When he had gone, Dame Alianora laughed contentedly. "Mon bel esper! my fairest hope! The man called me that in his verses--thirty years ago! Yes, I may trust you, my poor Osmund."
So they set out at cockcrow. He had procured for himself a viol and a long falchion, and had somewhere got suitable clothes for the Queen; and in their aging but decent garb the two approached near enough to the appearance of what they desired to be thought. In the courtyard a knot of servants gaped, nudged one another, but openly said nothing. Messire Heleigh, as they interpreted it, was brazening out an affair of gallantry before the countryside; and they esteemed his casual observation that they would find a couple of dead men on the common exceedingly diverting.
When the Queen asked him the same morning, "And what will you sing, my Osmund? Shall we begin the practise of our new profession with the Sestina of Spring?"--old Osmund Heleigh grunted out: "I have forgotten that rubbish long ago. _Omnis amans, amens_, saith the satirist of Rome town, and with reason."
Followed silence.
One sees them thus trudging the brown, naked plains under a sky of steel. In a pageant the woman, full-veined and comely, her russet gown girded up like a harvester's might not inaptly have prefigured October; and for less comfortable November you could nowhere have found a symbol more precise than her lank companion, humorously peevish under his white thatch of hair, and constantly fretted by the sword tapping at his ankles.
They made Hurlburt prosperously and found it vacant, for the news of Falmouth's advance had driven the villagers hillward. There was in this place a child, a naked boy of some two years, lying on a doorstep, overlooked in his elders' gross terror. As the Queen with a sob lifted this boy the child died.
"Starved!" said Osmund Heleigh; "and within a stone's throw of my snug home!"
The Queen laid down the tiny corpse, and, stooping, lightly caressed its sparse flaxen hair. She answered nothing, though her lips moved.
Past Vachel, scene of a recent skirmish, with many dead in the gutters, they were overtaken by Falmouth himself, and stood at the roadside to afford his troop passage. The Marquess, as he went by, flung the Queen a coin, with a jest sufficiently high flavored. She knew the man her inveterate enemy, knew that on recognition he would have killed her as he would a wolf; she smiled at him and dropped a curtsey.
"This is remarkable," Messire Heleigh observed. "I was hideously afraid, and am yet shaking. But you, madame, laughed."
The Queen replied: "I laughed because I know that some day I shall have Lord Falmouth's head. It will be very sweet to see it roll in the dust, my Osmund."
Messire Heleigh somewhat dryly observed that tastes differed.
At Jessop Minor befell a more threatening adventure. Seeking food at the _Cat and Hautbois_ in that village, they blundered upon the same troop at dinner in the square about the inn. Falmouth and his lieutenants were somewhere inside the house. The men greeted the supposed purveyors of amusement with a shout; and one of these soldiers--a swarthy rascal with his head tied in a napkin--demanded that the jongleurs grace their meal with a song.
Osmund tried to put him off with a tale of a broken viol.
But, "Haro!" the fellow blustered; "by blood and by nails! you will sing more sweetly with a broken viol than with a broken head. I would have you understand, you hedge thief, that we gentlemen of the sword are not partial to wordy argument." Messire Heleigh fluttered inefficient hands as the men-at-arms gathered about them, scenting some genial piece of cruelty. "Oh, you rabbit!" the trooper jeered, and caught at Osmund's throat, shaking him. In the act this rascal tore open Messire Heleigh's tunic, disclosing a thin chain about his neck and a handsome locket, which the fellow wrested from its fastening. "Ahoi!" he continued. "Ahoi, my comrades, what sort of minstrel is this, who goes about England all hung with gold like a Cathedral Virgin! He and his sweetheart"--the actual word was grosser--"will be none the worse for an interview with the Marquess."
The situation smacked of awkwardness, because Lord Falmouth was familiar with the Queen, and to be brought specifically to his attention meant death for two detected masqueraders. Hastily Osmund Heleigh said:
"Messire, the locket contains the portrait of a lady whom in my youth I loved very greatly. Save to me, it is valueless. I pray you, do not rob me of it."
But the trooper shook his head with drunken solemnity. "I do not like the looks of this. Yet I will sell it to you, as the saying is, for a song."
"It shall be the king of songs," said Osmund,--"the song that Arnaut Daniel first made. I will sing for you a Sestina, messieurs,--a Sestina in salutation of Spring."
The men disposed themselves about the dying grass, and presently he sang.
Sang Messire Heleigh:
"Awaken! for the servitors of Spring Proclaim his triumph! ah, make haste to see With what tempestuous pageantry they bring The victor homeward! haste, for this is he That cast out Winter and all woes that cling To Winter's garments, and bade April be!
"And now that Spring is master, let us be Content, and laugh, as anciently in spring The battle-wearied Tristan laughed, when he Was come again Tintagel-ward, to bring Glad news of Arthur's victory--and see Ysoude, with parted lips, that waver and cling.
"Not yet in Brittany must Tristan cling To this or that sad memory, and be Alone, as she in Cornwall; for in spring Love sows against far harvestings,--and he Is blind, and scatters baleful seed that bring Such fruitage as blind Love lacks eyes to see!"
Osmund paused here for an appreciable interval, staring at the Queen. You saw his flabby throat a-quiver, his eyes melting, saw his cheeks kindle, and youth seeping into the lean man like water over a crumbling dam. His voice was now big and desirous.
Sang Messire Heleigh:
"Love sows, but lovers reap; and ye will see The loved eyes lighten, feel the loved lips cling, Never again when in the grave ye be Incurious of your happiness in spring, And get no grace of Love there, whither he That bartered life for love no love may bring.
"No braggart Heracles avails to bring Alcestis hence; nor here may Roland see The eyes of Aude; nor here the wakening spring Vex any man with memories: for there be No memories that cling as cerements cling, No force that baffles Death, more strong than he.
"Us hath he noted, and for us hath he An hour appointed; and that hour will bring Oblivion.--Then, laugh! Laugh, dear, and see The tyrant mocked, while yet our bosoms cling, While yet our lips obey us, and we be Untrammeled in our little hour of spring!
"Thus in the spring we jeer at Death, though he Will see our children perish and will briny Asunder all that cling while love may be."
Then Osmund put the viol aside and sat quite silent. The soldiery judged, and with cordial frankness stated, that the difficulty of his rhyming scheme did not atone for his lack of indecency, but when the Queen of England went among them with Messire Heleigh's faded green hat she found them liberal. Even the fellow with the broken head admitted that a bargain was proverbially a bargain,
