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:
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:
Every man of the little group applauded except Sir Jaufre, who yawned affectedly behind a languidly lifted hand.
"You mew too lewdly to be true," he asserted, contemptuously. "Your sincere kiss-winner has no leisure to sing of it."
Sir Guy made him an extravagant bow.
"Suave Sir Jaufre," he said; "smooth Sir Jaufre, by that count you should write red ballads of battles."
There came a faint laugh from some of the hearers, others raised their eyebrows and drew nearer. The war of wits promised to quicken. Count Ernault, coming from the palace and conference with Duke Baldwin, spied the excited group and drew nigh. As he came near he heard Sir Jaufre interrogate his critic.
"Your meaning?"
Sir Guy, still with the same air of extravagant respect, explained, syllabling, with laborious slowness:
"I mean that if I am no lucky lover you are no famous fighter."
Sir Jaufre propped his hand on his chin for a moment as one drowned in deep thought. Then his eyes travelled slowly along the little line of listeners.
"Who can tell me the Latin for 'braggart'?" he asked, meditatively.
There was a little silence. Scholarship was not a strong point of Duke Baldwin's companions. Then Fernand Ximenes, to end or extend the embarrassment, asked:
"Why the Latin?"
Sir Jaufre made a deprecating gesture.
"That it may serve for Guy's epitaph to-night," he interpreted.
Sir Guy laughed again very softly, swaying a little backward and forward, as one exceedingly amused.
"Do you think," he asked, "that any one will kill me to-night for killing you this morning?"
Sir Jaufre spoke again, not to Guy, but still to the constrained, attentive circle:
"I do not know the Latin for 'braggart,'" he said, thoughtfully, "but I know the French for 'fool.'"
"Why, so do I," Sir Guy agreed, instantly; "it is Jaufre de Brabant."
Every one of the hearers laughed at this, coming so crisp and pat, but Sir Jaufre sprang to his feet.
"Up sword, and out!" he cried, and drew his weapon.
Sir Guy as swiftly bared his blade, and it seemed for a moment as if to the many images of life the court-yard presented that of a battle to the death was to be added. Only for a moment, for instantly Count Ernault thrust his white staff of marshalship between the combatants.
"House your swords, gentlemen," he insisted, peremptorily. "Do you not know the day's law? There shall be no challenge taken, no quarrel honored in arms, save in the tourney and under the eye of Duke Baldwin. For to-day the duke's son marries the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes, and on such a day there may be no brawling; wherefore, close hands in amity."
Sir Jaufre sulkily calm, Sir Guy seraphically affable, extended each a hand, and clasped in sign of formal peace. The somewhat awkward silence that followed on this stifled brawl and seeming reconciliation was strangely interrupted. Outside the great gate came the clear sound of the note of a horn, which immediately attracted the attention of every man in the court-yard and every woman at the palace windows.
"What belated knight is this?" cried Ambrose of Blois, pleased at the interruption, for he liked both the disputants.
The lord-marshal shook his head.
"I thought that every expected knight was in the castle," he answered, and had hardly finished speaking when the horn was wound a second time.
"It is a baron's summons," Ximenes exclaimed, pleased to air his intimacy with Frankish etiquette, and on the heels of his exclamation came a third time, louder and clearer, the note of the great horn.
"By the Lord!" cried Count Ernault, "this is a prince's parley," and he turned to the giants at the gate.