True, Richard, poor fool, must die. Squarely the priest faced that stark and hideous circumstance; to spare Richard was beyond his power, and the boy was his brother; yes, this oncoming King Edward would be a fratricide, and after death would be irrevocably damned. To burn, and eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the torment was eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of Richard’s ignoble life and of Edward’s inconsiderable soul, to win so many men to manhood was not a bargain to be refused.
The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden which adjoined Dame Anne’s apartments. He found the Queen there, alone, as nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused to wonder at her bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd was this beauty, he reflected, too; how alien in its effect to that of any other woman in sturdy England, and how associable it was, somehow, with every wild and gracious denizen of the woods which blossomed yonder.
In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but undiluted. They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short to ripple, which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and left, birds sang as if in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint and radiant blue throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the zenith, so that the Queen’s brows cast honey-colored shadows upon either cheek. The priest was greatly troubled by the proud and heatless brilliancies, the shrill joys, of every object within the radius of his senses.
She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, tinted like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and wore over all a gown of white, cut open on each side as far as the hips. This garment was embroidered with golden leopards and was trimmed with ermine. About her yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein emeralds glowed. Her blue eyes were as large and shining and changeable (he thought) as two oceans in midsummer; and Maudelain stood motionless and seemed to himself but to revere, as the Earl Ixion did, some bright unstable wisp of cloud, while somehow all elation departed from him as water does from a wetted sponge compressed. He laughed discordantly.
“Wait—! O my only friend—!” said Maudelain. Then in a level voice he told her all, unhurriedly and without any apparent emotion.
She had breathed once, with a deep inhalation. She had screened her countenance from his gaze the while you might have counted fifty. Presently she said: “This means more war, for de Vere and Tressilian and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons know that the King’s fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands die tomorrow.”
He answered, “It means a war which will make me King of England, and will make you my wife.”
“In that war the nobles will ride abroad with banners and gay surcoats, and will kill and ravish in the pauses of their songs; while daily in that war the naked peasants will kill the one the other, without knowing why.”
His thought had forerun hers. “Yes, some must die, so that in the end I may be King, and the general happiness may rest at my disposal. The adventure of this world is wonderful, and it goes otherwise than under the strict tutelage of reason.”
“It would not be yours, but Gloucester’s and his barons’. Friend, they would set you on the throne to be their puppet and to move only as they pulled the strings. Thwart them in their maraudings and they will fling you aside, as the barons have pulled down every king that dared oppose them. No, they desire to live pleasantly, to have fish on Fridays, and white bread and the finest wine the whole year through, and there is not enough for all, say they. Can you alone contend against them? and conquer them? for not unless you can do this may I dare bid you reign.”
The sun had grown too bright, too merciless, but as always she drew the truth from him. “I could not venture to oppose in anything the barons who supported my cause: for if I did, I would not endure a fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor I nor anyone may transform through any personal force this bitter world, this piercing, cruel place of frost and sun. Charity and Truth are excommunicate, and a king is only an adorned and fearful person who leads wolves toward their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and devour him. Everywhere the powerful labor to put one another out of worship, and each to stand the higher with the other’s corpse as his pedestal; and Lechery and Greed and Hatred sway these proud and inconsiderate fools as winds blow at will the gay leaves of autumn. We walk among shining vapors, we aspire to overpass a mountain of unstable sparkling sand! We two alone in all the scuffling world! Oh, it is horrible, and I think that Satan plans the jest! We dream for a while of refashioning this bright desolation, and know that we alone can do it! we are as demigods, you and I, in those gallant dreams! and at the end we can but poultice some dirty rascal!”
The Queen answered sadly: “Once and only once did God tread this tangible world, for a very little while, and, look you, to what trivial matters He devoted that brief space! Only to chat with fishermen, and to talk with light women, and to consort with rascals, and at last to die between two cutpurses, ignominiously! If Christ Himself achieved so little that seemed great and admirable, how should we two hope to do any more?”
He answered: “It is true. Of anise and of cumin
