More or less, all were laughing, but the laughter of some carried threads of anger. “What penance?”
“If you talk of that, penance me, too,” said Tanneguy. “My mind and Beatrix’s pace together!”
But when it came to the majority they would not penance Tanneguy the Prince, who was their host, nor Beatrix whose scarf Tanneguy wore in joust and battle. The moon shone, the nightingales sang, ten thousand thousand flower chalices dropped perfume, a gauze-like wind breathed here, breathed there.
Tanneguy took the lute from Guibour and sang,—
“‘I dreamed the All was whole and knew Itself,
A robe it wore of million hues,
And million shapes that moved and played.
And here were flowers and here were fruit,
The vine ran here, the tree sprang there,
The root was seen, the seed, the stem,
And there were women, there were men!—
Yet all were figures in Its robe,
And when It thought, they shifted form.
Whence drew the Robe but from Itself?
And all the dreams, and all the shapes?—
O man and woman, know Thyself!
O shaken notes, re-find the chord!’—
That is my song and Beatrix’s, for we made it together!”
The summer dawn began, the early summer, between spring and summer. There rang a convent bell. Cocks crew. The stars went out; the moon, like a pearl, like a fairy raft, like a bubble, hung in the west, above the sea. Behind the castle the sky spread branched with coral. The nightingales still sang, but out of sheer weariness with delight, the knights, the troubadours, the ladies, quitting the perron, went into castle.
The baron who was Beatrix’s lord and husband was gone with the better part of his knights and men overseas, upon the Fourth Crusade. He had been from home a year when two barons, ill neighbours of his, combined together, and taking advantage of a disordered world, thrust against his fief and castle. Then was the place besieged, and Beatrix, the baron’s wife, held it bravely and strongly.
Her lord, very far away, having seen the capture of Zara for the Venetians, now with other leaders schemed the taking of Constantinople, all in the interest of the young Alexius who would depose his uncle the Emperor, and then, one good turn deserving another, aid the crusaders to win Jerusalem! The baron, who was able, proud, and ambitious, dreamed a kingdom of his own. Now and then he thought of his castle and fief and his son. His wife was there to keep the castle and care for the son she had borne. He loved her no more than another, but he knew that castle and son would get from her right watch and ward.... Tanneguy the Prince was Beatrix’s knight—that was quite correct in a time at once highflown and very, very practical. Lord and his wife, lady and knight—and so the lady and knight never forgot the lord and his wife, what harm in poetizing?... So the baron sailed in his ship for Constantinople, and dreamed of gold and power and Eastern delights.
Meantime, at home, Beatrix held with knowledge and courage that castle, but against her were great odds.... Then came Tanneguy the Prince, who for many a year had worn her colours. With a great force, in open field, he beat the warring barons. One was slain, the other made submission. But the castle walls lay in huge ruin, and half the keep was a flaming fire.... Tanneguy’s town rose not many leagues away. Under his escort, when she had taken good order for the wounded fief, came there Beatrix and her two children, a son and a daughter. He gave her a fair house and garden, close by his own great castle.