The princess studied him, walking by the bridle of her white Arabian. “What would you do, Thibaut Canteleu, if I gave you Montmaure for lord?”
Thibaut looked at Roche-de-Frêne spread around them, and then looked at the sky, and then met, frank and full, the princess’s eyes with his own black ones.
“What could we do, my Lady Audiart? Begin again, perchance, where we began in your great-grandfather’s time. Give us warning ere it happen! So all who love freedom may hang themselves, saving Count Jaufre the trouble!”
“It will not happen,” said Audiart. She, too, looked at Roche-de-Frêne, and looked at the sky. When she had made the round of the walls, she rode through the street where the armourers and weapon-makers worked at their trade more busily than in the days of peace, and to the quarter where the fletchers worked, and to the storehouses where was being heaped the incoming grain and other victual. Everywhere reigned activity. Roche-de-Frêne contained not alone its own citizens, together with the castle retainers, the poor knights, the squires, the people of vague feudal standing and their followers whom ordinarily it lodged, but in at the gates now, day by day, rode or walked fighting men. There mustered to the town and the crowning great pile of the castle lords and knights, esquires and mounted men and footmen. Men who owed service came, and in lesser numbers free lances came. And all the great vassals that entered had kneeled in the castle hall, before the Princess Audiart, and putting their hands between hers, had taken her for their liege lady. Where had reigned Gaucelm reigned Audiart.
Each day, before she recrossed the castle moat and went in at the great gate between Red Tower and Lion Tower, she would go for a little time to the cathedral. She rode there now, knights about her. The white Arabian stopped where he was wont to stop. Dismounting, she passed the tremendous, sculptured portal and entered the place.
Within abode a solemn and echoing dimness pointed with light. There were a score of shadowy, kneeling folk, and the lights of the shrines burned. The pillars stood like reeds in a giant elder world. Thin ladders of gold light came down between them. Obeying the princess’s gesture, the two or three with her stayed their steps. She went alone to the chapel of Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne. Here, between the Saracen pillars, before the tall, jewelled Queen of Heaven, before the lamps fed with perfumed oil, lay a great slab of black stone. The Princess Audiart knelt beside it, bowed herself until her forehead felt the coldness....
She bent no long while over Gaucelm the Fortunate, lying still in the crypt below. Sorrow must serve, not rule, in Roche-de-Frêne! Before she rose from her knees and went, she lifted her eyes to the image in blue samite, with the pierced heart and the starry crown. But her own heart and mind spoke to something somewhat larger, more nearly the whole.... She quitted the cathedral, and mounting her Arabian, turned with her following toward the castle heaped against the sapphire sky.
Riding that way, she rode by the bishop’s palace, and in the flagged place, beside the dolphin fountain, she met Bishop Ugo. He checked his mule by the spraying water, those with him attending at a little distance.
“Well met, my Lord Bishop!” said Audiart. “I have wished to take counsel with you as to these stones. Here are five hundred fit for casting upon Montmaure.”
Ugo regarded the fair space between fountain and palace. “Then have them taken up, princess, and borne to the walls.” He left the subject. “Has there come any messenger from the host to-day?”