This was in the courtyard at Winstead. Roger Darke of Yaxham, the girl’s cousin, standing beside her, noted the gesture, and snarled.
“Think twice of it, Adelais,” said he.
Whereupon Mistress Vernon flushed like a peony. “I honor him,” she said, with some irrelevance, “and he loves me.”
Roger scoffed. “Love, love! O you piece of ice! You gray-stone saint! What do you know of love?” Master Darke caught both her hands in his. “Now, by Almighty God, our Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ!” he said, between his teeth, his eyes flaming; “I, Roger Darke, have offered you undefiled love and you have mocked at it. Ha, Tears of Mary! how I love you! And you mean to marry this man for his title! Do you not believe that I love you, Adelais?” he whimpered.
Gently she disengaged herself. This was of a pattern with Roger’s behavior any time during the past two years. “I suppose you do,” Adelais conceded, with the tiniest possible shrug. “Perhaps that is why I find you so insufferable.”
Afterward Mistress Vernon turned on her heel and left Master Darke. In his fluent invocation of Mahound and Termagaunt and other overseers of the damned he presently touched upon eloquence.
II
Comes One with Moly
Adelais came into the walled garden of Winstead, aflame now with autumnal scarlet and gold. She seated herself upon a semicircular marble bench, and laughed for no apparent reason, and contentedly waited what Dame Luck might send.
She was a comely maid, past argument or (as her lovers habitually complained) any adequate description. Circe, Colchian Medea, Viviane du Lac, were their favorite analogues; and what old romancers had fabled concerning these ladies they took to be the shadow of which Adelais Vernon was the substance. At times these rhapsodists might have supported their contention with a certain speciousness, such as was apparent today, for example, when against the garden’s hurly-burly of color, the prodigal blazes of scarlet and saffron and wine-yellow, the girl’s green gown glowed like an emerald, and her eyes, too, seemed emeralds, vivid, inscrutable, of a clear verdancy that was quite untinged with either blue or gray. Very black lashes shaded them. The long oval of her face (you might have objected), was of an absolute pallor, rarely quickening to a flush; but her petulant lips burned crimson, and her hair mimicked the dwindling radiance of the autumn sunlight and shamed it. All in all, the aspect of Adelais Vernon was, beyond any questioning, spiced with a sorcerous tang; say, the look of a young witch shrewd at love-potions, but ignorant of their flavor; yet before this the girl’s comeliness had stirred men’s hearts to madness, and the county boasted of it.
Presently Adelais lifted her small imperious head, and then again she smiled, for out of the depths of the garden, with an embellishment of diverse trills and roulades, came a man’s voice that carolled blithely.
Sang the voice:
“Had you lived when earth was new
What had bards of old to do
Save to sing in praise of you?“Had you lived in ancient days,
Adelais, sweet Adelais,
You had all the ancients’ praise—
You whose beauty would have won
Canticles of Solomon,
Had the sage Judean king
Gazed upon this goodliest thing
Earth of Heaven’s grace hath got.“Had you gladdened Greece, were not
All the nymphs of Greece forgot?“Had you trod Sicilian ways,
Adelais, sweet Adelais,“You had pilfered all their praise:
Bion and Theocritus
Had transmitted unto us
Honeyed harmonies to tell
Of your beauty’s miracle,
Delicate, desirable,
And their singing skill were bent
You-ward tenderly—content,
While the world slipped by, to gaze
On the grace of you, and praise
Sweet Adelais.”
Here the song ended, and a man, wheeling about the hedge, paused to regard her with adoring eyes. Adelais looked up at him, incredibly surprised by his coming.
This was the young Sieur d’Arnaye, Hugh Vernon’s prisoner, taken at Agincourt seven years earlier and held since then, by the King’s command, without ransom; for it was Henry’s policy to release none of the important French prisoners. Even on his deathbed he found time to admonish his brother, John of Bedford, that four of these—Charles d’Orleans and Jehan de Bourbon and Arthur de Rougemont and Fulke d’Arnaye—should never be set at liberty. “Lest,” as the King said, with a savor of prophecy, “more fire be kindled in one day than all your endeavors can quench in three.”
Presently the Sieur d’Arnaye sighed, rather ostentatiously; and Adelais laughed, and demanded the cause of his grief.
“Mademoiselle,” he said—his English had but a trace of accent—“I am afflicted with a very grave malady.”
“What is the name of this malady?” said she.
“They call it love, mademoiselle.”
Adelais laughed yet again and doubted if the disease were incurable. But Fulke d’Arnaye seated himself beside her and demonstrated that, in his case, it might not ever be healed.
“For it is true,” he observed, “that the ancient Scythians, who lived before the moon was made, were wont to cure this distemper by bloodletting under the ears; but your brother, mademoiselle, denies me access to all knives. And the leech Aelian avers that it may be cured by the herb agnea; but your brother, mademoiselle, will not permit that I go into the fields in search of this herb. And in Greece—hé, mademoiselle, I might easily be healed of my malady in Greece! For in Greece is the rock, Leucata Petra, from which a lover may leap and be cured; and the well of the Cyziceni, from which a lover may drink and be cured; and the river Selemnus, in which a lover may bathe and be cured: but your brother will not permit that I go to Greece. You have a very cruel brother, mademoiselle; seven long years, no less, he has penned me here like a starling in a cage.”
And Fulke d’Arnaye shook his head at her reproachfully.
Afterward he laughed. Always this Frenchman found something at which to laugh; Adelais could not remember in all
