“As you would myself,” said the princess.
She turned in her chair, looked beyond him out of the window upon tower and roof and wall and the November sky of a southern land. “I hold you true knight, true poet, true man,” she said. “Else never should I give you this charge! Keep that likewise in memory, Sir Garin de Castel-Noir, Sir Garin de l’Isle d’Or!—And now you will go. Tell Sir Aimar de Panemonde that you have been set a task and given an errand full of danger, but that, living, he may see you again by Christmas-tide. Tell no one else anything.”
“Going on such an errand and so long,” said Garin, “and one from which there may be no returning, I would kiss your hands, my liege—”
She gave her hand to him. He knelt and kissed the slender, long, embrowned fingers. As they rested, that moment, upon his own hand, there came into his mind some association. It came and was gone like distant lightning, and he could not then give it name or habitation. He rose and stepped backward to the door. “God be with you, my Lady Audiart—”
“And with you,” the princess answered gravely.
Outside the White Tower he paused a moment and looked about him, his eyes saying farewell to a place that in actuality he might not see again. It was the same with the garden through which he presently passed. Now it was sunshine, but he thought of it in dusk, the eve when he had been there with the princess. Later in the day he found Aimar, and told him as much as he had been told to tell and no more. The two brothers-in-arms spent an hour together, then they embraced and Aimar went to the men of both, defending the city wall. When the sun hung low in the west, Garin sent there also his squire Rainier. The sun sank and he stood at his window watching.
Around the corner came a man in brown and yellow like autumn leaves. Slung from his neck by a red ribbon he had a lute, and under his arm a bundle wrapped in cloth. He reached the entrance below, spoke to the porter and vanished within. Garin, turning from the window, answered presently to a knock at the door. “Enter!” There came in, the room being yet lit by the glow from the western sky, the brown and yellow man. He proved to be a slender, swarthy person, with long, narrow eyes and a Moorish look. “I speak,” he asked, “to the right noble knight and famed troubadour Sir Garin of the Black Castle—also called of the Golden Island?”
“I am Sir Garin. I know you for the jongleur, Elias of Montaudon.”
“That poor same, fair sir!—Moreover I have here that which will make in the castle of Roche-de-Frêne two of me!” He laid the bundle on a bench, and slipping the ribbon from his neck placed there the lute as well. “When I think that from so famous a troubadour I am set to make a poor jongleur, I know not how to take my task! But princesses are to be obeyed, and truly I would do much for this one! And for your comfort, lord,—only for that and never for vain-glory,—I would have you to wit that Elias of Montaudon hath a kind of fame of his own!” As he spoke he untied the bundle. “It is an honour that you should deign to wear me, so to speak, in whatever world you are repairing to—and Saint Orpheus my witness, I know not where that world may be! So, noble sir, here is, at your pleasure, a holiday suit—only a little worn—and a name no more frayed than is reasonably to be expected!”