Free Chivalry by James Branch Cabell

for the happiness of every Englishman
within my realm saving only Edward Plantagenet; and now I think his turn
to be at hand." Then the man kept silence; and his hot appraisal daunted
her.
    "Lord," she presently faltered, "lord, you know that we are already
betrothed, and, in sober verity, Love cannot extend his laws between
husband and wife, since the gifts of love are voluntary, and husband and
wife are but the slaves of duty—"
    "Troubadourish nonsense!" Sire Edward said; "yet it is true that the
gifts of love are voluntary. And therefore—Ha, most beautiful, what
have you and I to do with all this chaffering over Guienne?" The two
stood very close to each other now. Blanch said, "It is a high
matter—" Then on a sudden the full-veined girl was aglow. "It is a
trivial matter." He took her in his arms, since already her cheeks
flared in scarlet anticipation of the event.
    Thus holding her, he wooed the girl tempestuously. Here, indeed, was
Sieur Hercules enslaved, burned by a fiercer fire than that of Nessus,
and the huge bulk of the unconquerable visibly shaken by his adoration.
In a disordered tapestry of verbiage, aflap in winds of passion, she
presently beheld herself prefigured by Balkis, the Judean's lure, and by
that Princess of Cyprus who reigned in Aristotle's time, and by
Nicolete, the King's daughter of Carthage,—since the first flush of
morning was as a rush-light before her resplendency, the man swore; and
in conclusion, he likened her to a modern Countess of Tripolis, for love
of whom he, like Rudel, had cleft the seas, and losing whom he must
inevitably die as did Rudel. Sire Edward snapped his fingers now over
any consideration of Guienne. He would conquer for her all Muscovy and
all Cataia, too, if she desired mere acreage. Meanwhile he wanted her,
and his hard and savage passion beat down opposition as if with a
bludgeon.
    "Heart's emperor," the trembling girl replied, "I think that you were
cast in some larger mould than we of France. Oh, none of us may dare
resist you! and I know that nothing matters, nothing in all the world,
save that you love me. Then take me, since you will it,—and take me
not as King, since you will otherwise, but as Edward Plantagenet. For
listen! by good luck you have this afternoon despatched Rigon for
Chevrieul, where to-morrow we were to hunt the great boar. So to-night
this hut will be unoccupied."
    The man was silent. He had a gift that way when occasion served.
    "Here, then, beau sire! here, then, at nine, you are to meet me with my
chaplain. Behold, he marries us, as glibly as though we two were
peasants. Poor king and princess!" cried Dame Blanch, and in a voice
which thrilled him, "shall ye not, then, dare to be but man and woman?"
    "Ha!" the King said. "So the chaplain makes a third! Well, the King is
pleased to loose his prisoner, that long-imprisoned Edward Plantagenet:
and I will do it."
    So he came that night, without any retinue, and habited as a forester,
with a horn swung about his neck, into the unlighted hut of Rigon the
forester, and he found a woman there, though not the woman whom he had
expected.
    "Treachery, beau sire! Horrible treachery!" she wailed.
    "I have encountered it before this," the big man said.
    "Presently will come to you not Blanch but Philippe, with many men to
back him. And presently they will slay you. You have been trapped, beau
sire. Ah, for the love of God, go! Go, while there is yet time!" Sire
Edward reflected. Undoubtedly, to light on Edward Longshanks alone in a
forest would appear to King Philippe, if properly attended, a tempting
chance to settle divers difficulties, once for all; and Sire Edward knew
the conscience of his old opponent to be invulnerable. The act would
violate the core of hospitality and knighthood, no doubt, but its
outcome would be a very definite gain to France, and for the rest,
merely a dead body in a ditch. Not a monarch in Christendom, Sire Edward
reflected, but feared and in consequence hated the