CHAPTER VI.
The road that De Coucy followed had been made, apparently, without the least purpose of proceeding straight to Paris, though it ultimately terminated there; but its object seemed more particularly to visit every possible place on the way, without leaving the smallest village within several miles of the direct line to complain of being neglected. Thus, instead of cutting off angles, and such other whimsical improvements of modern days, it proceeded along the banks of the river, following, with a laudable pertinacity, all the turnings and windings thereof. This sort of road, which uncommonly resembles the way in which I have been obliged to relate this most meandering of histories, is doubtless very agreeable when you have plenty of time to stay and amuse yourself with the pleasures of this prospect or that--to get off your horse to gather a flower upon the bank--to pause under the shadow of a tree, and pant in concert with your beast in the cool air; but when you are in a hurry, then is the time to bless modern shorts cuts. Such must by my case; for, having a long way before me, and a short space to do it in, I must abridge De Coucy's journey as much as possible; and, only staying to relate two events which occurred to him on the road, must hasten to bring him, together with my other characters, to that one point to which all their histories are tending.
Passing over, then, the follies of Gallon the fool, who, notwithstanding all his maniac malice, felt he knew not what of joy at his lord's deliverance, and all the details given by Ermold de Marcy concerning his various peregrinations and negotiations, together with the young knight's joyful feelings on his liberation, and his sorrowful ones at the accounts he heard of the unhappy Count d'Auvergne, we will bring the whole party at once to that high hill from which the lower road to Paris descends rapidly on the little, dirty, old-fashioned town called the Pont de l'Arche.
There being few things more uncertain in the world than the smiles of beauty and the boundaries of kingdoms, the limits of France, which have been here, and there, and every where, within the last few centuries, were fixed, on the precise day I speak of, at the Pont de l'Arche. That hill being then the extreme limit of King John's Norman dominions, his deputy prévôt, John of Wincaunton, was, at the very moment De Coucy and his followers arrived at the summit of the hill, engaged in the very praiseworthy occupation of hanging the Brabançois, Jodelle, to one of the highest elms in the land.
It must not, however, be inferred that the hanging had actually commenced; for though the prévôt, with a party of six or seven men, very well calculated to hang their neighbours, stood round Jodelle under the tree, while one of their companions fastened the end of a thick noose tightly to one of the strongest branches, yet the plunderer's neck was still free from that encumbrance so fatal to persons of his profession.
There are various sorts of bravery; and Jodelle was a brave man, of a certain sort. He had never shown himself afraid of death; and yet, the idea of hanging affected him with mortal fear--whether he fancied that that peculiar position would be unpleasant to him or not, can hardly be said; but certain it is, though he had never shrunk from death in the battle-field, his face looked already that of a corpse; his limbs shook, and his teeth chattered, at the sight of the awful preparations that were carrying on around him.
What is there to which hope will not attach itself? Even the sight of De Coucy, whom he had sold to his enemies, awoke a dream of it in the breast of the Brabançois, and with pitiful cries he adjured the knight to save him from the hands of his executioners.
The men of the prévôt stood to their arms; but the knight's reply soon showed them they had no molestation to fear from him. "Villain," answered he, "if I saved thee from their hands, it should be but to impale thee alive! Every drop of Prince Arthur's blood cries vengeance upon thee! and, by Heaven! I have a mind to stay and see thee hanged myself!"
"Haw, law!" cried Gallon the fool,--"Haw, haw! Beau sire Jodelle! It strikes me, they are going to hang thee, beau sire! Undo the haussecol of thy doublet, man. They are going to give thee one of tighter stuff. Haw, haw, Sire Brabançois! Haw, haw! Why pray you not the Coucy again? Perchance he may be moved. Or, rather, why pray you not me? I am the only man in the troop that can aid thee--Haw, haw, haw! haw, haw! I could save thee if I would!"
"Thou wouldst not if thou couldst, fiend," replied Jodelle, glaring on him with eyes in which wrath struggled with terror, for his executioners were now actually adjusting the noose to his neck, and his pinioned hands might be seen to quiver with the agonising anticipation of destruction. "I do now believe thee a devil indeed, as thou once toldest me, for none but the devil could mock me in such a moment as this."
"Haw, haw, haw! Haw, haw, haw!" roared Gallon, rolling on his horse with laughter. "Dost thou believe? Well, then, for that I will save thee;" and, riding up to the prévôt, the juggler thrust his snout into that officer's ear, and whispered a few words, in regard to the truth of which the other seemed at first doubtful. Gallon, however, exclaimed, "'Tis true, thou infidel! 'tis true! I heard the order given myself! Look ye there!--There comes the messenger down in the valley--Haw, haw, haw! Ye fools! Thought you king John could spare so useful a villain as that?"
The prévôt gazed in the direction wherein the juggler pointed; and then made a sign to his men to put a stop to the preparations, which they were hurrying forward with most unseemly haste; while Gallon, with a patronising sort of nod to Jodelle, and a loud laugh, rode on after De Coucy, who had not waited to listen to the termination of the eloquent conversation between the juggler and the coterel. At the bottom of the hill, however, the young knight turned his head, never doubting that he should behold the form of his late follower dangling from the elm; but, to his surprise, he perceived two of the men placing Jodelle on horseback, still apparently bound, and the rest hastening to mount their own beasts, while a horseman was seen conversing with the prévôt.
"By St. Paul! if thou hast saved that fellow from the hands of the hangman," cried De Coucy, "thou art a juggler indeed, and a mischievous one to boot, friend Gallon!"
"'Twas not I saved him, friend Coucy," replied Gallon, who was in somewhat of a saner state of mind than usual. "'Twas our very good friend and patron, John, King of England; and I'll tell thee what, Coucy, if you ill-treat me, and thump me, as you used sometimes to do, I'll e'en take service with him, John of Anjou, and leave you! Haw, haw! What do you think of that? Or else I'll go and live with fair William de la Roche Guyon," he added, in his rambling way. "He loves me dearly, does William de la Roche Guyon. So I'll go and live with him, when I want to better myself. Haw, haw! Then I shall always be near the pretty Lady Isadore of the Mount, whom good King John of England gave to fair Count William this morning, for standing by him in his need, as he said. 'Twas all in a whisper; but I would have heard it had it been twice a whisper; my ears are as fine as my nose. Haw, haw!"
De Coucy had drawn his rein at the first word of these very pleasing tidings, which Gallon communicated with a broad lack-lustre stare, from which he had banished every particle of speculation; so that, whether it was true or false, a dreadful reality or an idiotic jest, was in no degree to be gathered from his countenance.
"What is that you say?" cried the knight. "Tell me, good Gallon, for the love of Heaven, are you serious in your news?"
"Good Gallon!--Haw! haw!" shouted the jongleur,--"Good Gallon! He'll call me pretty Gallon next!--Haw, haw, haw!--Coucy, you are mad!"
"For God's sake!" cried the knight earnestly, "do not drive me mad really; but, for once, try to give me a connected answer. Say! What was it you heard that traitorous king say to the beardless, womanly coward, William de la Roche Guyon?"
"Give you a connected answer!" replied Gallon, suddenly assuming an unwonted gravity. "Why should you doubt my giving you one? I'm not mad, Coucy! I'll tell you what the king said, as wisely as he that spoke it. William de la Roche, whispered he, with the face of a cat lapping a saucer full of cream--William de la Roche, you have stood by me this day in my need, and I will not forget it."
And Gallon, though with a countenance as unlike that of John of Anjou as any human face could well be, contrived to imitate the king's look and manner, so as to leave no earthly doubt, not only that he had said what the fool attributed to him, but that he had also precisely said it as was represented.
"Well then," continued the jongleur, "the noble king bade him, fair William de Roche as aforesaid, take the fair Lady Isadore from the castle of Moulineaux, hard by Rouen, where her father, Count Julian the Wise, had left her under the care of the Lady Plumdumpling, or some such English name; and when he had got her, to carry her whither he would, as quickly as possible. And the sweet potentate John, with true kingly consideration for the happiness of his lieges, added this sage counsel to the aforesaid William, namely, that if he liked, he might marry the maid; but if he liked light love better than broad lands, he might make his leman of her."
"By the Lord, fool! if thou deceivest me, thou shall rue it!" cried De Coucy. "I believe not thy tale! How came her father to trust her from his sight?"
"I fear me, my lord. Gallon is right," said Ermold de Marcy, who various negotiations had somewhat rubbed off the rawness of his youth, and given him confidence to address his master more boldly. "In my wanderings about, striving to achieve your ransom, I have heard much of Count Julian and his proceedings; and I thus learned, that not long after your capture, he left the court of King John, to raise all his vassals for the great alliance that, men say, is forming against King Philip, leaving the Lady Isadore as a hostage for his faith, with the Lady Plymlymman of Cornouaille, chatelaine of the castle of Moulineaux. So that Gallon's tale is too likely to be true."
While the page spoke, the juggler drew his two eyes together upon De Coucy's countenance, watching, with a fiendish sort of pleasure, the workings of all those powerful feelings that the news he had given had cast into commotion. At length he burst into a loud laugh. "Haw, haw!" cried he. "Haw, haw, haw! De Coucy's in a rage!--Now, Coucy, now, think of the very best way of cleaving me down Guillaume de la Roche from the crest to the saddle. Haw, haw, haw! Oh, rare! Crack his skull like a walnut-shell, and leave him no more brains than a date-stone. Haw, haw! haw, haw!"
CHAPTER VII.
There was a party of travellers wound down through the beautiful valleys, and over the rich hills that lie between Pacy and Rolleboise, proceeding slowly and calmly, though with a certain degree of circumspection, as if they were not at all without their share of the apprehensions to which travellers of every kind were exposed in those days, and yet were embarrassed by the presence of some one, whose sex or age prevented them from proceeding more rapidly.
At the head of the cavalcade were seen, agitated by the breeze, various of those light habiliments which have been used in all ages to give the female figure a degree of butterfly flutter, which seems to court pursuit; and it appeared out of consideration for the frailer limbs of the part of the troop thus clothed, that the iron-clad warriors which formed the main body proceeded at so slow and easy a pace.
The whole party might consist of fifty persons, four or five of whom, by their pennons and arms, were distinguished as knights; while the rest showed but the sword and buckler of the squire, or the archer's quiver, long bow, and round target. Except an éclaireur thrown out before to mark the way, the female part of the troop took the lead; and, as far as could be judged from appearance, the rest was but an escort attending upon them.
One of the knights, however, whose helmet nodded with plumes, and whose arms were glittering with gold, ever and anon spurred forward, and, with bending head and low musical voice, addressed a few words to the fair girl who headed the troop, demanding now whether she was fatigued, now whether she felt the cold, now promising speedy repose, and now offering a few words of somewhat commonplace gallantry, concerning bright eyes, rosy lips, and inspiring smiles.
To his questions concerning her comfort, the lady replied briefly, and as coldly as courtesy permitted; and to his gallant speeches, the chilling unmoved glance of her large dark eye might have afforded sufficient answer, had he been one easily rebuffed. The only uncalled-for words which she addressed to him herself tended but to ask where it was that her father had appointed to meet her; and on his replying that a place called Drocourt had been named, some five leagues farther, she relapsed into silence.
The young knight, however, though on every check he received he sunk back into himself with an air of deep despondency, still returned to his point, holding perseverance to be the most serviceable quality in the world in all dealings with the fair; and thus, from time to time, he continued his assiduities, notwithstanding cold looks and scanty answers; till at length the road, descending, began to wind along the banks of the Seine.
Here his attention became more entirely directed to precautions against surprise; and the increased haste and circumspection which he enjoined, seemed to imply that he found himself upon hostile and dangerous ground.
"See you no ferry boat," cried he, "along the river!--Look out, Arnoul!--look out! We must get across as soon as may be."
"The ferry lies beyond this woody tongue of land, my lord," replied the man. "'Tis not half a mile hence, and there is no town between; so we may pass easily;" and, spurring on, the party entered the pass, between the wood which skirted down from the road to the river on the one side, and the high chalky cliffs on the other.
The knight in the gilded armour had received a fresh rebuff from the lady whose favour he seemed so anxious to win; and, having retired to his companions, who, as we have shown, were a few steps behind, was conversing with them in an earnest but under-tone, when from an ambush in the wood, which had escaped even the eyes of the advanced scout, rushed forth a body of horsemen, with such rapid force as to separate entirely the female part of the cavalcade from their escort.
It was done in an instant; but, in truth, it needed such rapidity of attack to render it, in itself, any thing short of madness; for, when the escort recovered in a degree from their first astonishment, they found that seven men formed the whole force that had thrown them into such confusion. Before, however, this became apparent, the leader of their adversaries shouting, "A Coucy! A Coucy!" spurred like lightning upon the knight we have before mentioned, and at one blow of his battle-axe dashed him under his horse's feet. A squire behind shared the same fate; a man-at-arms followed; and each of De Coucy's followers, fighting as if inspired by the same daring valour that animated their lord, the escort were driven back along the road, leaving four or five saddles vacant. Then, however, the tide of the battle turned. The knights at the head of the escort saw the handful of men to which they were opposed, and, ashamed of yielding a step to so scanty a body, four of them united their efforts to attack De Coucy, while another rallied their followers; and the young knight was in turn driven back, now striking at one, now at another, now parrying the blows that were aimed at himself, and now showering them thick upon the head of the opponent that he had singled out for the moment.
Separated from the escort which attended her, the lady we have mentioned, with her women, had in the meanwhile endeavoured to escape from the scene of strife which had so suddenly arisen, by hurrying on upon the road; but the scout, who had turned at the first noise of the affray, caught her bridle, and, notwithstanding her prayers and entreaties, would not suffer her to proceed.
The danger indeed to which she was exposed was not for the moment great, as, by this time, the first impetuous attack of De Coucy and his followers had driven the escort back beyond the turn of the wood; and nothing could be gathered of the progress of the fight but from the trampling of the horses heard sounding this way or that, and the cries and shouts of the combatants approaching or receding as the battle turned.
"Lady Isadore! Lady Isadore!" cried a girl who followed her. "It is the Sire de Coucy. Hear you not his battle-cry? and I am sure I saw Ermold the page strike down an archer twice as big as himself. God send them the victory!"
"Hush! foolish girl! hush!" cried Isadore of the Mount, leaning her head to listen more intently. "Hark, they are coming this way! Free my bridle, soldier! Free my bridle, for the love of Heaven! How dare you, serf, to hold me against my will? You will repent, whoever wins!"
The soldier, however, heeded neither the lady's entreaties nor her threats, though it so happened that it would have proved fortunate to himself had he done so; for, in a moment after, De Coucy, driven back by the superior force to which he was opposed, appeared at the turn of the wood, striking a thundering blow on the crest of one of the knights who pressed closely on him, while the three others spurred after at about three horse-lengths' distance.
No sooner had the blow descended, than the knight's quick glance fell upon Isadore. "Fly, Isadore, fly!" cried he. "You have been deceived into the power of traitors!--Fly! up the path to the right! To the castle on the hill!" But, as he spoke, he suddenly perceived the soldier holding her rein, and forcing her horse up a bank somewhat of the current of the fight. Like lightning, De Coucy wheeled his charger; and, disappointing, by the turn he took, a blow that one of his adversaries was discharging at his head, he swung his battle-axe round in the air, and hurled it with sure and unerring aim at the unhappy scout. It needed a firm heart and well-practised hand to dismiss such a fatal missile in a direction so near the person of one deeply beloved. But De Coucy had both; and rushing within two feet of Isadore of the Mount, the head of the ponderous axe struck the soldier full on the neck and jawbone, and dashed him from his horse, a ghastly and disfigured corpse.
"Fly, Isadore! fly!" repeated De Coucy, at the same moment drawing his sword, and spurring his charger furiously against the first of his opponents. "Fly up to the right! The castle on the hill!--the castle on the hill!"
Isadore required no second injunction, but parted like an arrow from the scene of the battle, while De Coucy made almost more than mortal efforts to drive back the enemy.
Though he thus gave her time to escape, his valour and skill were of course in vain, opposed to numbers not inferior to himself in personal courage, and clothed in arms equal to those by which he was defended. All he could do was to give his scattered followers time again to collect about him; and then, satisfied with having delivered Isadore, to keep up a defensive fight along the road.
Even this, however, was difficult to conduct successfully in the face of a body of men so much superior to his own in numbers eager to avenge themselves upon him, and hurried on by the knowledge, that, being upon adverse ground, they must win their revenge quickly, or not at all. The four knights pressed on him on all sides, striving to bear him down to the earth; his armour was hacked and splintered in many parts; his shield was nearly cleft in two with the blow of a battle-axe; several of the bars of his visor were dashed to pieces, so as to leave his face nearly uncovered; but still he retreated slowly, with his face to his enemies, shouting from time to time his battle-cry, to cheer the spirits of his men, and striking terrible sweeping blows with his long sword, whenever his opponents made a general rush upon him.
One of these united attacks, however, had nearly proved fatal to the gallant young knight; for, in suddenly backing his horse to avoid it, the animal's feet struck against a felled tree, and he went down at once upon his haunches. "A Coucy! a Coucy!" cried the knight, striving to spur him up; but all four of his antagonists pressed upon him at once, beating him down with repeated blows, when suddenly two new combatants were added to the fight, Philip Augustus and the Count d'Auvergne.
Both, though we have seen them in a preceding chapter opposed hand to hand, suddenly ceased their mutual conflict, and rushed forward to strike upon the side of De Coucy. The Count d'Auvergne, warned by his friend's well-known battle-cry, rushed, bare-headed as he was, into the midst of the struggle, and, striking with all the energy of insanity, dashed at once the foremost of the young knight's opponents to the earth. The king, recognising instantly, by the Norman fashion of their harness, the followers of his enemy King John, sprang on his horse; and, with the same chivalrous spirit that induced him in former days to attack King Richard's whole army near Courcelles with scarce two hundred knights in his own train, he cast himself in the foremost of the battle, and plied his weapon with a hand that seldom struck in vain.
The struggle, by its greater equality, now became more desperate; but it was soon rendered no longer doubtful, by the sight of a body of horse coming down at full speed on the road from the castle. The Normans, who had followed Guillaume de la Roche Guyon, now hastened to effect their retreat, well knowing that whatever fresh troops arrived on the spot must necessarily swell the party of their adversaries. They made an effort, however, in the first place, to deliver their companion who had been struck down by the Count d'Auvergne; but finding it impossible, they turned their horses, and retreated along the line of road over which they had advanced, only pausing for an instant at the spot where the contest had first begun to aid William de la Roche himself, who had, as we have shown, been cast from his horse by a blow of De Coucy's battle-axe; and now sat by the road-side, somewhat stunned and dizzied by his fall, and completely plundered of his fine armour.
"Haw! haw!" shouted some one from the top of one of the leafless trees hard by, as they remounted the discomfited cavalier. "Haw! haw! haw!" and in a moment. Gallon the fool cast down one of the gay gauntlets on the head of its former owner, laughing till the whole cliffs rang, to see it strike him on the forehead, and deluge his fair effeminate face with blood. The Normans had not time to seek vengeance; for De Coucy's party, reinforced by the troop from the castle, hung upon their rear, and gave them neither pause nor respite till the early night, following a day in February, closed in upon the world; and, fatigued with so long a strife, the pursuers drew the rein, and left them to escape as they might.
So fierce and eager had been the pursuit, that scarce a word had passed between De Coucy's party and their new companions, till, by common accord, they checked their horses' speed.
It was then that the two brothers in arms turned towards each other, each suddenly grasping his friend's hand with all the warmth of old affection. "D'Auvergne!" cried De Coucy, gazing on his friend's face, down which the blood was streaming from a wound in his temple, giving to his worn and ashy countenance, in the twilight of the evening, an appearance of scarcely human paleness.
"De Coucy!" replied D'Auvergne, fixing his eyes on the broken bars of the young knight's helmet. "De Coucy!" he repeated; and, turning away his head with a look of painful consciousness, he carried his hand to his brow, as if sensible of his infirmity, adding, "I have been ill, my friend--the hot sun of the desert, and Agnes' cold words when I delivered her father's message--a message I had sworn on my knighthood to deliver----"
"Ha! Then it was not"--cried Philip eagerly: "but let us return to some place of repose!" added he, remembering his disguise, and cutting across a topic which, besides being painful to himself, he loved not to hear canvassed near the ears of strangers. "Let us return to some place of repose. We have to thank you, sir knight," he added, turning to the leader of the horsemen who had joined them from the castle--"we have to thank you for your timely aid."
"Not so, beau sire," replied the knight, bowing to his saddle-bow. "We were warned of the strife by a lady, who claimed refuge in the castle; and we instantly came down to strike for France."
"You did well!" replied the king. "Hark, you, sir knight;" and approaching his horse, he spoke for some moments to him in an under-voice, to which the only reply was, "You shall be obeyed."
In the mean while, the men-at-arms and the followers of De Coucy, who had paused to breathe after the first heat of the affray, began to mingle in conversation upon the events that had just taken place, and the causes which had given rise to them; and very soon all the noise and clamour of explanation, and wonderment, and questioning, and boasting succeeded, which usually follows any very active struggle. In the course of this hubbub, De Coucy's name, situation, quality, the news he had heard concerning Guillaume de la Roche Guyon, and the means he had taken to surprise him, and deliver the lady Isadore, were explained to every body whom it might concern, with that almost childish frankness and simplicity, which was one of the chief characteristics of the age of chivalry.
To this the king listened attentively; and then, turning to De Coucy, he said, "Sir Guy de Coucy, this adventure which you have just achieved is worthy of your other exploits! I will beg leave to ride with your train to Paris, where doubtless you are going. This good knight," he added, pointing to the leader of the troop from the castle, "informs me, that the lady your good sword has delivered from that traitor Guillaume de la Roche Guyon, is in safety with the fair queen Agnes, and he adds, that it is the queen's will, that no man, except the garrison of the castle, shall be admitted within the walls."
"If such be the case, I must submit of course," replied De Coucy; "and yet I would fain speak but a few words to the lady Isadore, to inform her why I attacked her escort; for, beyond all doubt, they lured her away from the château of Moulineaux, upon some fine pretext."
"I will take care that your conduct be rightly stated, beau sire," replied the officer. "But as to your speaking with the lady, I fear it cannot be; for the queen will doubtless hold her, both as a liege vassal of the crown, and as hostage for her father's faith; and she has vowed, that during her absence from our noble lord the king, no man shall enter her gates, except such persons as the king himself has placed about her. Be assured, however, sir knight, that the lady shall receive all honourable treatment, and that your high deeds and noble prowess shall be spoken of in becoming terms."
De Coucy mused a moment. "Well," said he at length; "what must be, must be! To Paris then! for I bear the king both sad and important news."
"Ha?" cried Philip; but then again remembering his disguise, he added, "Are they such as a stranger may hear?
"They are such, sir unknown knight," replied De Coucy, "as will be soon heard of far and wide. But the king's ears must be the first to hear my tale. D'Auvergne," he added, turning to the count. "I pray you, let my page bind up that gash upon your temple. If I see rightly by this pale light, the blood is streaming from it still. Let him stanch it for thee, I pray!"
"Not so, not so! good friend," replied, the count, who, while this conversation had been passing amongst the rest, had been leaning silently against an oak, with his eyes bent thoughtfully upon the ground,--"Not so! It does me good. Methinks that every drop which trickles down and drops on the dust at my feet, takes some of the fire out of my brain. I have been mad, I fear me, De Coucy, I am not quite right yet; but I know, I feel, that I have done this good knight some wrong. Pardon me, sir knight," he added, advancing to the king, and extending his hand, "pardon me, as you are a good knight and true."
"I do, from my soul," replied the monarch, grasping the count's offered hand, and casting from his heart at the same moment far greater feelings of enmity than any one present knew but himself:--"I do from my soul. But you stagger! you are faint! Bind up his wound, some one! Stanch the blood; he has lost too much already!"
The monarch spoke in a tone of command that soon called prompt obedience. The Count d'Auvergne's wound was instantly bound up; but, before the bleeding could be stopped, he fainted, and in that state was borne to the cave from which he had first issued to attack the king. Here he was laid on a bed of moss and straw, which seemed to have formed his usual couch; and was after some difficulty recalled to animation.
De Coucy, having so far seen him restored to a state of safety, burthened with the tidings of Arthur's murder, which he was eager to announce as soon as possible to the sovereign and peers of France, took leave of his unhappy friend; and leaving his page and one of his men to guard and tend him, he set out with the king on the road to Paris. Two prisoners who had been taken, as well as one of De Coucy's followers severely wounded, were left in charge of the seneschal of the castle, who also undertook to see the rights of sepulture bestowed on one or two of the soldiers whose lives had been sacrificed in the affray.
CHAPTER VIII.
The particulars of De Coucy's journey to Paris are not worth recording. He paused for two hours at a village near Meulan, with his followers and his royal companion, for the purpose of resting their weary horses; but neither of the knights took any repose themselves, though the fatigues they had undergone might well have called for it.
The conduct of De Coucy somewhat puzzled the king; for it evinced a degree of calm respect towards him, which Philip judged the young knight would hardly have shown had he not recognised him by some of those signs, which, when seized on by a keen and observing eye, render disguises almost always abortive.
At the same time, neither by indiscreet word, or meaning glance, did De Coucy betray that he had any absolute knowledge of the quality of him whose limbs that plain armour covered. He spoke frankly and freely on all subjects, started various topics of conversation himself, and in short, took care to bound his respect to grave courtesy, without any of that formal reverence which might have directed the attention of others to what he had observed himself.
There was one, however, in the train not quite so cautious.
Gallon the fool--though we left him last at the top of one of the highest oaks in the wood, whither he had carried, piece by piece, the rich armour he had stripped from Guillaume de la Roche Guyon, together with a well-lined pouch of chamois leather--had since taken care to rejoin the victorious party, with all his acquirements nicely bundled up on the crupper of his horse, forming a square not unlike the pack with which wandering minstrels travelled in those days.
On the road he was very still and thoughtful. Whether it was that he was calculating in silence the value of his plunder, or that he was sullen from fatigue, his companions could not well tell, but when the party stopped, Gallon watched his opportunity, when De Coucy was alone, gazing at the pale moon, and indulging in such dreams as moonlight only yields. Stealing up to his lord, the juggler peered cunningly in his face, saying in a low voice, "Oh, Coucy! Coucy! I could show you such a trick for taming a lion;" and at the same time he bent his thumb back over his shoulder, pointing to where the monarch stood at a few yards' distance.
"Silence, fool!" said the knight, in a deep stern voice, adding, a moment afterwards, "What mean you, Gallon?"
"Did you not hear him cry, 'Denis Mountjoy! Denis Mountjoy!' when he joined the fight?" demanded Gallon.--"Coucy, Coucy! you might tame a lion, an' you would!"
De Coucy caught Gallon by the arm, and whispered in his ear a stern menace if he kept not silence. After which he turned at once to the king, saying aloud, "We had better to horse, fair sir, or it will be late ere we reach the city."
"Haw, haw!" shouted Gallon,--"Haw, haw!" and bounding away, he was the first in the saddle.
When they were within sight of Paris, the king thanked De Coucy for the pleasure of his fair company; and, saying that they should doubtless soon meet at the court, he took leave of the young knight, as if his road lay in somewhat a different direction, and rode on, his horse putting forth all his speed to reach the well-known stable. The young knight followed more slowly; and, proceeding across the bridge, directed his steps to the palace on the island.
In the court he found a crowd of inferior ecclesiastics, with robes, and stoles, and crosses, and banners, and all the pompous display of Romish magnificence, mingled with the king's serjeants-at-arms, and many a long train of retainers belonging to several of the great vassals of the crown, who seemed to be at that moment at the court. The young knight dismounted in the midst of them, and sent in to crave an audience of the king, giving his business, as it well deserved, the character of important.
A reply was soon returned, purporting that Sir Guy de Coucy was ever welcome to the king of France, and the knight was instantly marshalled to the presence-chamber.
Philip stood at the further extremity of the magnificent Gothic hall, a part of which still remains in the old palace of the kings of France. He was habited in a wide tunic of rich purple silk, bound round his waist by a belt of gold, from which hung his sword of state. The neck and sleeves were tied with gold, and from his shoulders descended a mantle of crimson sendal, lined throughout with ermines, which fell in broad and glossy folds upon the floor. On his head he wore a jewelled cap of crimson velvet, from under which the glossy waves of his long fair hair fell down in some disarray upon his shoulders. In any other man, the haste with which he had changed his apparel would have appeared; but Philip, in person even, was formed to be a king; and, in the easy grace of his figure, and the dignified erectness of his carriage, hurry or negligence of dress was never seen; or appeared but to display the innate majesty of his demeanour to greater advantage.
He stood with one foot rather advanced, and his chest and head thrown back, while his eagle eye fixed with a keen and somewhat stern regard upon a mitred prelate--the abbot of Three Fountains Abbey--who seemed to have been speaking the moment before De Coucy entered, Guerin the chancellor, still in the simple dress of the knights hospitallers, stood beside the king; and around appeared a small but brilliant circle of nobles, amongst whom were to be seen the dukes of Burgundy and Champagne, the counts of Nevers and Dampierre; and the unhappy count of Toulouse, afterwards sacrificed to the intolerant spirit of the Roman Church.
"How is this?" said Philip, just as the young knight passed into the hall;--"Will Rome never be satisfied? Do concessions wrung from our very heart's blood but stimulate new demands? What has Innocent the Third to do with the wars of Philip of France against his traitorous and rebellious vassal, John duke of Normandy? What pretext of clerical authority and the church's rights has the pontiff now to show, why a monarch should not in his own dominions compel his vassals to obedience, and punish crime and baseness? By the holy rood! there must be some new creed we have not heard of, to enjoin implicit obedience, in all temporal as well as spiritual things, to our moderate, temperate, holy father, Innocent the Third, and his successors for ever! We pray thee, my lord abbot, to communicate to us all the tenets of this blessed doctrine; and to tell us, whether it has been made manifest by inspiration or revelation."
"You speak scornfully, my son," said the abbot mildly, "ay, and somewhat profanely; but you well know the causes that move our holy father to interfere, when he sees two christened kings wasting their blood, their treasure, and their time, in vain and impious wars against each other, while the holy sepulchre is still the prey of miscreants and infidels, and the land of our blessed Redeemer,--the land in which so many saints have died, and for which so many heroes have bled,--still lies bowed down to heathens and blasphemers,--you well know the causes that move him to interfere, I say, and therefore need ask no new motive for his christianlike and holy zeal."
"His christianlike and holy zeal!!" exclaimed the king, holding up his hands. "Ay, abbot," he continued, his lip curling with a bitter smile, "I do know the causes, and Christendom shall find I estimate them justly. For all answer, then, to the mild good father pope his exhortation to peace, I reply that Philip is king of France; and that, though I will, in all strictly ecclesiastical affairs, yield reverence and due submission to the supreme pontiff; yet when he dares--ay, when he dares, abbot--to use the word command to me, in my just wars, or in the dispensation of justice unto my vassals, I shall scoff his idle threats to scorn, and, by God's will, pursue my way, as if there were neither priest nor prelate on the earth. Now, fair Sir Guy de Coucy! most welcome to Philip of France!" he continued, abruptly turning away from the abbot and addressing the young knight. "We were arming even now to march to deliver you and our fair cousin Arthur Plantagenet. What cheer do you bring us from him?"
"I had hoped, my liege," replied De Coucy, with a pained and melancholy air, "that fame, who speeds fast enough in general to bear ill news, would have spared me the hard and bitter task of telling you what I have to communicate. He for whom you inquire is no more! Basely has he been murdered in the prisons of Rouen by his own uncle, John king of England!"
Philip's brow had been cloudy before; but as the young knight spoke, fresh shadows came quickly over it, as we see storm after storm roll up over a thundery sky. At the same time, each of the nobles of France took an involuntary step forward, and with knitted brow, and eager, horrified eyes, gazed upon De Coucy while he told his news.
"God of heaven!" exclaimed the monarch rapidly. "What would you say? Are you very sure, sir knight? Not with his own hand? His nephew too! His own brother's child! As noble a boy as ever looked up in the face of heaven! Speak, sir knight! Speak! What was the manner of his death! Have you heard? But be careful that each word be founded on certain knowledge, for on your lips hangs the fate of thousands!"
De Coucy related clearly and distinctly all that had occurred on the day of Arthur's murder--all that he had seen, all that he had heard; but, with scrupulous care, he took heed that not one atom of surmise should mingle with his discourse. He painted strongly, clearly, minutely, every circumstance; but he left his auditors to draw their own conclusions.
The nobles of France looked silently in each other's faces, where each read the same feelings of horror and indignation that swelled in his own bosom. At the same time, the king glanced his keen eye round the circle, with a momentary gaze of inquiry at the countenances of his barons, as if he sought to gather whether the feelings of wrath and hatred which the young knight's tale had stirred up in his heart were common to all around.
"Now, by the bones of the saints!" cried he, "we will this day--nay this hour,--send a herald to defy that felon king, and dare him to the field. Ho! serjeant-at-arms, bid Mountjoy hither!"
"I have already, my lord," said De Coucy, "presumed, even before bearing you this news, to defy king John before his court; and, accusing him of this foul murder, to dare his barons--all, or any who should deny the fact--to meet me in arms, upon the quarrel."
"Ha!" cried Philip eagerly. "What said his nobles?--Did they believe your charge? Did they take up your gage, sir knight?"
"It seems, sire," replied De Coucy, "that the tidings of the prince's murder were already common amongst the English barons; and, from what I could gather, some of their body had already charged John of Anjou with it before I came. As to my gauntlet, several of the knights stepped forward to raise it--for, to do the lords of England justice, they are never backward to draw the sword, right or wrong--but Lord Pembroke interposed; and, taking up the gage, said that he would hold it in all honour, till the king should have cleared himself, to their satisfaction, of the accusation which I brought against him; hinting some doubt, however, that he could do so. Nevertheless, he promised either to meet me in arms in fair field of combat, or to return me my gage, acknowledging the king's quarrel to be bad."
"'Tis evident enough!" cried the king. "The barons of England--who are ever willing to support their monarch in any just cause," he added, with a peculiar emphasis, not exactly reproachful, but certainly intended to convey to the ears on which it fell a warning of the monarch's expectations,--"the barons of England are already aware of this hateful deed, or not one of them would for a moment hesitate to draw the sword in defence of his king. Poor Arthur!" he continued, casting his eyes on the ground, and letting his mind wander over the past,--"poor Arthur! thou wert as hopeful a youth as ever a mother was blessed withal--as fair, as engaging a boy--and now thine unhappy mother is sonless, as well widowed. I had hoped to have seated thee on the throne of thine ancestors, and to have made thy mother's heart glad in the sight of thy renewed prosperity. But thou art gone, poor child! and left few so fair and noble behind. In faith, lords! I could weep that boy's loss," continued the king, dashing a drop from his proud eye. "His youth promised so splendidly, that his manhood must have proved great.--Lord Abbot," he added gravely, turning to the abbot of Three Fountains, "you have marked what has passed this day--you have heard what I have heard,--and, if there needs any farther answer to him that sent you to preach me from my purpose of punishing a rebellious vassal, tell him that John of Anjou has added murder to treachery; and that Philip of France will never sheathe the sword till he has fully avenged the death of Arthur Plantagenet!"
"I have indeed heard what has passed, sire, with horror and dismay," replied the abbot; "but still, without at all seeking to impugn the faith or truth of this good knight, whose deeds in defence of the holy sepulchre have been heard of by all men, and warrant his Christian truth--yet still he saw not the murder committed."
Philip knit his brow and gnawed his lip impatiently, glancing his eye round the circle with a scornful and meaning smile; and muttering to himself, "Roman craft--Roman craft!"
Whether the abbot heard it or not, he took instantly a higher tone. "I irritate you, sir king!" said he, "by speaking truth; but still you must thus far hear me. The pope--the holy head of the common Christian church, finding himself called upon to exert all the powers entrusted to him for the deliverance of the holy city of Jerusalem, has resolved that he will compel all Christian kings to cease their private quarrels, and lay by their vindictive animosities, till the great object of giving deliverance to Christ's sepulchre be accomplished."
"Compel!" cried Philip, the living lightning flashing from his eyes. "By heaven! priest, the king he can compel to sheathe the sword of righteous vengeance out against a murderer is formed of different metal from Philip of France. So tell the pontiff! Let him cast again the interdict upon the land if he will. The next time I pray him to raise it, shall be at the gates of Rome with my lance in my hand, and my shield upon my breast. My supplication shall be the voice of trumpets, and my kneeling the trampling of my war-horse in the courts of the capitol.--What say ye, barons! Have I spoken well?"
"Well! Well! Well!" echoed the peers around, enraged beyond moderation at the prelate's daring protection of a murderer; and at the same moment the Duke of Burgundy laid the finger of his right hand upon the pommel of his sword, with a meaning glance towards the king.
"Ay, Burgundy, my noble friend! thou art right," said Philip; "with our swords we will show our freedom.--Look not scared, sir abbot, but know, that we are not such children as to be deceived with tales of holy wars, when the question is, whether a murderer shall be punished. Away with such pretences! This war against the assassin of my noble boy, Arthur of Brittany, is my holy war, and never was one more just and righteous.--Ha, Mountjoy!" he added, as the king of arms entered, "we have a task for thee, fitted for so noble a knight and so learned a herald. John of Anjou has murdered Arthur Plantagenet, his nephew, in prison. Here stands in witness thereof. Sir Guy de Coucy--"
"Good knight and noble! if ever one lived," said the herald, bowing his head to De Coucy.
"Go then to the false traitor John," continued the king, "defy him in our name! tell him that we will have blood for blood; and that the death of all the thousands which shall fall in his unrighteous quarrel we cast upon his head. Tell him, that we will never sheathe the sword, so long as he possesses one foot of ground in France; and that when we have even driven him across his bulwark of the sea, we will overleap that too, and the avenging blade shall plague him at his very hearth.--Yet hold!" cried Philip, pausing in the midst of the passion into which he had worked himself, and reining in his wrath, to guide it in the course of his greater purposes; as a skilful charioteer bends the angry and impetuous fire of his horses, to whirl him on with more energetic celerity to the goal within his view. "Yet hold!--------" and Philip carried his hand to his brow, catching, as by inspiration, the outline of that bright stroke of policy which, more than any other act of his whole reign, secured to the monarchs of France the absolute supremacy of their rule--the judgment of John of Anjou, the greatest feudatory of the crown, by the united peers of France.
If he made the war against John a personal one between himself and the king of England, he might be supported by his barons, and come off victorious in the struggle, it was true; but if he summoned John, as Duke of Normandy, to receive judgment from his sovereign court in a case of felony, it established his jurisdiction over his higher vassals, on a precedent such as none would ever dare in after years to resist. It did more; for, if John were condemned by his peers, of which Philip entertained not a moment's doubt, the barons of France would be bound to support their own award; and the tie between them and him would become, not the unstable one of voluntary service, rendered and refused as caprice might dictate, but a strictly feudal duty with which all would be interested to comply.
Philip saw, at a glance, the immense increase of stability which he might give to his power by this great exercise of his rights; and, clear-sighted himself, he hardly doubted that his barons would see it also, and perhaps oppose his will. Certain, however, that by the feudal system his right to summon John, and judge him in his court, was clear and undeniable, he resolved to carry it through, at all events; but determined, first, to propose it to his nobles as a concession that he himself made to their privileges.
What is long and tedious, as the slow eye or slower pen travels over the paper, is but the work of a moment to the mind; and Philip had, in the pause of one brief instant, caught every consideration that affected the idea before him, and determined upon his line of conduct.
"Hold!" said he to the herald--"hold! My lords," he continued, turning to the nobles, by whom he was surrounded, "in my first wrath against this base murderer, I had forgot that, though I have the indisputable right of warring upon him as a monarch, yet I cannot justly punish him as a felon, strictly speaking, without your judgment previously pronounced upon him. I would not willingly trespass upon the privileges of any of my noble vassals; and therefore, lords--you Dukes of Burgundy and Champagne, and whatever other peers of France are present, I resign the judgment of this John of Anjou into your hands. I will summon him to appear before my court of peers, at the end of twenty days, to answer the charges brought against him. The peers of France shall judge him according to their honour and his demerits; and I will stand by in arms, to see that judgment executed." The peers of France could hardly have refused to assist at the trial to which Philip called them, even had they been so willed; but, far behind the monarch in intellect, and indignant at the baseness of John of Anjou, they now eagerly expressed their approval of the king's determination; and again plighted themselves to support him in his war against the English sovereign, whether that war was maintained as a consequence of the judgment they should give, or as a continuation of that which had already commenced.
The herald, then, was instantly despatched to Rouen, for the purpose of displaying the articles of accusation against John at the court of Normandy, and of summoning him to appear on the twentieth day at Paris, to answer the charges to be there substantiated. At the same time, the legate of the holy see, very well convinced that, in the present case, the thunders of the church would fall harmless at the feet of Philip, though launched with ever so angry a hand, took leave of the monarch with a discontented air; and as he left the hall, the monarch's lip curled, and his eye lightened, with a foretaste of that triumph which he anticipated over the proud priest who had so darkly troubled the current of his domestic happiness.
"Beau Sire De Coucy," said the king, turning to the young knight with a bland smile, as he recalled his thoughts from the contemplation of the future, "notwithstanding the sad news you have brought us, you are most welcome to the court of France. Nor will we fail to repay your sufferings, as far as our poor means will go. In the mean while, we beg of you to make our palace your home till such time as, with sounding trumpets and lances in rest, we shall march to punish the assassin of Arthur Plantagenet. Then shall you lead, to aid in the revenge I know you thirst to take, all the fair host raised on the lands of the Count de Tankerville, full a thousand archers and two hundred knights. At supper, noble lords," continued the king, "I trust that all here will grace my board with their presence. Ere then, I have a bitter task to perform--to break to a fond mother the death of her noble boy, and to soothe the sorrows of a helpless widow."