“That is a good song,” said a stranger who had come in so quietly that Ranulph did not see him. “Did you find it in Spain?”
Ranulph stood up and bowed with the grace that had not left him in all his wandering life. “No,” he said, his dark eyes glinting with laughter, “I learned it in the Grasshoppers’ Library. I beg your pardon, master,—that is a saying we have in Provence. You will guess the meaning. A learned physician found me there, studying diligently though perhaps not over-profitably upon a hillside.”
“Not bad at all,” said the stranger, sitting down by Ranulph in the window and running over the melody on the harp. His fingers swept the strings in a confident power that showed him a master-musician, and he began a song so full of wonder, mystery and sweetness that Ranulph listened spellbound. Neither of them knew that for centuries after they sat there singing in a ruined Roman tower, the song would be known to all the world as the legend of Parzifal.
“I too have studied in the Grasshoppers’ Library,” said the singer, “but I found in an ancient book among the infidels in Spain this tale of a cup of enchantment, and made use of it. I think that it is one of those songs which do not die, but travel far and wide in many disguises, and end perhaps in the Church. You are one of us, are you not?”
“I am a street singer,” Ranulph answered, “a jongleur—a jester. I make songs for this,”—he took up his battered rote and hummed a camp-chorus.
“Do you mean to say that you play like that—on that?” asked the other. “Your studies must have led you indeed to Fairyland. You ought to go to England. The Plantagenets are friendly to us troubadours, and the English are a merry people, who delight in songs and the hearing of tales.”
Ranulph did not answer. Going to England and going to Fairyland were not in the same class of undertaking. Fairyland might be just over the border of the real world, but it cost money to cross the seas.
Tomaso came in just then, his deep-set eyes twinkling. “It is all right,” he said, nodding to the troubadour.
“I have been telling our friend here that he should go to England,” said the latter, rising and putting on his cloak. “If, as you say, his father was loyal to the House of Anjou, Henry will remember it. He is a wise old fox, is Henry, and he needs men whom he can trust. He is changing laws, and that is no easy thing to do when you have a stubborn people with all sorts of ideas in their heads about custom, and tradition, and what not. He wants to make things safe for his sons, and the throne on which he sits is rocking. The French king is greedy and the Welsh are savage, and Italian galleys crowd the very Pool of London. I remember me when I was a student in Paris, a Welsh clerk—he calls himself now Giraldus Cambrensis, but his name then was Gerald Barri,—had the room over mine, the year that Philip was born. We woke up one night to find the whole street ablaze with torches and lanterns, and two old crones dancing under our windows with lighted torches in their hands, howling for joy. Barri stuck his head out of window and asked what ailed them, and one of them screamed in her cracked voice, ‘We have got a Prince now who will drive you all out of France some day, you Englishmen!’ I can see his face now as he shouted back something that assuredly was not French. I tell you, Philip will hate the English like his father before him, and these are times when a troubadour who can keep a merry face and a close tongue will learn much.”
As the door closed the physician sat down in his round-backed chair, resting his long, wrinkled hands upon the arms. “Well, my son,” he said in his unperturbed voice, “I find somebody yonder is very sorry that you were thrown out of the gates this morning.”