“There are many heretics in this town,” said Aimar. “Catharists or bons hommes—men of Albi, as they are now called. The strange thing is that they seem very gentle, good people! I remember one who came to Panemonde the year before we took the cross. He sat beneath the great oak and talked to any who would listen as sweetly as if Our Lady had sent him down from Heaven! I wondered—Some of the people took up stones to stone him, but I would not let him be hurt, and he went away. I wondered—”
Garin’s squire, Rainier, had been sent ahead to the inn, and now rode back to meet them. “Sirs, a Venetian merchant-lord and his people possess the house! But I have caught one fair chamber from the Italian’s clutch and the hostess promises good supper and soon. For the men, the next street hath the Olive Tree and the Sheaf and Sickle.”
They came to the great inn, a low, capacious building with a courtyard, and in a corner of this a spacious arbour overrun by a grape-vine. It was sunset. The knights and their squires dismounted, and a sumpter mule with its load was brought from the rear. Men came from the inn stable and took away the horses. Orders as to the morning start having been given, the troop from Panemonde trotted off, down an unpaved lane, to the lesser hostels. The hostess appeared, a woman of great size with a face as genial as the sun. She poured forth words as to preëmpted quarters, regrets, admirations, welcomes, hints that they were as well off here as at the castle where the lord was healing him of a grisly wound, and the lady had yesterday been brought to bed of a woman-child. Then she herself marshalled the knights, the squire Rainier following, to a chamber reasonably large and clean. Maids brought basins and ewers of water. Rainier busied himself with squire’s duties. He, too, looked to knighthood, somewhere in the future. The bright evening light came through the window. Below, under the grape-arbour, serving-men placed boards on trestles, and furnished forth a table.
The inn followed a good fashion, and on these warm and long days spread supper in the largest, most open hall that might be. When they descended to the court it was to find the Venetian great merchant already at table, sitting with two others above the salt. He was a lordly person, dressed in prune-coloured cendal, breathing potencies of travel and trade. In his air were Venice and her doges, the equal sea and the flavour of gold.
He greeted the two knights courteously, and they returned his greeting. They took their places, the squire below them. Supper went well, with the hum of life around the arbour, and the sky’s warm tint showing between twisted branches of the vine. When hunger was satisfied, they talked. They who spent years in the East came back to Europe with certain Saracenic touches of conduct and manner that to such as the Venetian told at least part of their history. He began at once to speak of cities beyond the sea—of Jaffa, Tripoli, Edessa, Aleppo, Damascus. In turn Garin and Aimar questioned him of Venice, paved with the sea.
When they had eaten, they washed and dried their hands. Serving-men took away the dishes, the boards and trestles. The arbour was left, a cool and pleasant place, with a table whereon was set wine of the country, with the summer stars brightening overhead, and a vagrant wind lifting the vine leaves. They tarried under the arbour, drinking the red wine and talking now of matters nearer at hand than was Venice or Damascus. Around was the hum of the town, of the long, warm evening settling into night. Out from the inn door came voices of the inn people. The hostess was rating some idle man or maid. “May Aquitaine take you—!”
The Venetian, it seemed, was on his way to Barcelona, had travelled yesterday from the city of Toulouse. He had left Venice the past winter, and in the interest of that sea-queen and her trade had been in many towns and a guest of many courts. Of late, war, blazing forth, had disarranged his plans, preoccupied his hosts. He was in a most ill humour with this warring.
“Fair sirs, I look not that you should believe me, but one day it will be found that war is the name of the general foe! For what, say I, is the mind given to you?” He drank his wine. “Now the Count of Montmaure wars against the Prince of Roche-de-Frêne! In Montmaure trade is broken on the wheel. In Roche-de-Frêne she is burned at the stake.” He tapped the wine-cup with his fingers. “Trade is the true ship—War is the pirate!”
Garin spoke. “I have hours in which I should believe that you were right. Love, too, and the finer thought are broken on the wheel! But it is the way of the world, and we are knights who go to war.”
“My lord of Montmaure fights,” said the chant, “like a fiend! Or so the Count of Toulouse told me. The country of Roche-de-Frêne is harried and wasted. Now he goes about to besiege the town and the castle.”