he had a store of food and drink with him to cheer the waiting-time. He had not long to wait. There came a gleam of whiteness through the trees, the gleam of a white body garmented in white stuff. Another moment and Argathona emerged from the forest and came running across the grass towards him. She was holding the skirts of her smock in both hands to form a kind of sack, and in this sack she carried herbs. As she came near to Simon she shook what she carried in a heap upon the sward and leaped forward to where her lover had lain. Then she gave a great cry as she saw that Simon sat there alone.

"Where is he?" she asked, an agony in her voice.

Simon was glad to see the girl again, but sorely against his will he found himself a sharer in her sorrow, and could almost have wished young Athens back again between them to conjure away the pathos of her look. He rose up to answer her, honestly sorry for her flagrant sorrow, painfully conscious that it was not for him to bring her consolation.

"Gone," he said, simply. It was all he could find to say on the instant; it really seemed all there was to say.

"Gone!" she echoed, and it seemed to Simon as if the woes of all unhappy lovers in the world seemed to flow mournful through her lips. He nodded his head and spoke soberly, gently, weighing his words:

"In your absence there came a great lady riding by, the duchess she of Thebes, no less, with a large escort. She saw your young gentleman sprawling on his back in the moonlight, and, seeing him, seemed to know him and to show a fancy for his fair face. So when she had tickled him out of his swoon she persuaded him, as I take it, for her voice carried far and I could catch snatches of her speech in the stillness, that you were no more than the doll of a dream and that it was she, the duchess, who had tended him in his time of peril, she who had changed troth with him, she who had taken his ring which indeed lay on the grass for any chance-by to handle, she who had given him a ring in exchange, for indeed she did thrust a ring on his finger while he slumbered. I suppose in the end he gobbled her story, which seemed, on the face of it, plain and specious. Anyway, she gave him wine to drink which sent him to sleep like a baby, and so without more ado she bundled him off to Athens."

Simon paused after this patter of narrative. To his surprise the girl had mastered her instant grief, and her countenance carried its former air of sweet serenity. The tears had dried from her eyes; the fear had faded from her cheeks; only she seemed to regard Simon now with cold, accusing mien.

"Did you do nothing to stay her?" she asked, and there was that stroke of reproach in her voice which made Simon feel, he knew not exactly why, as if he had betrayed a friend. But he answered bluffly enough, putting a bold face on his conduct, for, after all, maugre her strength, she was only a slip of a she-wizard and he a bearded man little accountable to such jills.

"I am a soldier of fortune," he blustered, "and it is not the way of my trade to take sides in a squabble unless I be paid for it. But if I had been fool enough to thrust my nose into another's quarrel, there was nothing of any purpose to do, for my high-mighty lady the duchess had fifty or so stout fellows with her, more than I could tackle. I was in a kind my lady's prisoner, and if I had not contrived to slip aside into the wood while she was plying him with the wine it is like she would have carried me, too, to Athens, and indeed it was not part of my plans to travel thither in such fashion."

Argathona seemed to be listening to Simon, but in truth she was paying little heed to his surly speech. She was looking steadfastly at the white ribbon of road which skirted the glade and ran, a highway, to Athens, and her face showed only the composure of a noble hope.

"He does not love her," she murmured to herself, and her words flowed with the motion of some proud and ancient song. "It is I whom he loves, I who love him."

Simon hoisted his shoulders to his ears. These amatory flights were not to his mind, for he took himself to be in a free field, and he was mulishly set to push his own case.

"He may live content enough with his bargain," he asserted. "Lady Esclaramonde of Thebes is a great lady and a wealthy and a fair, with broad lands for her dower--a better match, saving your presence, for young Athens than a wood-wench in a wood."

Argathona looked at him now with the same air of triumphant patience.