In the larger castles this gallery or loggia was sometimes distinct from the keep. Together with the great dining-hall (“sänger-saal” or “mandement”), where the lord sat in justice and received his guests, it formed a lower church-like building, in style much like an Oxford chapel, placed beside the keep and less strongly fortified. These separate halls were only used in time of peace. They were already well known in the thirteenth century, for in the palace of Percival—
“La sale fu devant la tour
Et les loges devant la sale.”
And we read in the Lai de Lautrec—
“Prochaines eurent leurs maisons
Et leurs sales et leurs donjons.”
But the sole square tower with its corner turrets remains, even in the fourteenth century, the type of the castle keep. The chateau of Vincennes, built by Charles V., is an admirable example of the kind.
II
It was not easy to enter the castle keep. It stood encircled by a strongly fortified enclosure, isolated by moat or precipice, and defended, not only by outworks of palisading, but by a barbican and several smaller towers. Having run the gauntlet of all this, having passed down the narrow winding path between the palisades, the visitor arrived at the moat, and blew a horn hung there for the purpose. After parley with porter and watchman, the drawbridge was let down; and after further parley, perchance, the great gate may have swung back on its hinges. In this case, the stranger found himself in a long hollow archway, protected by a series of portcullises, with a perforated roof, through which boiling pitch, molten lead, Greek fire, or simple scalding water could be poured down from an upper chamber. In time of peace, however, the visitor passed unscathed through the gate into a vast courtyard enclosed by huge battlemented walls or towers; a courtyard that is almost a village, for it contains the church, the knights’ quarters, the squires’ house, the lodgings for pages and servants, the barracks, the cottages of the artisans and labourers on the estate, the bake-house, the kitchen, the walled and gated fish-pond, the fountain, the washing-place, the stables, the barns, etc. A second gate, a second portcullis, lead to a smaller court, where—huge, swart, and sombre—towers the keep. It is immense, it is impregnable, and always opposite to the weakest point of the defence, with a postern of its own leading to the orchard, and a subterranean way into the open country. Those who have admired the black majesty of Loches will admit the grandeur of the mediæval keep.
Built against the castle’s outer wall, looking from its upper windows across the open country, the keep sometimes has pleasant views. An island castle, defended by a wide expanse of water, or lifted high above the plain upon a granite needle, could afford the luxury of light and air, could indulge in large windows, grouped three or four together in a space of dead wall, on which they make a lacework of pointed arch and separating columns. But the huge moated castle of the plain was less fortunate. The windows were rare, narrow, far apart. The walls, ten feet thick, made a deep and dark recess for the long lancet holes, more often closed with oiled and painted linen than with glass, and placed very high for the sake of safety. Sometimes they were as much as five feet above the floor. A few years ago in Florence, at the Palazzo Alessandri, I remember seeing windows of this sort, high-perched recesses, the size and shape of an opera-box, reached by a staircase cut in the stone of the wall. On the granite window-benches, heap embroidered cushions; lay a Saracen carpet on the floor; and set in this narrow shrine some fair young woman, lily-slender in her tight brocaded gown. She is playing chess with a squire still younger than herself. Or perhaps she is alone, singing to her lute some ballad of the Round Table—
“La reine chante doucement,
La voix accorde à l’estrument,
Les mains sont belles, li laiz bons,
Douce la voix et bas li tons.”