“Go on,” the King said presently.
“Afterward you took a fancy to reign in France. You learned then that we Brabanters are a frugal people: Madame Philippa was wealthy when she married you, and twenty years had quadrupled her private fortune. She gave you every penny of it that you might fit out this expedition; now her very crown is in pawn at Ghent. In fine, the love of Madame Philippa gave you France as lightly as one might bestow a toy upon a child who whined for it.”
The King fiercely said, “Go on.”
“Eh, sire, I intend to. You left England undefended that you might posture a little in the eyes of Europe. And meanwhile a woman preserves England, a woman gives you Scotland as a gift, and in return asks nothing—God have mercy on us!—save that you nightly chafe your feet with a bit of woollen. You hear of it—and inquire, ‘Where is Madame de Salisbury?’ Here beyond doubt is the cock of Aesop’s fable,” snarled John Copeland, “who unearthed a gem and grumbled that his diamond was not a grain of corn.”
“You shall be hanged at dawn,” the King replied. “Meanwhile spit out your venom.”
“I say to you, then,” John Copeland continued, “that today you are master of Europe. I say to you that, but for this woman whom for twenty years you have neglected, you would today be mouldering in some pauper’s grave. Eh, without question, you most magnanimously loved that shrew of Salisbury! because you fancied the color of her eyes, Sire Edward, and admired the angle between her nose and her forehead. Minstrels unborn will sing of this great love of yours. Meantime I say to you”—now the man’s rage was monstrous—“I say to you, go home to your too-tedious wife, the source of all your glory! sit at her feet! and let her teach you what love is!” He flung away the dagger. “There you have the truth. Now summon your attendants, my très beau sire, and have me hanged.”
The King made no movement. “You have been bold—” he said at last.
“But you have been far bolder, sire. For twenty years you have dared to flout that love which is God’s noblest heritage to His children.”
King Edward sat in meditation for a long while. The squinting of his left eye was now very noticeable. “I consider my wife’s clerk,” he drily said, “to discourse of love in somewhat too much the tone of a lover.” And a flush was his reward.
But when this Copeland spoke he was like one transfigured. His voice was grave and very tender, and he said:
“As the fish have their life in the waters, so I have and always shall have mine in love. Love made me choose and dare to emulate a lady, long ago, through whom I live contented, without expecting any other good. Her purity is so inestimable that I cannot say whether I derive more pride or sorrow from its preeminence. She does not love me, and she will never love me. She would condemn me to be hewed in fragments sooner than permit her husband’s finger to be injured. Yet she surpasses all others so utterly that I would rather hunger in her presence than enjoy from another all which a lover can devise.”
Sire Edward stroked the table through this while, with an inverted pen. He cleared his throat. He said, half-fretfully:
“Now, by the Face! it is not given every man to love precisely in this troubadourish fashion. Even the most generous person cannot render to love any more than that person happens to possess. I have read in an old tale how the devil sat upon a cathedral spire and white doves flew about him. Monks came and told him to begone. ‘Do not the spires show you, O son of darkness’ they clamored, ‘that the place is holy?’ And Satan (in this old tale) replied that these spires were capable of various interpretations. I speak of symbols, John. Yet I also have loved, in my own fashion—and, it would seem, I win the same reward as you.”
The King said more lately: “And so she is at Stirling now? hobnob with my armed enemies, and cajoling that red lecher Robert Stewart?” He laughed, not overpleasantly. “Eh, yes, it needed a bold person to bring all your tidings! But you Brabanters are a very thoroughgoing people.”
The King rose and flung back his high head. “John, the loyal service you have done us and our esteem for your valor are so great that they may well serve you as an excuse. May shame fall on those who bear you any ill-will! You will now return home, and take your prisoner, the King of Scotland, and deliver him to my wife, to do with as she may elect. You will convey to her my entreaty—not my orders, John—that she come to me here at Calais. As remuneration for this evening’s insolence, I assign lands as near your house as you can choose them to the value of £500 a year for you and for your heirs.”
You must know that John Copeland fell upon his knees before King Edward. “Sire—” he stammered.
But the King raised him. “No, no,” he said, “you are the better man. Were there any equity in fate, John Copeland, your lady had loved you, not me. As it is, I must strive to prove not altogether unworthy of my fortune. But I make no large promises,” he added, squinting horribly, “because the most generous person cannot render to love any more than that person happens to possess. So be off with you, John Copeland—go, my squire, and bring me back my Queen!”
Presently he heard John Copeland singing without. And through that instant, they say, his youth returned to Edward Plantagenet, and all the scents and shadows and faint sounds of Valenciennes on that ancient night when a tall girl came
