Free Chivalry by James Branch Cabell Page B

burning charcoal. She had
the Valois nose, long and delicate in form, and overhanging a short
upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious in tint, and the whiteness of her
skin would have matched the Hyperborean snows tidily enough. As for her
eyes, the customary similes of the court poets were gigantic onyxes or
ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. These eyes were too big for
her little face: they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which
nervously endured each incident of life, like a foreigner uneasily
acquiescent to the custom of the country.
    Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. "Madame, I
do not understand."
    Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. "It means that I
love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for presently you die.
Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may hearten me to live."
    The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming to
Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful haze of
forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes a god and
transmutes whatever in corporeal man would have been a defect into some
divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must tell you in this
place, since no other occasion offers, that even until the end of her
life it was so. For to her what in other persons would have seemed
flagrant dulness showed somehow, in Sire Edward, as the majestic
deliberation of one that knows his verdict to be decisive, and therefore
appraises cautiously; and if sometimes his big, irregular calm eyes
betrayed no apprehension of the jest at which her lips were laughing,
and of which her brain approved, always within the instant her heart
convinced her that a god is not lightly moved to mirth.
    And now it was a god—
O deus certe!
—who had taken a woman's paltry
face between his hands, half roughly. "And the maid is a Capet!" Sire
Edward mused.
    "Blanch has never desired you any ill, beau sire. But she loves the
Archduke of Austria. And once you were dead, she might marry him. One
cannot blame her," Meregrett considered, "since he wishes to marry her,
and she, of course, wishes to make him happy."
    "And not herself, save in some secondary way!" the big King said. "In
part I comprehend, madame. Now I too hanker after this same happiness,
and my admiration for the cantankerous despoiler whom I praised this
morning is somewhat abated. There was a Tenson once—Lord, Lord, how
long ago! I learn too late that truth may possibly have been upon the
losing side—" Thus talking incoherencies, he took up Rigon's lute.
    Sang Sire Edward:
    "Incuriously he smites the armored king
And tricks his counsellors—
    "yes, the jingle ran thus. Now listen, madame—listen, the while that I
have my singing out, whatever any little cut-throats may be planning in
corners."
    Sang Sire Edward:
    "As, later on,
Death will, half-idly, still our pleasuring,
And change for fevered laughter in the sun
Sleep such as Merlin's,—and excess thereof,—
Whence we, divorceless Death our Viviaine
Implacable, may never more regain
The unforgotten rapture, and the pain
And grief and ecstasy of life and love.
    "For, presently, as quiet as the king
Sleeps now that planned the keeps of Ilion,
We, too, will sleep, whilst overhead the spring
Rules, and young lovers laugh—as we have done,—
And kiss—as we, that take no heed thereof,
But slumber very soundly, and disdain
The world-wide heralding of winter's wane
And swift sweet ripple of the April rain
Running about the world to waken love.
    "We shall have done with Love, and Death be king
And turn our nimble bodies carrion,
Our red lips dusty;—yet our live lips cling
Despite that age-long severance and are one
Despite the grave and the vain grief thereof,—
Which we will baffle, if in Death's domain
Fond memories may enter, and we twain
May dream a little, and rehearse again
In that unending sleep our present love.
    "Speed forth to her in halting unison,
My rhymes: and say no