Now see the shield turned. That very afternoon did the other sister unbend a point with cruel suavity, and set me joyous by promising to meet me at nightfall, whereat, as you will readily understand, every other event of the day faded into nothingness. At the appointed hour, just as the white mist floated in thin fine wisps from the shadowed moat on the eastward of the castle wall and the red setting sun was throwing the strong black shadows of cedar branches upon the copper-gleaming windows and walls of the side that faced him, I rose, and, making some jesting excuse, slipped away from my noisy comrades in the hall into the shadows of the corridors. Yes! and, though you may smile, he who thought this Phœnician had plumbed the well of mortal love to the very depth, had learned all there was to learn, and left nothing that could stir him so much as a heart-beat in this fair field of adventure, was now tripping through the ruddy and black dust, anxious and alert, his pulses beating a quicker measure than his feet, the native boldness of his nature all overlaid with new-born diffidence, fingering his silken points as he went, and conning pretty speeches, now hoping in his lover hesitance the tryst would not be kept, and then anon spurning himself for being so laggard and faint-hearted, and thus progressing in moods and minds as many as the gentle shadows checkering his path from many an oriel window and many a fluted casement, he came at length within sight of the deep-set window looking down over the pale-shining water and the heavy woods beyond, where his own love-tale was to be told.
And there as I plucked back the last tapestry that barred my passage and stood still for a moment on the threshold—there before me sitting on the tressels under the mullions in the twilight, was the figure of my fair and haughty English girl.
She had her face turned away from the evening glow, her ample white cap, peaked and laced with gold on either crescent point, further threw into shadow the features I knew so well, while the fine shapely hands lay hidden in the folds of the ample dress which shone and glimmered in the dusk against the oak panelings of that ancient lobby in misty uncertainty. Gentle dame! My heart bounded with expectant triumph to see how pensive and downcast was her look—how still she sat and how, methought, the white linen and the golden ceinture above her heart rose and fell even in that silent place with the tumult of maidenly passion within. My heart opened to her, I say, as though I were an enamored shepherd about to pour a brand-new virgin love into the frightened ears of some timid country maid, and within my veins, as the heavy arras fell from my hands behind me, there surged up the molten stream of Eastern love! I waited neither to see nor hear else, but strode swiftly over the floor and cast myself down there at her feet upon one knee—gods! how it makes me smart to think of it!—I who had never bent a knee before in supplication to earth or heaven, and poured out before her the offering of my passion. Hot and swiftly I wooed her, saying I scarce know what, loosening my heart before that silent shrine, laying bare the keen, strong throb of life and yearning that pulsed within me, persuading, entreating, cajoling, until both breath and fancy failed. And never under all that stream of love had the damsel given one sign, one single indication of existence.
Then on I went again, deeming the maid held herself not yet wooed enough, disporting myself before her, and pleading the simplicity of my love, saying how that, if it brought no great riches with it, yet was it the treasure of a truthful heart. Did she sigh to widen her father’s broad lands? I swore by Osiris I would do it for her love better than any petty lordling could. Did she desire to shine, honored above all women, where spears were broken or feasts were spread? Think of yon littered lists, I cried, and told her there was not a champion in all the world I feared—none who should not come humbled to her footstool; while, as for honor and recognition—Jove! I would pluck them from the King himself, even as I had plucked them from his betters. Yet never a sign that fair girl gave.
Full of wonder and surprise, I waited for a moment for some sign or show, if not of answering fire, at least of reason; and then, as I checked in full course my passionate pleadings, that wretched thing before me burst, not into the tears I expected of maidenly capitulation, nor into the proud anger of offended virgins, but into a silly, plebeian simper, which began in ludicrous smothered merriment under the folds of the lawn she held across her face, and ended amid what appeared contending feelings in a rustic outburst of sobs and exclamations.
I was on my feet in an instant, all my wild love-making dammed back upon my heart by suspicion and surprise, and as I frowned fiercely at that dim-seen form under the distorting shadow of the windows, it rose—to nothing like Alianora’s height—and stepped out where the evening light better illumined us. And there that poor traitress tore off in anger and remorse the lace and linen of a well-born English maiden, and stood revealed before me the humblest, the meanest-seeming, and the most despised kitchen wench of any that served in that baronial hall!
You will guess what my feelings were as this indignity I had been put to rushed upon me, how in my wounded pride I crossed my arms savagely upon my breast, and turned away from that poor, simpering, rustic fool, and clenched my teeth, and swore fierce oaths against that cruel girl who, in her pride and insolence, had played me this sorry trick. Wild and bitter were the gusts of passion that swept through my heart, and all the more unruly since it was by and for a woman I had fallen, and there was none for me to take vengeance on.
In a few minutes I turned to the wretched tool of a vixen mistress. “Hast any explanation of this?” I sternly asked, pointing to the disordered finery that lay glimmering upon the floor.
The unhappy kitchenmaid nodded behind her tears and the thick red hands wherewith she was streaking two wet, round cheeks with alternate hues of grief and dinginess, and put a hand into her bosom and handed me a folded missive. I tore it open and read, in prettily scrawled old Norman French, that cruel message:
This is to tell that nameless knight who has nothing to distinguish him but presumption, that although the daughter of an English peer must ever treat his suit with the contempt it deserved, yet will she go so far as to select him from among her father’s vassals one to whom she thinks he might very fitly unburden his soul of its load of “love and fealty.”