But the dying man who lay before them made as though to smile. “I charge you all to witness,” he faintly said, “how willingly I render to Caesar’s daughter that which was ever hers.”
Then Exton fretted, as if with a little trace of shame: “Who would have thought the rascal had remembered that first wife of his so long? Caesar’s daughter, saith he! and dares in extremis to pervert Holy Scripture like any Wycliffite! Well, he is as dead as that first Caesar now, and our gracious King, I think, will sleep the better for it. And yet—God only knows! for they are an odd race, even as he said—these men that have old Manuel’s blood in them.”
VIII
The Story of the Scabbard
“Ainsi il avait trouvé sa mie
Si belle qu’on put souhaiter.
N’avoit cure d’ailleurs plaider,
Fors qu’avec lui manoir et estre.
Bien est Amour puissant et maistre.”
The eighth novel.—Branwen of Wales gets a king’s love unwittingly, and in all innocence convinces him of the littleness of his kingdom; so that he besieges and in due course occupies another realm as yet unmapped.
In the year of grace 1400 (Nicolas begins) King Richard, the second monarch of that name to rule in England, wrenched his own existence, and nothing more, from the close wiles of his cousin, Harry of Derby, who was now sometimes called Henry of Lancaster, and sometimes Bolingbroke. The circumstances of this evasion having been recorded in the preceding tale, it suffices here to record that this Henry was presently crowned King of England in Richard’s place. All persons, saving only Owain Glyndwyr and Henry of Lancaster, believed King Richard dead at that period when Richard attended his own funeral, as a proceeding taking to the fancy, and, among many others, saw the body of Edward Maudelain interred with every regal ceremony in the chapel at Langley Bower. Then alone Sire Richard crossed the seas, and at thirty-three set out to inspect a transformed and gratefully untrammelling world wherein not a foot of land belonged to him.
Holland was the surname he assumed, the name of his half-brothers; and to detail his Asian wanderings would be tedious and unprofitable. But at the end of each four months would come to him a certain messenger from Glyndwyr, supposed by Richard to be the imp Orvendile, who notoriously ran every day around the world upon the Welshman’s business. It was in the Isle of Taprobane, where the pismires are as great as hounds, and mine and store the gold of which the inhabitants afterward rob them through a very cunning device, that this emissary brought the letter which read simply, “Now is England fit pasture for the White Hart.” Presently Richard Holland was in Wales, and then he rode to Sycharth.
There, after salutation, Glyndwyr gave an account of his long stewardship. It was a puzzling record of obscure and tireless machinations with which we have no immediate concern: in brief, the barons who had ousted King Log had been the very first to find their squinting King Stork intolerable; and Northumberland, Worcester, Douglas, Mortimer, and so on, were already pledged and in open revolt. “By the God I do not altogether serve,” Owain ended, “you have but to declare yourself, sire, and within the moment England is yours.”
Richard spoke with narrowed eyes. “You forget that while Henry of Lancaster lives no other man can ever hope to reign tranquilly in these islands. Come then! the hour strikes; and we will coax the devil for once in a way to serve God.”
“Oh, but there is a boundary appointed,” Glyndwyr moodily returned. “You, too, forget that in cold blood this Henry stabbed my best-loved son. But I do not forget this, and I have tried divers methods which we need not speak of—I who can at will corrupt the air, and cause sickness and storms, raise heavy mists, and create plagues and fires and shipwrecks; yet the life itself I cannot take. For there is a boundary appointed, sire, and beyond that frontier the Master of our Sabbaths cannot serve us even though he would.”
Richard crossed himself. “You horribly mistake my meaning. Your practices are your own affair, and in them I decline to dabble. I merely design to trap a tiger with his appropriate bait. For you have a fief at Caer Idion, I think?—Very well! I intend to herd your sheep there, for a week or two, after the honorable example of Apollo. It is your part to see that Henry knows I am living disguised and defenceless at Caer Idion.”
The gaunt Welshman chuckled. “Yes, squinting Henry of Lancaster would cross the world, much less the Severn, to make quite sure of Richard’s death. He would come in his own person with at most some twenty trustworthy followers. I will have a hundred there; and certain aging scores will then be settled in that place.” Glyndwyr meditated afterward, very evilly. “Sire,” he said without prelude, “I do not recognize Richard of Bordeaux. You have garnered much in travelling!”
“Why, look you,” Richard returned, “I have garnered so much that I do not greatly care whether this scheme succeed or no. With age I begin to contend even more indomitably that a wise man will consider nothing very seriously. You barons here believe it an affair of importance who may chance to be the King of England, say, this time next year; you take sides between Henry and me. I tell you frankly that neither of us, that no man in the world, by reason of innate limitations, can ever rule otherwise than abominably, or, ruling, can create anything save discord. Nor can I see how this matters either, since the discomfort of an ant-village is not, after all, a planet-wrecking disaster. No, Owain, if the planets do indeed sing together, it is, depend upon it, to the burden of ‘Fools
