Some crowding took place, some pressing against the wooden barrier. At one point a plane tree, old and gnarled, stretched a bough above the pathway. It made a superb tower of observation and as such had been seized upon. The duke, walking with the marshal, and approaching this tree, became aware of folk aloft, thick as fruit upon the bough, half-hidden by the bronzing leaves, and more vocal than elsewhere. Certain judgements floated down.
Holiday and festival encouraged licence of speech. The time enforced a reality of obedience from rank to rank, but that provided for, cared not to prevent mere wagging of tongues. The ruling castes never thought it out, but had they done so they might have said that it was not amiss that the people should somewhere indemnify themselves. Let them laugh, exercise their wit, so that it grew not too caustic—be merry-hearted, bold, and familiar! Who held the land held them, but it was pleasanter for the lord himself when the land knew jollity. Add that the courts of the south were more democratic than those of the north, and that Gaucelm was a democratic prince.
The duke was of another temper,—a martinet and a stickler for respect on the part of the vulgar. He caught the comment and flushed. “An unmannerly people!” he said to Stephen the Marshal.
That baron darted an experienced glance. “They are the younger, mechanical sort. Take no heed of them, fair lord.”
The remark caught had not been ill-natured, was more jocose than turbulent, might pass where any freedom of speech was accorded. But suddenly came clearly from the bough of the plane tree a genuinely seditious utterance. Given forth in a round, naturally sonorous voice, it carried further than the speaker intended. “One day a burgher will be as good as a duke!”
The great folk were almost beneath that wide-spreading bough. They looked sharply up—the duke, Stephen the Marshal, all the knights. The voice said on, like an oracle aloft among the leaves: “The man in my skin isn’t any less than the man in his skin. I say that one day—”
A branch that had served to steady the oracle suddenly broke, snapping short. Amid ejaculations, oracle and branch came together to earth. Down they tumbled, on the inner side of the barrier, upon the grassy path before the duke and Stephen the Marshal.
Laughter arose with, on the knights’ side, some angry exclamation. The fallen man got hastily to his feet. “The branch was rotten—” He put a hand to either side his head, seemed to settle it upon his shoulders and recover his wits. “Give me pardon, good lords, for tumbling there like a pippin—” He was a young man, square-shouldered and sturdy, with crisply curling black hair, a determined mouth, and black, bold, and merry eyes.
Stephen the Marshal spoke sternly. “That bough brought you to earth, Thibaut Canteleu, but, an you rein it not, your tongue will bring you into earth!”
The offender turned his cap in his hand. “I spoke not to be heard by great lords,” he said. “I know not that I said harm. I said that, change my lord duke and me, and I might make a fair duke, and he a fair master-saddler and worker in Cordovan! I think that he might, and I will tell you that it taketh skill—”