Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms

by G. P. R. James

IV.

Through life, as o'er that Syrian plain,

Alone I've wander'd from a child,

Thirsting for love, yet all in vain,

'Till now, when sweet and undefiled,

I find Love's fountain in the wild."

De Coucy sang, and then again pressed the token which he had obtained to his lips, and to his heart; when suddenly a loud "Haw, haw! haw, haw!" startled him from his pleasing dreams, and he saw Gallon the fool standing beside him.

"Haw, haw!" cried Gallon; "my master's turned juggler, and is playing with scraps of gold ribbon, and singing songs to them. By my dexterity! I'll give up the trade: the mystery is no longer honourable--every fool can do it."

"Take care that one fool does not get his ears slit," answered De Coucy.--"Tell me, sir, and tell me truly,--for I know thee, Gallon, and that thou art no more fool than may serve thy turn,--where hast thou been since daybreak, this morning?"

"I went out on the road to Compiègne," replied Gallon gravely, "to see how the wolf looked in the sheepfold; and whether the falcon comported himself sociably in the dove's nest. Farther, I sought to behold how the shepherd enjoyed the sight of sir wolf toying with the lamb; and still farther----"

"Villain!" cried De Coucy, "what mean you? Speak me no more apologues, or your skin shall suffer for it! What mean you, I say?" and De Coucy suddenly seized the juggler by the arm, so as to prevent him from escaping by his agility, which he frequently did, from the blow which he menaced to bestow on him with his other hand.

"Well! well!" cried Gallon, ever willing to say any thing that he thought might alarm, or mortify, or pain his hearers. "I went first, beau sire, to inquire of a dear friend of mine, at the palace--who fell in love with me, because, and on account of, the simple beauty and grace of my snout--whether it be true, that Philip the Magnificent had taken actual possession of the lands of your aunt's husband, the Count de Tankerville; and I find he has, and called in all the revenues to the royal treasury. Oh! 'tis a great king and an expeditious!--Haw, haw, haw!" and though within reach of the young knight's arm. Gallon the fool could not repress his glee at the sight of a slight shade of natural mortification that came over his lord's countenance.

"Let him," cried De Coucy,--"let him take them all! I would rather that he had them than the duke of Burgundy. Better they should go to strengthen a good king, than to nourish a fat and overgrown vassal.--But you escape me not so, sir Gallon! You said you went on the road to Compiègne to see how the wolf looked, in the sheepfold! Translate, sir fool! Translate! What meant you?"

"Simply to see Count Thibalt d'Auvergne and Queen Agnes de Meranie," replied the jongleur.--"Haw, haw!--Is there any harm in that?"

De Coucy started, as if some one had struck him, experiencing that sort of astonishment which one feels, when suddenly some fact, to which we have long shut our eyes, breaks upon us at once, in all the sharpness of self-evidency--if one may use the word. "'Tis impossible!" cried he. "It cannot be! 'Tis not to be believed!"

"Haw, haw, haw!" cried Gallon the fool. "Not to be doubted, beau sire De Coucy!--Did he not join your good knighthood as blithe and merry as a lark, after having spent some three months at the court of Istria and Moravia?--Did he not go on well and gaily, till the news came that Philip of France had wedded Agnes de Meranie?--Then did he not, in your own tent, turn paler than the canvass that covered him?--And did he not thenceforth wax wan and lack-witted, sick and sorrowful?--Ha, haw? Ha, haw!"

"Cease thy grinning, knave!" cried De Coucy sharply, "and know, that even if he does love the queen, 'tis in all honour and honesty; as one may dedicate one's heart and soul, one's lance and song, to the greatest princess on all the earth, without dreaming aught to her dishonour."

"Haw, haw, haw! haw, haw!" was all the answer of Gallon the fool; and darting away from the relaxed grasp of De Coucy, on whose brow he saw clearly a gathering storm, he rushed down, shouting "Haw, haw! haw, haw!" with as keen an accent of triumph, as if he had gained a victory.

"Is it possible?" said the knight to himself, "that I have been blind for nearly two years to what has been discovered by an idiot on the instant? God bless us all, and the holy saints!--D'Auvergne! D'Auvergne! I pity thee, from my soul! for where thou hast loved, and loved so fair a creature, there wilt thou still love, till the death. Nor art thou a man to seek to quench thy love in thy lady's dishonour--to learn to gratify thy passion and to despise its object, as some men would. Here thy very nobleness, like plumes to the ostrich, is thy bane and not thy help. And Philip too. If e'er a king was born to be jealous, he is the man. I would not for a dukedom love so hopelessly. However, D'Auvergne, I will be near thee--near to thy dangers, though not to thy wealth."

At this point, the contemplations of De Coucy were interrupted by the return of Hugo de Barre, his squire, informing him that the horses were ready; and at the same time laying down on the table before his lord a small leathern bag, apparently full of money.

"What is that?" demanded De Coucy.

"The ransom of the two knights' horses and armour, overthrown by your lance in the yesterday's tournament," replied the squire.

"Well, then, pay the two hireling grooms," said De Coucy, "whom we engaged to lead the two Arabians from Auvergne, since we discharged the Lombards who brought them thither."

"They will not be paid, beau sire," replied the squire. "They both pray you to employ the hire which is their due in furnishing them with each a horse and arms, and then to let them serve under your banner."

"Well, be it so, good Hugo," replied the knight. "Where--God knows where I shall find food to cram their mouths withal! 'Twill add too, however, to my poor following. Then, with thee and the page, and my own two varlets, we shall make seven:--eight with Gallon the fool. By my faith! I forgot the juggler, who is as stout a man-at-arms as any amongst us. But, as I said, get thee gone with the men to the Rue St. Victor, where the Haubergers dwell. Give them each a sword, a shield, a corslet, and a steel bonnet: but make them cast away those long knives hanging by their thighs which I love not;--they always make me think of that one wherewith the villain slave of Mahound ripped up my good battle-horse Hero; and would have slain me with it too, if I had not dashed him to atoms with my mace. Ride quick, and overtake me and the rest on the road: we go at a foot-pace." So saying, Guy de Coucy descended the narrow staircase of his dwelling; and, after having spoken for a few moments with one of the attendants of the Count d'Auvergne, who had remained behind, he mounted his horse, and rode slowly out of the city of Paris.

There is no possible mode of progression, that I know of, more engendering of melancholy than the foot-pace of a horse when one is alone. It is so like the slow and retarded pace which, whether we will or not, we are obliged to pursue on the high-road of life; and each object, as it rises on our view, seems such a long age in its approach, that one feels an almost irresistible desire, at every other step, to give the whip or spur, and accelerate the heart's slow beatings by some more rapid movement of the body. Did one wish to cultivate their stupidity, let them ride their horse, at a walk, over one of the long, straight roads of France.

The face of the country, however, was in those days very different from what it is at present; and the narrow, earthy road over which De Coucy travelled, wound in and out over hills and through forests: now plunging into the deep wood; now emerging by the bright stream; now passing, for a short space, through vineyards and fields, with a hamlet or a village by the road-side; now losing itself in wilds and solitudes, where one might well suppose that Adam's likeness had been never seen.

The continual changing of the objects around relieved, of course, the monotony of the slow pace at which De Coucy had condemned himself to proceed, while expecting of his squire's return; and a calm sort of melancholy was all he felt, as he revolved in his mind the various points of his own situation and that of his friend the Count d'Auvergne.

In regard to himself, new feelings had sprung up in his bosom--feelings that he had heard of, but never known before. He loved, and he fancied he was beloved; and dreams, and hopes, and expectations, softer, calmer, more profound than ever had reached him in camps or courts, flowed in upon his heart, like the stream of some deep, pure river, and washed away all that was rude and light, or unworthy in his bosom. Yet, at the same time, all the tormenting contentions of hope and fear--the fine hair balancings of doubt and anxiety--the soul torturings of that light and malicious imp, Love, took possession of the heart of De Coucy; and he calculated, within the hundred thousandth part of a line, how much chance there existed of Isadore of the Mount not loving him,--and of her loving some one else,--and of her father, who was rich, rejecting him, who was poor,--and of his having promised her to some one else;--and so on to infinity. At length, weary of his own reasonings thereupon, and laughing at himself for combating the chimeras of his own imagination, he endeavoured to turn his thoughts to other things, humming as he went--

"'The man's a fool--the man's a fool
That lets Love use him for a tool:
But is that man the gods above,
Himself unused, who uses love.'

"--And so will I," continued De Coucy mentally. "It shall prompt me to great deeds, and to mighty efforts. I will go to every court in Europe, and challenge them all to do battle with me upon the question. I will fight in every combat and every skirmish that can be met with, till they cannot refuse her to me, out of pure shame."

Such were the determinations of De Coucy in the age of chivalry, and he was one more likely than most men to keep such determinations. They, however, like all resolutions, were of course modified by circumstances; and in the mean while, his squire, Hugo, rejoined him with the two varlets, who had been hired in Auvergne to lead his horses, but who were now fitted to make a figure in the train of so warlike a knight.

Still the prospect of his cold and vacant home, with no smile to give him welcome, and, as he well knew, nothing but poverty for his entertainment, sat somewhat heavily upon the young knight's heart. To lodge upon the battle plain, under a covering that scarce excluded the weather; to feed on the coarsest and most scanty food; to endure all perils and privations, for chivalry's, religion's, or his country's sake, was nothing to the bold and hardy soldier, whose task and pride it was so to suffer: but, for the châtelain, De Coucy, to return to the castle where his fathers had lived in splendour,--to the bowers and halls where his infancy had been nursed with tenderness,--and to find all empty and desolate; the wealth and magnificence wasted in the thousand fruitless enterprises of the crusades, and the loved and familiar laid low in the melancholy dwellings of the gone, was bitter, sadly bitter, even for a young, light heart, and unquenchable spirit like his.

One of his ancestors, who, in the reign of Henry the First, had founded the younger branch of the De Coucy's, of which he was now the sole representative, had done important services to the crown, and had been rewarded by the hand of Aleonore de Magny, on the Seine, heiress of the last terre libre, or free land, in France; and this his race had maintained, in its original freedom, against all the surrounding barons, and even against the repeated efforts of every successive king, who, on all occasions, attempted to exact homage by force, or to win it by policy. His father, indeed, before taking the cross, which he did at the persuasion of Louis the Seventh, had put his lands under the protection of the king, who, on his part, promised to guard its inviolability against all and every one; and acknowledged by charter under his hand and seal, that it was free and independent of the crown.

The manoir, or castel, of every baron of the time, was always a building of more or less strength; but it is to be supposed, of course, that the château attached to lands in continual dispute, was fortified with an additional degree of precaution and care. Nor was this wanting in the château of De Coucy Magny, as it was called: wall, and battlement, tower, turret, and bartizan, overhung every angle of the hill on which it was placed, and rendered it almost impregnable, according to the mode of warfare of those days.

When De Coucy had left it, with his father's men-at-arms, though age had blackened it, not one stone was less in the castle-walls,--not a weed was on the battlements; and even the green ivy, that true parasite which sucks the vital strength of that which supports it, was carefully removed from the masonry.

But, oh! how fast decay speeds on, even by the neglect of ten short years! When De Coucy returned, the evening sun was setting behind the hill on which the castle stood; and, as he led his scanty band of horsemen up the winding and difficult path, he could see, by the rough, uneven outline of the dark mass before him, what ravages time had already made. High above the rest, the donjon, which used to seem proud of its square regularity, now towered with one entire angle of its battlements given way, and with many a bush and shrub waving its long feathery foliage from window and from loophole; while the neglected state of the road, and even the tameness of the wild animals in the woods near the château; the hares and the deer, which stood and gazed with their large round eyes for many moments at De Coucy and his followers before they started away, told, with a sad moral, that man was seldom seen there.

De Coucy sighed as he rode on; and, stopping at the gates of the barbican, which, thickly plated and studded with iron, opposed all entrance, wound a long blast upon his horn. A moment after, the noise of bolts and bars was heard, as if the doors were about to be thrown open; but then again came the sound of an old man's voice, exclaiming in a tone of querulous anger--"Hold, hold! Villain Calord! Will you give up the castle to the cotereaux? Hold, I say! or I will break thy pate! I saw them from the beffroy. They are a band of cotereaux. Go round to the serfs' sheds, and bid them come and take their bows to the walls. Up you, and ring the bancloche, that we may have the soldiers from Magny!"

"Onfroy! Onfroy!" shouted De Coucy. "Open your gates! 'Tis I, Guy de Coucy!"

"Your voice I know not!" roared the old man in reply. "My young lord had a soft, sweet voice; and yours is as deep as a bell. I know not your voice, fair sir.--Man the walls, I say, Calord! 'Tis all a trick," he continued, speaking to his companion. "Sound the bancloche!"

"If you know not my voice," cried De Coucy, "surely you should know the blast I have sounded on my horn!"

"Sound again, beau sire!--sound again!" cried the old man. "I will know your blast among ten thousand, if you be a De Coucy; and if you be my young lord, I will know it in all the world."

De Coucy put his horn to his lips and reiterated his blast, when instantly the old man exclaimed--"'Tis he!--'tis he, Calord!--Open the gates--open the gates, quick! lest I die of joy before I see his face again! 'Tis he himself! The blessed Virgin, queen of heaven, be praised for all things--Give me the keys--give me the keys, Calord!" and no sooner were the doors pushed back, than casting himself on his knees before his lord's horse, with the tears of joy coursing each other rapidly down his withered face, the old seneschal exclaimed, "Enter, noble châtelain! and take your own; and God be praised, my dear boy! and the holy Virgin, and St. John, and St. Peter, but more especially St. Martin of Tours! for having brought you safe back again from the dangers of Palestine, where your noble father has left his valiant bones! Here are the keys, which I offer into your hand, beau sire," he continued, looking earnestly at De Coucy, and wiping the salt rheum that obscured his sight. "And yet I can scarce believe," he added, "that young Guy, the last of the three fair youths--he who was not up to my shoulder when he went, whom I first taught to draw a bow, or wheel a horse--that young Guy, the page--and a saucy stripling he was too--my blessing on his waggish head!--that young Guy the page should have grown into so tall and strong a man as you, beau sire!--Are you not putting upon me? Was it truly you that blew that blast?" and his eye ran over the persons who followed behind his lord.--"But no!" he added, "it must be he! I know his blue eye, and the curl of his lip; and I have heard how he is a great knight now-a-days, and slays Saracens, and bears away the prizes at tournays:--I have heard it all!"

De Coucy calmly let the old man finish his speech, without offering to take the keys, which from time to time he proffered, as a sort of interjection between the various parts of his disjointed discourse. "It is even I, good Onfroy," replied he at last: "keep the keys!--keep the keys, good old man!--they cannot be in worthier hands than yours. But now let us in. I bring you, as you see, no great reinforcement; but I hope your garrison is not so straitened for provisions, that you cannot give us some supper, for we are hungry, though we be few."

"We will kill a hog--we will kill a hog, beau sire!" replied the old man. "I have kept chiefly to the hogs, beau sire, since you were gone, for they cost nothing to keep--the acorns of the forest serve them--and they have increased wonderfully! Oh, we have plenty of hogs; but as to cows, and sheep, and things of that kind, that eat much and profit little, I was obliged to abandon them when I sent you the last silver I could get, as you commanded."

De Coucy signified his perfect indifference as to whether his supper consisted of mutton, beef, or pork; and riding through the barbican, into the enclosure of the walls, he crossed the court and alighted at the great gates of the hall, which were thrown open to receive him.

Calord, the servant or varlet of the seneschal, had run on before, to light a torch; for the day was beginning to fail, and the immense apartment was of its own nature dark and gloomy; but still, all within was dim. The rays of the torch, though held high, and waved round and round, scarcely served to show some dark lustreless suits of armour hung against the walls; and the figures of some of the serfs, who had stolen into the farther extremity of the hall, to catch a glimpse of their returned lord, seemed like spirits moving about on the dark confines of another world; while more than one bat, startled even by the feeble light, took wing and fluttered amongst the old banners overhead. At the same time, as if dreary sounds were wanting to complete the gloominess of the young knight's return, the clanging of his footsteps upon the pavement of the empty hall, awoke a long, wild echo, which, prolonged through the open doors communicating with untenanted halls and galleries beyond, seemed the very voice of solitude bewailing her disturbed repose.

It all fell cold upon De Coucy's heart; and, laying his hand on the old seneschal's shoulder, as he was about to begin one of his long discourses:--"Do not speak to me just now, good Onfroy!" said the young knight; "I am not in a vein to listen to any thing. But throw on a fire in yon empty hearth; for, though it be July, this hall has a touch of January. Thou hast the key of the books too:--bring them all down, good Onfroy; I will seek some moral that may teach contentment.--Set down my harp beside me, good page." And having given these directions, De Coucy cast himself into the justice-chair of his ancestors, and, covering his eyes with his hands, gave himself up to no very sweet contemplations.