The Castle of Twilight

by Margaret Horton Potter

“I know not if it troubled him at first, madame. But this I know: that he is happy in her.”

“Then the dear God be thanked! I ask no more. Ah! It seems that at last I can pray again with an open heart. ’Twill be the first time since—since—” Suddenly Eleanore began to tremble. “Courtoise,” she whispered, pale with dread, “hath thy lord heard—of—of Laure’s flight?”

Courtoise bent his head, answering in a strained voice: “My lord had news of—of the flight late in the month of March. Monseigneur de St. Nazaire sent us the word of it, and for many weeks my lord hunted the country over for a trace of her. And when he found her not, nor any word of her, he forbore, in his grief, to write to thee, dear lady, lest he should cause thy tears to flow again.”

“I thank the good God that he knows!” murmured Eleanore. “It had been more than I could bear that Gerault should come home to find his wedding feast blackened with a new-learned shame.”

“Yea, Lady Eleanore.”

“And so now, Courtoise, go thou to thy rest; for I have kept thee long, and thou’rt very weary. And on the morrow there must be a beginning of making the Castle bravely gay for the home-coming of its lord and its bride. Likewise, on the morrow thou must tell me more of the young Lenore, my daughter.”

Courtoise smiled wearily, and then, with proper obeisance, hurried off to his own room, a little triangular closet opening into Gerault’s old bedroom on the first floor. When the squire was gone, his liege lady also laid her down; and for the first time in many months sank easily to sleep. For happiness is the best of doctors, and this that had come to her was a greater happiness than Eleanore had thought ever to know again.

Through the next week the very dogs about the Castle caught the air of bustle and eager life that had laid hold of it. Never, since the days of the old lord and his crews of drinking barons, had Le Crépuscule shown such symptoms of gayety. Every scullion scampered about his pots and kettles as if an army of Brittany depended on him for nourishment. The henchmen hurried about, polishing their armor and their steel trappings till the keep glittered as with many mirrors, and they broke off from this labor now and then to see that the stable-boys were at work on the proper horses or to dissolve into thunderous roars of laughter at a neighbor’s jest. The young demoiselles were giddy with excitement. They pricked their fingers with spindles, they broke innumerable threads on the wheels, they stopped the loom to dance or sing in the middle of the morning; and while they were arranging the rooms where the train of the young bride were to lodge, they gossiped so ardently over possible future gayeties that their very tongues were like to drop off with weariness. As for the squires, all five of them, headed by Courtoise, were to ride out to Croitôt on the Rennes road, as an additional escort for Seigneur Gerault. And the parade they made over this matter was more than Montfort had for his coronation at Rennes when the great war ended.

There were, however, three silent workers in the Castle who did more than all the rest together; and they were silent only because their hearts were too full for speech. These were madame, Alixe, and David the dwarf. While the little man worked at the decoration of the chapel, the women adorned the bridal chamber; and in all that week of preparation, not a soul save these two set foot over that sacred threshold. Madame had selected the room. It was not Gerault’s usual chamber, but one on the second floor, on the northwest corner of the Castle, separated from madame’s room only by the place in which Laure had slept of old, and which madame now kept closed to all save herself.

For the adornment of Gerault’s and Lenore’s apartment, madame brought out the old historic tapestries, embroideries, and precious silken hangings that had been for years stowed away in great chests in the spinning-room. The bed was hung with curtains in which were woven illustrations of the “Romant of the Rose,” a poem that had once been much recited in Le Crépuscule. On the walls were great squares of tapestry representing the battles of the family of Montfort. On the floor were two or three strips of precious brocade, brought out of the East a century before by some crusading lord. Finished, the room looked very rich, but very sombre; and, this being the fashion of the times, it was satisfactory to all that saw it. Eleanore only, with eyes new-opened by the thought of approaching happiness, feared the room a little dark, a little heavy for the reception of so delicate a creature as the young Lenore. But every one else in the Castle was in such delight over its appearance that she left it as it was. Meantime the lower hall was hung with banners and scarred pennants and gay streamers; and then the pillars were wreathed with greenery and flowers till the still, gray place was all transformed, and resembled a triumphal hall awaiting the coming of a conqueror.