He asked for his own. Garin, seeing that he did so, smiled and swept the strings of the lute. “Aye, I know more than one!” He sang, and did sweet words justice. The knights, each after his own fashion, gave applause, and Robert de Mercœur sighed with pleasure. The song was short. Garin lifted his voice in another, made by the same troubadour. “Ah!” sighed Robert, “I would buy you and feed you from my hand!” He sat for a moment with closed eyes, tasting the bliss of right interpretation. Then, “Know you Garin of the Golden Isle’s, If e’er, Fair Goal, I turn my eyes from thee?”
Garin sang it. “Rose tree of the Soul!” said Robert de Mercœur; “there is the poet I would have fellowship with!”
The leaves of the great door opened, and there came into hall the Count of Beauvoisin, with him two or three famed knights. All who had been seated, or lounging half reclined, stood up; the silence of deference fell at once. Garin saw that the count was not old and that he had a look of the Abbess Madeleine. He said that he was weary from riding, and coming to his accustomed great chair, sat down and stretched himself with a sigh. His eyes fell upon the troubadour with whom he had acquaintance. “Ha, Robert! rest us with music.”
“Lord count,” said Robert, “we have here a jongleur with the angel of sound in his throat and the angel of intelligence in his head! Set him to singing.—Sing, jongleur, again, that which you have just sung.”
Garin touched his lute. As he did so he came near to the count. He stood and sang the song of Garin of the Golden Island. “Ah, ah!” said the Count of Beauvoisin. “The Saints fed you with honey in your cradle!” A coin gleamed between his outstretched fingers. Garin came very near to receive it. “Lord,” he whispered as he bent, “much hangs upon my speaking to you alone.”
A jongleur upon an embassy was never an unheard-of phenomenon. The Count moved so as to let the light fall upon this present jongleur’s face. The eyes of the two men met, the one in an enquiring, the other in a beseeching and compelling gaze. The count leaned back in his chair, the jongleur, when he had bowed low, moved to his original station. “He sings well indeed!” said the Count. “Give him place among his fellows, and when there is listening-space I will hear him again.”
Ere long he rose and was attended from the hall. The knights, too, left the place, each bent upon his own concerns. Only the troubadour Robert de Mercœur remained, and he came and, seating himself on the same bench with Garin, asked if he would be taught a just-composed alba or morning song, and upon the other’s word of assent forthwith repeated the first stanza. Garin said it over after him. “Ha, jongleur!” quoth Robert, “you are worthy to be a troubadour! Not all can give values value! The second goes thus—”
But before the alba was wholly learned came a page, summoning the jongleur. Garin, following the boy, came into the count’s chamber. Here was that lord, none with him but a chamberlain whom he sent away. “Now, jongleur,” said the count, “what errand and by whom despatched?”
Garin drew the letter from his tunic and gave it, his hand into the other’s hand. The count looked at the writing. “What is here?” he said. “Does the Abbess Madeleine choose a jongleur for a messenger?” He broke the seal, read the first few lines, glanced at the body of the letter, then with a startled look, followed by a knit brow, laid it upon the table beside him but kept his hand over it. He stood in a brown study. Garin, watching him, divined that mind and heart and memory were busied elsewhere than in just this house in Angoulême. At last he moved, turned his head and spoke to the page. “Ammonet!” Ammonet came from the door. “Take this jongleur to some chamber where he may rest. Have food and wine sent to him there.” He spoke to Garin, “Go! but I shall send for you here again!”