Lord Geoffrey's Fancy Page 3

  But the barony of Escorta maintained its reputation. Our constable, Sir iohn de Catabas, won the prize in the Round Table. I was surprised to see it, for he was stiff and no longer young; but he rode as though part of his horse, which obeyed him as though they were one creature with two heads. The prize was a pair of scented gloves, and he looked rather absurd as he received it at the hands of a pretty little damsel who can't have been older than twelve. Sir John was no lady's man; he looked as awkward as he probably felt, stiffly kissing her hand before she could offer her cheek. But though he was shy of the ladies he was a gallant and debonair knight in the field, and he generously allowed the defeated to take back their horses and arms in exchange for a few gold pieces. Everyone liked Sir John, all the more because it was so easy to make jokes about him.

  2. THE LADY ISABEL

  To a Frank all the buildings of Romanie are strange, but the castle of Carytena is really astonishing. It overhangs a stupendous gorge, in which a swift stream rushes westward; this is all the more strange because the stream leaves a level plain to flow between high mountains, instead of the other way round as you might expect. On a crag above the gorge, joined to the northern range by a low saddle, stands the citadel of Carytena; but the outer bailey takes in the whole crag, so that as soon as you cross the river you face the lower gate. The fine masonry bridge, built by Sir Geoffrey at his own charges, is a famous landmark; for its pointed arch was a novelty to the peasants. On it stands a little chapel dedicated to St. Christopher, where every traveller stops to say a prayer; for any journey through Escorta will be dangerous.

  From the keep you look eastward to the Mesaree, the central plain of Lamorie, where Sir Geoffrey's peasants ploughed under his strong protection; on every side this plain is girdled by the steep mountains of the Esclavons. Westward lies the gloomy gorge, and to north and south mountains shut in the view. The path from the bridge to the inner gate zigzags up the slope, too steep for a more direct approach. It must be one of the strongest castles in the world, but as a home it is undoubtedly gloomy.

  Much of the crowded summit is taken up with vaulted water cisterns; though below the donjon is a little spring, and in peacetime mules carry water from the river. Sir Geoffrey's fine hall was paved with white marble, as were the solar and chamber opening off it. The other buildings were cut up into many small rooms, after the fashion of those parts; for Grifons dislike living in a perpetual crowd as we do in the west. I myself had a corner of a little square room, which I shared with three other household knights, an Italian and two Frenchmen; when I served Earl Simon in Gascony I had bedded down among the sleepers in the hall.

  Sir Geoffrey had seen the castle finished, not ten years ago. He thought it a splendid and commodious palace, for he had been born and bred in the mountains of Escorta. But as soon as his mother was widowed she went to live with her brother in level Andreville. The greatest inconvenience of Carytena was that horses had to pick their way down to the bridge before you could let them out into a trot, so that exercising them was tedious and difficult. But on top of that windy keep you certainly felt safe from your enemies.

  At this time there were only four ladies in the castle: Melisande and two other young damsels, under the care of an elderly widow whose husband had been a vassal of Bruyere until the Esclavons caught him. Sir Geoffrey looked after his dependants, and had invented the post of lady-housekeeper to provide for poor madame Magdalen. All the household knights buzzed round the three damsels; but Melisande, as fresh to Carytena as I was, seemed pleased to poke about the strange place in my company.

  "Perhaps it won't be so gloomy when the bride comes here with her gay young ladies," she said hopefully. "Poor madam Isabel! She is younger than I am, so they say. She will find this a great change from Estives in its grassy plain, and from Satines where you smell the thyme and the sea. She will miss the burgesses too. Burgesses are often more lively and intelligent than provincial knights. In Romanie we mingle with Franks of every class, since there are so few of us in the country. Most of the merchants of Estives are gay, fashionable Tuscans. This won't be a bit like the crowded de la Roche castles by the shore. I hope she has a full nursery. Otherwise I don't know how she will fill her days."

  "Not even any hunting," I added, "unless she rides a mule. Have you ever seen anything like these roads ? Yet they tell me we have to ride after the Esclavons. On foot you cannot catch them."

  "You will get used to it, Sir William. In Romanie we ride wherever a goat can find foothold. Ride a local nag, and keep your great warhorse for battles in the open plain. The ponies of these parts never put a foot wrong. Drop your reins, if need be shut your eyes, and a native pony will take you to the end of your journey." That sounded comforting, and later I discovered that it was more or less true. But during that autumn the Esclavons gave us no trouble, since Franks riding to La Cremonie had traversed every road in their land. Winter and spring are their favourite times for raiding, when snow blocks the passes and fords are flooded. During our short stay, before we set out for Satines, I did not put on my mail.

  For the journey I wore mail, partly because we must ride northward through the heart of the mountains, partly because Sir Geoffrey wished to make a display of his power in the lands of his father-in-law. But in the baggage I brought a silk surcoat and a fine woollen tunic in the colours of Bruyere, an extra livery which Sir Geoffrey had given to all his household knights in honour of the wedding. We were a small army, all the warriors of Escorta except for the small permanent garrison of Carytena. We reached the isthmus without incident, though some of the roads we travelled seemed to me at first sight impassable.

  We hurried, to have time to finish the festivities before Advent, which is taken more seriously in Romanie than in the west. Estives is the chief town of the Megaskyr, as even Franks then called Sir Guy de la Roche; but the wedding was to be celebrated in Satines, which was his favourite residence and graced with a famous church. I was warned that this church would surprise me when I saw it, but the reality surpassed my expectation.

  Satines is a little unwalled village, so near the sea that no one bothers to build fine houses because pirates often land to burn it. But all around are the great marble ruins of the ancients; long ago it must have been an important place. As you come to it from the west you see first a tall pointed hill, very steep, with a little church on it. That is where you would expect to find the castle. Instead the citadel crowns a lower, flat-topped hill, which does not look nearly so strong. Then as you get nearer you see that the sides of this hill have been built up with masonry into sheer vertical walls; The flat summit has room for many fine buildings of pale marble, but the glory of it is the great many-columned cathedral of Our Lady.

  In Italy there are more spacious cathedrals; in parts of France they nowadays build higher into the sky. But there is no church more beautiful, more delightful, more satisfying than Our Lady of Satines. All is of smooth honey-coloured marble, exquisitely joined; and on the outer wall, within the colonnade, is carved a great procession bringing offerings to Our Lady in glory. Round the roof there are smaller carvings of saints warring against very queer devils, but no one could tell me what legends they illustrate. The whole thing was built by St. Denys the Areopagite, a native of these parts, to the designs of St. Luke.

  You enter the citadel by an imposing stair. The marble gatehouse above has been made into a small but luxurious palace for the Megaskyr and his household.

  In this wonderful setting the lady Isabel de la Roche, daughter of the Megaskyr of Satines, was married to Sir Geoffrey de Bruyere of Escorta, a baron of the conquest of Lamorie. Afterwards the whole company feasted at long tables in the open air, in the village below the citadel.

  Naturally I was placed far from the high table, but in that clear air you see every detail. The de la Roches and their household seemed to be mostly jolly, red-cheeked Burgundians, rather coarser and more beefy than true Frenchmen; but the lady Isabel was beautiful.

  She was six
teen, tall and slim, grey-eyed, with golden hair hanging to her waist in token of maidenhood. She held herself very straight, and looked remarkably calm during all the excitement. Her face was lightly freckled but the skin of her neck was quite white; her hands were delicate yet capable. We all thought Sir Geoffrey a very lucky man, to gain so much beauty with high birth and a rich dowry thrown in. He thought so too, from the way he gazed after his bride. She met his glance, and obviously liked what she saw.

  The marriage was a dynastic alliance, and I believe the happy couple met for the first time at the altar. But they proceeded to fall in love at first sight. It was a love-match, as well as the outcome of cautious political bargaining.

  On the second day of the feast, news reached us that the Princess Carintana of Lamorie, wife to Prince William, had died in Andre-ville. She had been Sir Geoffrey's aunt by marriage, and everyone was sorry that she had died young and childless; in Satines there was court mourning, and the tournament arranged for the next day was cancelled. We all prepared to go home, as soon as we could round up our baggage animals.

  During the festivities I had seen nothing of Melisande, but on the journey home I rode beside her whenever the track was wide enough for two horses abreast. She was a stimulating companion. Thanks to her Frankish upbringing she could cope with the usual protestations of courtly love, the only manner of talking to a lady that I had been taught as a boy at Ludlow; but her eastern blood made her alive to little niceties of affection and enmity that a Frankish lady in her position would never have bothered to notice.

  I began to see also that she was very beautiful, though her looks were not of the kind I had been brought up to admire. On the March we praise golden hair and a skin as white as snow; but Melisande's glowing black eyes and olive skin seemed better suited to the translucent air of Romanie.

  "It's very lucky that Sir Geoffrey and his bride should be in love with one another," she said as our horses ambled side by side. "This match was meant to bind together Lamorie and Satines, and if they had quarrelled all the Franks of Romanie might have to choose sides in a dangerous civil war. You see, William, the Megaskyr is in an awkward position. In theory he is the peer of the Prince of Lamorie, neither owing homage to any lord except a non-existent King of Salonique. But the Megaskyr also holds two fees in the south, Argue and Naples de Romanie; and for them he owes homage to the Prince. Naturally, he has never performed his homage; something has always turned up to keep him at home when he ought to be kneeling to a lord who is in most ways his equal. But one day Lamorie will go to war, and Sir Guy de la Roche will be summoned to lead the knight service of Argue and Naples under the banner of Villehardouin. Then he can send his son-in-law to serve in his stead, a son-in-law who would have to serve Prince William anyway. No danger of a great lord having to take orders from a lord no greater than he. And perhaps one day, if Isabel has children and the young de la Roches continue to die in their cradles, Lamorie and Satines will be united into one great Frankish principality."

  "No need to explain, my lady," I answered cheerfully. "Any knight born in England has heard of these problems since he was breeched. Our King owes the homage of Gascony to the King of France, and never performs it. The King of Scots owes the homage of Huntingdon to our King Henry, and never performs it. It's all great nonsense anyway. Little knights like me must be true to our lords, or no one will employ us. A great baron or a prince may fight on whichever side he likes; he is never reproached for felony to his lord."

  "But you see how important it is that this marriage should be a success? Isn't it lucky that Isabel loves her lord? Don't you think her beautiful?"

  This was twice that Melisande had referred to her lady as Isabel, with no more formal title. I hugged myself with delight. She must think of me as a very close friend, with whom she could speak her thoughts in complete confidence.

  "Do you attend my lady when she dresses ?" I asked, to keep the conversation going. "Is it easy to get on with her?"

  "She's quite charming. I waited on her this morning, when we had to make such an early start. Getting up at dawn in riding clothes is a test of anyone's temper. But dear Isabel enjoys long rides, she told me so. She is wonderfully happy, and we all like waiting on her. She never forgets that we are ladies. My mother warned me that some young brides treat their ladies like common servants, because they don't know any other way of enforcing their authority."

  "There's great courtesy in Romanie," I agreed. "I like it here. I can't think why more landless knights don't come out from the west,"

  "No hope of further conquest, that's why," said Melisande at once. "Jerusalem lost, and the inland of Syria. The Emperor afraid to venture beyond the walls of Constantinople. France full of returned Crusaders whose castles have fallen to the infidel. In the west they see us as tottering to disaster. And so we are, in all the lands of Outremer except Lamorie and Satines."

  "You may be right, though fear of defeat should never keep a good knight at home when there is wealth to be won from schismatics and infidels. Here at least we are safe. I have never seen such mighty castles." I nodded towards the great flat-topped citadel of Chorinthe, looming above us as we rode through the isthmus.

  When we reached Carytena bad news awaited poor Melisande. Her mother had died suddenly of some obscure fever, in the great hall at Andreville where she served the lady Agnes, widow of the late Prince of Lamorie. Franks often die suddenly in these hot foreign lands, where the air and water do not suit us; it is the sole disadvantage of Outremer.

  Melisande was now completely orphaned, for her father had died of the plague a few years ago. No marriage had been arranged for her, and she had no dowry. Her future looked bleak. While she was young and strong she might continue as a waiting lady in some great household, dining above the salt and clothed at the Christmas livery. But her wages were only four golden hyperpers a year, with occasional presents when her lady felt generous; and to maintain her dignity she must from time to time tip the common servants. If she lived to grow old she would end as an unwanted pensioner, sitting all day by someone else's fire, grubby and fusty for lack of soap and clean linen, hated by servants as an encumbrance, avoided as a bore by the younger ladies, idle, neglected, miserable. At Ludlow there had been an old lady of that kind, only survivor of a massacre. I had heard her regret that the Welsh spared her when they killed her father and three brothers; it would have been better if she had died young and fair and full of hope.

  For a whole day I was sorry for Melisande; until at last I understood that I was more than sorry, I loved her. When I thought over the matter I was surprised to see that there was no reason why we should not marry: that is, if she would have me. Except among the peasantry I had never heard of a marriage of this kind; every married knight I knew had taken the bride chosen for him by his parents, chosen for her dowry rather than her charm. But there is no law forbidding the gentry to marry for love, if they choose to. In some ways the world would be a better place if it happened more often; instead of all this tedious convention of courteous love, with knights moaning in every corner over an unattainable mistress while they neglect their own wedded wives.

  It is easier to behave unconventionally in a foreign land where no one knows your family; a proof of this is that the first person to whom I broached my new idea was Melisande herself. I found her alone on a tower, catching a last glimpse of the midday sun before it went behind the southern mountains. With deliberation I knelt down on one knee to make my formal declaration. Then, seeing that she was confused by the novel form of the proposal, I stood up again and outlined its practical advantages.

  "With no parents to negotiate on your behalf, and no dowry to offer, you will never marry a stranger in the normal manner of the gentry. I am no worse than the sort of man your poor mother would have chosen for you. I come of a noble house, as you do; and like you I am a cadet of a very minor branch of it. I am twenty-one years old, with the right number of arms and legs and so on. At present I hold no land, but per
haps one day Sir Geoffrey will give me a fee. Certainly I shall fight to gain one, and if the Grifons kill me you will be no worse off as a young widow than you are now as a dowerless maid. It may be bad manners to approach you so directly. I should have opened the matter through a third party; but the other fellow might have been indiscreet, and I didn't want gossip all over the castle. Will you be the landless Dame de Briwerr?"

  I had a lot more to say, for I had composed this speech very carefully beforehand. I stopped because Melisande exploded with laughter.

  "Dear William," she gasped, "you were prudent not to open the matter through a third party. As you say, there might have been gossip. But need you make this romantic declaration as if you were the third party? Yes, I will marry you. Not because you are Sir William de Briwerr, of noble birth and no prospects, with the right number of arms and legs, very much the kind of man my dear mother would have found for me if she had lived. But because you are dear William, who sounds pompous when he is embarrassed. And besides, I happen to like the way your hair stands on end at this minute. There now, we shall be married. That is settled. Now we must arrange time and place, and how we break the news to Sir Geoffrey and my lady. And..."

  This was one of the few occasions when my dear wife was unable to finish what she wished to say.

  We agreed that I should tell Sir Geoffrey. He was himself newly married, and very happy about it. So he ought to approve, though if he didn't I should have to look for another lord. A landless married couple, lodging permanently in their lord's castle, take up valuable space which ought to be free for important guests.

  That very evening I went to Sir Geoffrey. He took the news very well.

  "I suppose I am the lady's guardian, in so far as she has one at all," he said with a chuckle. "At any rate, she lives under my roof in the service of my wife, though she has never taken oath to me. You are her peer in blood, and a knight; there can be no question of disparagement. You both live here already, so I can't complain that you bring a stranger into my castle. Most suitable in every way. I thoroughly approve."