“That is what it is to be a knight. If you are a man—if you are a woman—that is what it is to be a knight.”
“Yea, in truth.... But Beatrix, now, the knife in my heart!”
“And in mine!”
The winds were stilled, the cypresses, like a cloud ring, kept out the world. The blue arch above was no tale-bearer. They wept in each other’s arms.
Tanneguy the Prince made princely entertainment for Sir Robert of the Good Lance and Sir Hugh of the Mount and Conon the Clerk. He wove wreaths of knightliness and with them adorned the ways that Beatrix trod to the day of All Saints. Came about her Amaury and Adelaide—Balthasar and Bérengère—Barral and Constance—Guibour and Mélisande—Roland and Blanche—Thierry and Laure—Aldhelm and Eleanor—Raimbauld and Tiphaine. Again was the garden, but an autumn garden. Again was moonlight, and the nightingales’ singing, but now they sang ancient love and ancient pain. The leaves coloured, the leaves turned brown and sere, the leaves fell....
A train of knights accompanied Hugh of the Mount and the Lady Beatrix and the two children to the port where waited the fleet. Tanneguy was with them, and rode beside Beatrix. All came upon a midday to the great inn of the port. In the morning the ships would sail. Alone in a room of the inn, red from the setting sun, Tanneguy and Beatrix said farewell.
“What we live for now is to make the gold—”
“To build the world where love lives as one—”
In the red morn of All Saints’ Day the great ship sailed. Tanneguy the Prince watched from the sea strand. It went forth under sails like stairs of clouds, it dwindled until it was only a star in the east. Then distance came between, and only faith could know that there was there a star.