with eager questionings, which are not absolutely to our purpose. In the main, this harper thought the man now buffeting France a just king, and he had heard, when the crown was laid aside, Sire Henry was sufficiently jovial, and even prankish. The harper educed anecdotes. He considered that the King would manifestly take Rouen, which the insatiable man was now besieging. Was the King in treaty for the hand of the Infanta of Aragon? Yes, he undoubtedly was.
Katharine sighed her pity for this ill-starred woman. "And now tell me about yourself."
He was, it appeared, Alain Maquedonnieux, a harper by vocation, and by birth a native of Ireland. Beyond the fact that it was a savage kingdom adjoining Cataia, Katharine knew nothing of Ireland. The harper assured her that in this she was misinformed, since the kings of England claimed Ireland as an appanage, though the Irish themselves were of two minds as to the justice of these pretensions; all in all, he considered that Ireland belonged to Saint Patrick, and that the holy man had never accredited a vicar.
"Doubtless, by the advice of God," Alain said: "for I have read in Master Roger de Wendover's Chronicles of how at the dread day of judgment all the Irish are to muster before the high and pious Patrick, as their liege lord and father in the spirit, and by him be conducted into the presence of God; and of how, by virtue of Saint Patrick's request, all the Irish will die seven years to an hour before the second coming of Christ, in order to give the blessed saint sufficient time to marshal his company, which is considerable." Katharine admitted the convenience of this arrangement, as well as the neglect of her education. Alain gazed up at her for a long while, as if in reflection, and presently said: "Doubtless the Lady Heleine of Argos also was thus starry-eyed and found in books less diverting reading than in the faces of men." It flooded Katharine's cheeks with a livelier hue, but did not vex her irretrievably; if she chose to read this man's face, the meaning was plain enough.
I give you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is trivial. But it was a day when one entered love's wardship with a plunge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by bit, as though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a long while, with laughter mutually provoked and shared, with divers eloquent and dangerous pauses. The harper squatted upon the ground, the Princess leaned over the wall; but to all intent they sat together upon the loftiest turret of Paradise, and it was a full two hours before Katharine hinted at departure.
Alain rose, approaching the wall. "To-morrow I ride for Milan to take service with Duke Filippo. I had broken my journey these three days past at Chteauneuf yonder, where this fox has been harrying my host's chickens. To-day I went out to slay him, and he led me, his murderer, to the fairest lady earth may boast. Do you not think that, in returning good for evil, this fox was a true Christian, my Princess?"
Katharine said: "I lament his destruction. Farewell, Messire Alain! And since chance brought you hither--"
"Destiny brought me hither," Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his eyes. "Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she continue so." But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be, Alain shook his tawny head. "Presently you shall know, Highness, but not now. I return to Chteauneuf on certain necessary businesses; to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti's livery. Farewell!" He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus Tristran de Lonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. She went to her apartments, singing an inane song about the amorous and joyful time of spring when everything and everybody is happy,--
"El tems amoreus plein de joie, El tems o tote riens s'esgaie,--"
and burst into a sudden passion of tears. There were born every day, she reflected, such hosts of women-children, who were not princesses, and therefore compelled to marry detestable kings.
Dawn found her in the orchard. She was to remember that it was a cloudy morning, and that mist-tatters trailed from the more distant trees. In the slaty twilight the garden's verdure was lustreless, the grass and foliage were uniformly sombre save where dewdrops showed like beryls. Nowhere in the orchard was there absolute shadow, nowhere a vista unblurred; in the east, half-way between horizon and zenith, two belts of coppery light flared against the gray sky like embers swaddled by ashes. The birds were waking; there were occasional scurryings in tree-tops and outbursts of peevish twittering to attest as much; and presently came a singing, less musical than that of many a bird perhaps, but far more grateful to the girl who heard it, heart in mouth. A lute accompanied the song demurely.
Sang Alain:
"O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, Be not too obdurate to us who pray That this our transient grant of youth be spent In laughter as befits a holiday, From which the evening summons us away, From which to-morrow wakens us to strife And toil and grief and wisdom,--and to-day Grudge us not life!
"O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, Why need our elders trouble us at play? We know that very soon we shall repent The idle follies of our holiday, And being old, shall be as wise as they: But now we are not wise, and lute and fife Plead sweetlier than axioms,--so to-day Grudge us not life!
"O Madam Destiny, omnipotent, You have given us youth--and must we cast away The cup undrained and our one coin unspent Because our elders' beards and hearts are gray? They have forgotten that if we delay Death claps us on the shoulder, and with knife Or cord or fever flouts the prayer we pray-- 'Grudge us not life!'
"Madam, recall that in the sun we play But for an hour, then have the worm for wife, The tomb for habitation--and to-day Grudge us not life!"
Candor in these matters is best. Katharine scrambled into the crotch of the apple-tree. The dew pattered sharply about her, but the Princess was not in a mood to appraise discomfort.
"You came!" this harper said, transfigured; and then again, "You came!"
She breathed, "Yes."
So for a long time they stood looking at each other. She found adoration in his eyes and quailed before it; and in the man's mind not a grimy and mean incident of the past but marshalled to leer at his unworthiness: yet in that primitive garden the first man and woman, meeting, knew no sweeter terror.
It was by the minstrel that a familiar earth and the grating speech of earth were earlier regained. "The affair is of the suddenest," Alain observed, and he now swung the lute behind him. He indicated no intention of touching her, though he might easily have done so as he sat there exalted by the height of his horse. "A meteor arrives with more prelude. But Love is an arbitrary lord; desiring my heart, he has seized it, and accordingly I would now brave hell to come to you, and finding you there, would esteem hell a pleasure-garden. I have already made my prayer to Destiny that she concede me love. Now of God, our Father and Master, I entreat quick death if I am not to win you. For, God willing, I shall come to you again, even if in order to do this I have to split the world like a rotten orange."
"Madness! Oh, brave, sweet madness!" Katharine said. "You are a minstrel and I am a king's daughter."
"Is it madness? Why, then, I think sane persons are to be commiserated. And indeed I spy in all this some design. Across half the earth I came to you, led by a fox. Hey, God's face!" Alain swore; "the foxes which Samson, that old sinewy captain, loosed among the corn of heathenry kindled no disputation such as this fox has set afoot. That was an affair of standing corn and olives spoilt, a bushel or so of disaster; now poised kingdoms topple on the brink of ruin. There
