it is not easy to strangle a whole school of herring," the fellow retorted. "Hoh, Messire d'Aquitaine, the bushes of Ermenouel are alive with my associates. The hut yonder, in effect, is girdled by them,--and we have our orders to let no man pass."
"Have you any orders concerning women?" the King said.
The man deliberated. Sire Edward handed him three gold pieces. "There was assuredly no specific mention of petticoats," the soldier now recollected, "and in consequence I dare to pass the Princess, against whom certainly nothing can be planned."
"Why, in that event," Sire Edward said, "we two had as well bid each other adieu."
But Meregrett only said, "You bid me go?"
He waved his hand. "Since there is no choice. For that which you have done--however tardily--I thank you. Meantime I return to Rigon's hut to rearrange my toga as King Caesar did when the assassins fell upon him, and to encounter with due decorum whatever Dame Luck may prefer."
She said, "You go to your death."
He shrugged his broad shoulders. "In the end we necessarily die."
Dame Meregrett turned, and without faltering passed back into the hut.
When he had lighted the inefficient lamp which he found there, Sire Edward wheeled upon her in half-humorous vexation. "Presently come your brother and his tattling lords. To be discovered here with me at night, alone, means trouble for you. If Philippe chances to fall into one of his Capetian rages it means death."
She answered, as though she were thinking about other matters, "Yes."
Now, for the first time, Sire Edward regarded her with profound consideration. To the finger-tips this so-little lady showed a descendant of the holy Lewis whom he had known and loved in old years. Small and thinnish she was, with soft and profuse hair that, for all its blackness, gleamed in the lamplight with stray ripples of brilliancy, as you may see sparks shudder to extinction over burning charcoal. She had the Valois nose, long and delicate in form, and overhanging a short upper-lip; yet the lips were glorious in tint, and the whiteness of her skin would have matched the Hyperborean snows tidily enough. As for her eyes, the customary similes of the court poets were gigantic onyxes or ebony highly polished and wet with May dew. These eyes were too big for her little face: they made of her a tiny and desirous wraith which nervously endured each incident of life, like a foreigner uneasily acquiescent to the custom of the country.
Sire Edward moved one step toward this tiny lady and paused. "Madame, I do not understand."
Dame Meregrett looked up into his face unflinchingly. "It means that I love you, sire. I may speak without shame now, for presently you die. Die bravely, sire! Die in such fashion as may hearten me to live."
The little Princess spoke the truth, for always since his coming to Mezelais she had viewed the great conqueror as through an aweful haze of forerunning rumor, twin to that golden vapor which enswathes a god and transmutes whatever in corporeal man would have been a defect into some divine and hitherto unguessed-at excellence. I must tell you in this place, since no other occasion offers, that even until the end of her life it was so. For to her what in other persons would have seemed flagrant dulness showed somehow, in Sire Edward, as the majestic deliberation of one that knows his verdict to be decisive, and therefore appraises cautiously; and if sometimes his big, irregular calm eyes betrayed no apprehension of the jest at which her lips were laughing, and of which her brain approved, always within the instant her heart convinced her that a god is not lightly moved to mirth.
And now it was a god--_O deus cert!_--who had taken a woman's paltry face between his hands, half roughly. "And the maid is a Capet!" Sire Edward mused.
"Blanch has never desired you any ill, beau sire. But she loves the Archduke of Austria. And once you were dead, she might marry him. One cannot blame her," Meregrett considered, "since he wishes to marry her, and she, of course, wishes to make him happy."
"And not herself, save in some secondary way!" the big King said. "In part I comprehend, madame. Now I too hanker after this same happiness, and my admiration for the cantankerous despoiler whom I praised this morning is somewhat abated. There was a Tenson once--Lord, Lord, how long ago! I learn too late that truth may possibly have been upon the losing side--" Thus talking incoherencies, he took up Rigon's lute.
Sang Sire Edward:
"Incuriously he smites the armored king And tricks his counsellors--
"yes, the jingle ran thus. Now listen, madame--listen, the while that I have my singing out, whatever any little cut-throats may be planning in corners."
Sang Sire Edward:
"As, later on, Death will, half-idly, still our pleasuring, And change for fevered laughter in the sun Sleep such as Merlin's,--and excess thereof,-- Whence we, divorceless Death our Viviaine Implacable, may never more regain The unforgotten rapture, and the pain And grief and ecstasy of life and love.
"For, presently, as quiet as the king Sleeps now that planned the keeps of Ilion, We, too, will sleep, whilst overhead the spring Rules, and young lovers laugh--as we have done,-- And kiss--as we, that take no heed thereof, But slumber very soundly, and disdain The world-wide heralding of winter's wane And swift sweet ripple of the April rain Running about the world to waken love.
"We shall have done with Love, and Death be king And turn our nimble bodies carrion, Our red lips dusty;--yet our live lips cling Despite that age-long severance and are one Despite the grave and the vain grief thereof,-- Which we will baffle, if in Death's domain Fond memories may enter, and we twain May dream a little, and rehearse again In that unending sleep our present love.
"Speed forth to her in halting unison, My rhymes: and say no hindrance may restrain Love from his aim when Love is bent thereon; And that were love at my disposal lain-- All mine to take!--and Death had said, 'Refrain, Lest I, even I, exact the cost thereof,' I know that even as the weather-vane Follows the wind so would I follow Love."
Sire Edward put aside the lute. "Thus ends the Song of Service," he said, "which was made not by the King of England but by Edward Plantagenet--hot-blooded and desirous man!--in honor of the one woman who within more years than I care to think of has at all considered Edward Plantagenet."
"I do not comprehend," she said. And, indeed, she dared not.
But now he held both tiny hands in his. "At best, your poet is an egotist. I must die presently. Meantime I crave largesse, madame, and a great almsgiving, so that in his unending sleep your poet may rehearse our present love." And even in Rigon's dim light he found her kindling eyes not niggardly.
Sire Edward strode to the window and raised big hands toward the spear-points of the aloof stars. "Master of us all!" he cried; "O Father of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the Scourge of France, the conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and the flail of the accursed race that slew Thine only Son! the King of England am I, who have made of England an imperial nation, and have given to Thy Englishmen new laws! And to-night I crave my hire. Never, O my Father, have I had of any person aught save reverence or hatred! never in my life has any person loved me! And I am old, my Father--I am old, and
