Part 8
A new-comer to a throne who is not in the direct line and is not upon the spot when the succession falls due is never too sure of his seat, even if his authority be unchallenged, and Duke Baldwin, with enemies ready to take the field against him, deemed it prudent to enter into negotiations for the services of the Catalan Grand Company. The Catalans, already weary of acting for their own hand, were very ready to take Duke Baldwin's pay and to play Duke Baldwin's game. Their terms were large, but Duke Baldwin's need was keen and Duke Baldwin's tongue was glib. He promised them what they asked with a cheerful spirit, albeit the company asked a good deal. Baldwin agreed to pay each full-armored horseman four gold ounces a month, each light-armed horseman two gold ounces a month, and each foot-soldier one gold ounce a month. When Duke Baldwin made, or rather accepted, these terms, the strength of the Catalan Grand Company totalled three thousand five hundred horsemen and three thousand men on foot, so that Duke Baldwin found himself pledged to a pretty penny. But with Duke Baldwin the present was very emphatically the present. The immediate important thing was to tighten his grip on the pleasant Duchy of Athens, to tweak the noses of Epirus here and Vlachia there, and he genially agreed to the terms of the Catalans, prepared no less genially hereafter to bamboozle them, but in the mean time making what might have been a dubious dominion indubitable with the strength of their support.
Yet Baldwin knew too much of the world of fighting-men to think that throne stable which was mainly defended by an army of mercenaries. So he made it his business to woo and welcome to his court all gentlemen-adventurers from France, and from the neighboring little principalities of Greece, who were willing to take chivalrous service under his standard. His fame as a warrior, his open-handed generosity where open-handed generosity was expedient, and especially the beauty of the open-hearted women with whom he took care that his court was always a-quiver, attracted to Athens a great number of knights and gentlemen-at-arms, who swelled his immediate following very rapidly. He further strengthened his hand by enrolling and equipping so many soldiers that in a short while he had more than doubled the strength of his solid little standing army. He had not been many months upon his throne before he had made his duchy the most formidable state in Greece and his duchy and himself very patently independent of the Catalan Grand Company. Feeling little need for the further services of the Catalan Grand Company, he felt little gratitude for their services in the past. Duke Baldwin was not a man burdened with a too lively sense of duty to others, and though in the early days of his dukedom he had paid the Grand Company month by month their promised wage, that payment had now been suffered to fall into arrears for a very considerable period.
For the time being this mattered very little to the Catalan Grand Company. Its members were quartered comfortably enough in the pleasant plain of Attica; they amused themselves from time to time with little marauding expeditions to the north, and they had, or affected to have, every confidence that sooner or later Duke Baldwin would pay up all the moneys that were due to them. The principal leaders of this company dwelt in Athens, and mingled on equal terms with the chivalry of Duke Baldwin's court. It could not truly be said that there was much love lost between the Spanish mercenaries and the French knights, for the latter looked down upon the Catalan companions as unchivalrous freebooters, and the Spaniards knew of this feeling, and it rankled in their hearts though they betrayed no trace of resentment in their faces. But between the two parties there was all outward show of amity, all outward interchange of knightly courtesies, and the Spanish leaders shared in all the festivals, drank at all the banquets, and jousted in all the tourneys of Duke Baldwin's court. If the Spaniards themselves were to be believed, they found no such hostility nestling in the white breasts of the fair French ladies of Athens as they were conscious that the mailed bosoms of the French gentlemen sheltered. But if the policy of the duke was regarded by the Catalan Grand Company for the most part with indifferent eyes, it was not so regarded by one of their number.
Fernand Ximenes was captain of the Catalan Grand Company, so far as the Catalan Grand Company could be said to have any single captain. That turbulent, mercenary army, though strongly bound together by common love of gold, common instinct for plunder, common lust for the gratification of all greeds, and common readiness for warfare under the service of any prince who chose to pay them, was not a community over which it was easy for any single man to extend an uncontested sovereignty. Since the Grand Company marched out on its career of rapine from Spain, leader after leader had fallen victim to the heady quarrels and bloody passions of his subordinates. Chieftains old in battle, and young chieftains eager to prove themselves peers of their predecessors, had in turn swayed for their moon the angry tides of the company, and in their turn had fallen victims to the weapons of those they were supposed to head.
For a time it seemed as if to accept any leadership over the Catalan Grand Company was not merely to court but to assure a violent death. Strong as were the links of common interest which bound the savage Spaniards into a depredatory army, it looked at one hour of their wild fortunes as if their forces must needs dissolve into anarchy from the reluctance of superior spirits to entertain or from the incapacity of inferior spirits to maintain control over the body. At length it became plain, even to the most ungovernable ruffian of that lawless brotherhood, that the promiscuous slaughter of superiors, however diverting in itself, was not the surest means of attaining the ends for which the free companions had been called together. A kind of compromise was arrived at: a form of parliamentary discussion instituted resulting in the evolution of a little cluster of captains, nominally each of equal authority, and only directing the action of the company when they spoke with a common voice and struck the drum-head of council with a common hand.
Of this little body of captains Fernand Ximenes owned indubitably the ablest mind, as he owned no less indubitably the strongest body. Of a smooth and grave exterior, with something of an ecclesiastic suavity blended with the urbanity of a scholar, this outward serenity masked a spirit as ingenious in forming schemes for self-aggrandizement as relentless in their execution. Greatly gifted as a practical soldier, greatly gifted as a possible statesman, Ximenes was most graced of all in this, that he knew how to wait. He was never in a hurry; he had never been known in a life that had now well come to middle age to speak a word there was no need to speak or strike a stroke there was no need to strike. His ambition was unlimited, but he never allowed it to lead him farther than he could safely see his clear way, and he had often let some apparently bright occasion go by when to his shrewd eyes the brightness seemed fallacious. He loved all desirable things--women, kingdoms, gold, images, pictures, jewels, costly habits, costly fare. He even--and this seemed a strange thing in a leader of the Catalan Grand Company--was not indifferent to books. But he could deny himself as vigorously as the most rigid ascetic to any of these fleshly temptations if his crafty mind were convinced that the denial of a moment meant a fuller gratification later, and he had never yet found that such wise denial had gone unrewarded.
It was through the influence and advice of Ximenes--so subtly exercised and so subtly offered that it seemed to each of his colleagues as if the course of action resolved upon had been decided as a result of his individual will--that the Catalan Grand Company entered into the service of Duke Baldwin of Athens. There were some, indeed, in the little cluster of captains who had talked none too vaguely of the possibility of the Grand Company making itself the master rather than the servant of the Duke of Athens. But with infinite patience and with infinite pains Fernand Ximenes made it plain to his co-captains that they had not at their command anything approaching to the necessary strength that would entitle them to enter upon a struggle with a fairly powerful prince of Greece, who had at his command a following little inferior to their own. "So long as we are well paid," he pleaded, "we shall do very well in Attica. The duke is generous; the duke is a free liver. He will be courteous to us captains, and our comrades will grow fat. The women of Greece are fair, if less radiant than the women of Spain, and the wines of Greece are very cheerful drinking." With these and other arguments he succeeded in carrying his point, and the forces of the Catalan Grand Company pledged their allegiance to Duke Baldwin in return for the stipulated sum.
From the moment that Ximenes had entered Greece with the company his mind had been filled with the desire--and with him to desire was almost invariably to attain--to become himself a prince in Greece. The most obvious way, and also the most difficult, was to seize some principality by the sword. An easier method suggested itself to him when the old Duke of Thebes died and left his duchy in charge of his young wife. Ximenes seemed here to perceive a chance of aggrandizement. He knew that the duchess was fair; he knew very well that the duchess was faithless, for he had visited Thebes ere he entered Baldwin's service and had found favor in the eyes of Esclaramonde. Indeed, so greatly did the handsome Spaniard gain the graces of the lady that when Ximenes heard of the death of the old dotard duke he was confident that the duchess would be likely soon to wed, and he was very ready to entertain the hope that the Duchess of Thebes would be willing to take for consort a certain valiant captain of the Catalan Grand Company. He began at once to work with his usual patience towards his goal. It was the result of his suggestions that Duke Baldwin welcomed the idea of holding a tournament, to which tournament the principal potentates in Greece should be bidden. Ximenes counted on his skill at arms to distinguish himself in the tourney; he counted on his way with women to ingratiate himself anew with the supple duchess--all seemed pleasantly and feasibly mapped out, and he thought of the project as much as he allowed himself to think of anything that lay ahead closed in the folded fingers of fate. And then, lo and behold! one moony May evening the Duchess of Thebes comes riding into Athens with Duke Baldwin's son and heir dozing on a litter, and in less than no time it is buzzed abroad through all the babblesome city that Rainouart, heir of Athens, is infatuated with the lovely Duchess of Thebes, that she is nothing unwilling to unwidow herself for his sake, that Duke Baldwin is hugely delighted at this union of Athens and Thebes, and that the marriage is decided and to take place with a celerity only excusable through the ungovernable passion of the prince. All of which is galling to an ambitious captain of Catalans, who shows, however, no sign of anger, but imperturbably waits on events.
XII
THE WINDING OF THE HORN
The palace of Duke Baldwin on the Acropolis was the stateliest of the many stately buildings which the French lords had made for their pleasure in Athens. All that the lessons of Western civilization could teach, all that the experience of Eastern luxury could suggest, to embellish the ducal dwelling had been accepted, and the daily state of Baldwin's existence was little, if at all, less regal than that of the monarch of France. The living-rooms were richly furnished and hung with costly tapestries. The walls of the great banqueting-hall were painted with vivid representations of the deeds of the Crusaders in the Holy Land. Vessels of gold and vessels of silver were in common use, and the jewelled pride of Byzantine mosaic filled every corridor with coloring as lustrous as the dawn and as glowing as the sunset. Whatever the arts could do to enrich and to adorn had been generously welcomed, and the people of Duke Baldwin's household moved familiarly, while the guests of Duke Baldwin's hospitality walked in wonder, amid surroundings as lovely as the liberal creation of a dream. Never had an abode been known more worthy of the presence of beautiful women, and the fair faces and shapely forms that made the home of Baldwin a wanton paradise in the minds of his knights found in every part of the great mansion a background worthy of their favor and their grace.
Duke Baldwin's palace, look at it one way, hummed like a human hive. It was full of sounds from dawn till night--servants going and coming, minstrels bowing and thrumming, the rustle of women's dresses, the flutter of women's fans, the patter of pages' footsteps running on delectable errands, merry messengers of love, the ring of noble voices, the clink of noble swords. Here, there, and everywhere Duke Baldwin's presence loomed, jovial, ferocious, vehemently alive and blithe, making love to a dozen ladies with a whole heart, drinking a dozen wines with a clear head, voluble, jocular, a brawny image of the lusts of the flesh. He was very well content with the world, and would not have it other than it was. To indulge all appetites furiously without hurt or satiety, to play the prodigal host and to read the reward of his opulence in the admiring eyes of easy women, this was Duke Baldwin's simple ideal of existence. It was the ideal of many others, but few attained it as completely as the genial, truculent duke, for few had his length of purse and fewer his strength of body.
But just now Duke Baldwin had other causes for complacency and content than gluttonizing in all the passions. The presence of the Duchess of Thebes in his palace he had at first looked forward to as an experiment in the affections, and it had never occurred to him that he might have his own son as a rival. But now this was so, as it seemed, and yet Duke Baldwin was plainly satisfied and limber of spirit over the business. For when the Duchess Esclaramonde came riding up to his gates on that memorable evening and told him her strange tale, Baldwin was well content with the way of affairs. Here was his son's life saved by this great lady and neighbor, and here was his son's heart given to, and taken by, this same great lady, which meant the welding of Thebes and Athens in a common strength and a common splendor. Baldwin thought better of his son for a sensible choice, and was quite willing to forego dalliance with the duchess in consequence, the more readily, indeed, that a number of lovely, affable ladies had newly landed from Byzantium.
The duchess was all for a speedy wedding. Her brief term of widowhood was expired; she needed, she said, the prop of a man's arm, and the duke, grinning in his sleeve, was delighted to meet her wishes. As for Rainouart, he took his good-fortune with a curious apathy, which might have puzzled his parent if that parent ever troubled his mind about people's motives so long as their actions conformed to his idea of the precisely right. Whatever the duchess said Rainouart echoed. Recovered from his hurt, thanks to the deep sleep and easeful rest on the duchess's litter, he squired her pertinaciously, patently in love to all beholders, patently under the spell of her beauty: under the spell also of her ministrations, for she must needs continue to be his leech who had begun by being his rescuer, and she slyly plied him with philtres in his drink. So it was settled out of hand that the heir to the Duchy of Athens and the dame of the Duchy of Thebes should be married on the second day following the evening of their arrival in the city, and that all the pomp and ceremony of the joustings should be regarded as incidental and obsequious to the hurried nuptials.
Fernand Ximenes was sorely displeased at the news, but he protested pleasure with the best, persistently patient. Everybody else was hugely delighted, for this sudden marriage put the perfect top to all the jollity--it was the cream on the milk of mirth, the finest feather in the cap of happiness. Of course the opinions of the gentlefolk were the only opinions that counted, but in their obscurity the citizens of Athens made merry with the rest, for the waves of great folk's pleasure always carried some flotsam and jetsam to their humble thresholds. As for those dark subalterns of St. Nicholas, Captain Fox and Captain Gander, Captain Bat and Captain Chanticleer, Captain Rat and Captain Badger, they were neck-high in delights, and drank of the best daily and nightly in popular taverns, toasting bride and groom mellifluously, and thanking their saint and their stars that they by a storm and a strange voice were stayed from slitting the weasand of the son of Duke Baldwin the Beneficent.
On the morning of the marriage-day the great court-yard of Duke Baldwin's palace was a little world of many types and many nationalities. From the gallery of the palace the loveliest ladies of the court looked down upon the flower of the French chivalry below and named their names to new-arrived beauties, and told tales of them, not always without malice. The slender fellow with the yellow hair was Sir Guy de Hainault. The gallant with the brown curls who sat apart and nursed a lute upon his knee was Sir Jaufre de Brabant. That lean, dark, strenuous figure, his visage bronzed by Spanish suns, the man with something Moorish in his garb and accoutrements, was Fernand Ximenes, chief among the leaders of the Catalan Grand Company. The portly, florid man, no longer young but comely in his prime, who carried a white staff in his hand and moved hither and thither among the knights with cheerful greeting for each, was Count Ernault of Toulouse, Duke Baldwin's right-hand man and lord-marshal of the lists. The two who walked and talked together in the shade, talking very surely of women and deeds of war, were Sir Ambrose of Blois and Sir Raymond of Provence. The two who sat and diced upon a drum-head, with faces as grave as if every cast gave or took great slices of empire, were Demetrius, the vassal prince of Epirus, and Andronicus Palæologus, the great noble from Constantinople.
So the fair told their tale to the fair, and pointed out for admiration of the strangers the two huge soldiers who stood at guard inside the great gates of the court-yard. They were veritable giants, chosen by Baldwin--feeding his greed for the monstrous and excessive in all--for their extraordinary size and strength. They leaned upon such mighty battle-axes as were the familiar weapons of the Varangian Guard at Constantinople, and their duties were to open the great gates to every summons. Outside the gate a huge horn hung for any comer to wind who desired admittance. An ordinary knight was to sound the horn once; a baron was to wind it twice; a triple summons was the privilege of princes. Such was Duke Baldwin's etiquette, familiar to all his world. So the ladies laughed and chattered, eying the bright throng through which every now and then little shimmering pages or servants in heraldic colors picked their way, carrying hawks on wrist or hounds in leash, or bearing some message from lady to lord or from lord to lady. It was all as pleasant to witness as a pageant or a play in the bright, idle morning, and the babble of women's voices floated through the pellucid air like the chatter of starlings.
In the quietest corner of the court-yard, and in that court-yard quiet was indeed only a relative term, Sir Jaufre de Brabant, whose brown curls the ladies had praised, sat apart picking at the strings of a lute and humming to himself. Sir Jaufre considered himself, and was considered by many, to be the handsomest man in the service of Duke Baldwin. It was his wish, further, to be considered the gallantest, a wish fulfilled in the consideration and complaisance of many, and one of the jewels of his gallantry was his gift of song. He had been turning words this way and that way in his brain for some time on that spring morning, and at last it seemed from the smile on his face that he had turned them to some purpose that pleased him. Now he began to sing softly to himself, accompanying his song with little gentle touches on the lutestrings that wakened a plaintive melody. As he sang Sir Ambrose of Blois and Sir Raymond of Provence first paused in their walk and talk, then came near and listened, and in a little while Sir Guy de Hainault left his place and joined them. And this is what Sir Jaufre sang:
"He is the wisest in the world Who rides his road with flag unfurled, With heart unfetter'd from the care That love of ladies places there; With sword that knows no master's laws, But shines and strikes for any cause, To highest bidder blithely sold; Glory is good, but better gold, And as for ladies, fair or brown He finds who sacks a captured town."
As Sir Jaufre finished, Ambrose and Raymond beamed approval, but Guy of Hainault, the young, fair-haired knight with a face that was partly girlish and partly angelic, pierced the approbation with a sneer.
"I do not like your song, Jaufre," he said, and said it with as much sweetness as if he had been crowning Sir Jaufre with a wreath of golden laurel in the heart of hot Provence.
Sir Jaufre flushed and looked up angrily.
"That makes me no bad minstrel," he retorted, "but it argues you a fool."
Sir Guy de Hainault's face was imperturbable, his voice was placid as he answered, smoothly:
"Your music and your manners would mend with your health if I let you some fretful blood."
Sir Jaufre shrugged his shoulders.
"You talk like a barber," he said--"white and red nonsense."
Guy smiled on a gradually increasing audience, for Demetrius of Epirus and Andronicus Palæologus had quitted their dice to hear the argument.
"You sing like a screech-owl," commented Sir Guy. Stooping swiftly, he caught the lute from Sir Jaufre's hands, ran his fingers skilfully over the strings, and awakened a tender tune. Fernand Ximenes, stately as a cat in his Spanish gravity, leisurely added himself to the circle, watching the rivals sardonically. His coming seemed to stimulate Sir Guy's ambition to sing.
"Listen to me, friends," he challenged, and began: