They stood like effigies, lit by the broad, unsparing splendor of the morning, but again their kindling eyes had met, and again the man shuddered visibly, convulsed by a monstrous and repulsive joy. 'Decide! oh, decide very quickly, my only friend!' he wailed, 'for throughout I am all filth!'
Closer she drew to him and without hesitancy laid one hand on either shoulder. 'O my only friend!' she breathed, with red lax lips which were very near to his, 'throughout so many years I have ranked your friendship as the chief of all my honors! and I pray God with an entire heart that I may die so soon as I have done what I must do to-day!'
Almost did Edward Maudelain smile, but now his stiffening mouth could not complete the brave attempt. 'God save King Richard!' said the priest. 'For by the cowardice and greed and ignorance of little men were Salomon himself confounded, and by them is Hercules lightly unhorsed. Were I Leviathan, whose bones were long ago picked clean by pismires, I could perform nothing. Therefore do you pronounce my doom.'
'O King,' then said Dame Anne, 'I bid you go forever from the court and live forever a landless man, and friendless, and without even name. I bid you dare to cast aside all happiness and wealth and comfort and each common tie that even a pickpocket may boast, like tawdry and unworthy garments. In fine, I bid you dare be King and absolute, yet not of England—but of your own being, alike in motion and in thought and even in wish. This doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, since we are royal and God's satraps, you and I.'
Twice or thrice his dry lips moved before he spoke. He was aware of innumerable birds that carolled with a piercing and intolerable sweetness. 'O Queen!' he hoarsely said, 'O fellow satrap! Heaven has many fiefs. A fair province is wasted and accords no revenue. Therein waste beauty and a shrewd wit and an illimitable charity which of their pride go in fetters and achieve no increase. To-day the young King junkets with his flatterers, and but rarely thinks of England. You have that beauty in desire of which many and many a man would blithely enter hell, and the mere sight of which may well cause a man's voice to tremble as my voice trembles now, and in desire of which— But I tread afield! Of that beauty you have made no profit. O daughter of the Caesars, I bid you now gird either loin for an unlovely traffic. Old Legion must be fought with fire. True that the age is sick, that we may not cure, we can but salve the hurt—' Now had his hand torn open his sombre gown, and the man's bared breast shone in the sunlight, and everywhere heaved on it sleek and glittering beads of sweat. Twice he cried the Queen's name aloud, without prefix. In a while he said: 'I bid you weave incessantly such snares of brain and body as may lure King Richard to be swayed by you, until against his will you daily guide this shallow-hearted fool to some commendable action. I bid you live as other folk do hereabouts. Coax! beg! cheat! wheedle! lie!' he barked like a teased dog, 'till you achieve in part the task which is denied me. This doom I dare adjudge and to pronounce, since we are royal and God's satraps, you and I.'
She answered with a tiny, wordless sound. He prayed for even horror as he appraised his handiwork. But presently, 'I take my doom,' the Queen proudly said. 'I shall be lonely now, my only friend, and yet—it does not matter,' the Queen said, with a little shiver. 'No, nothing will ever greatly matter now, I think.'
Her eyes had filled with tears; she was unhappy, and as always this knowledge roused in Maudelain a sort of frenzied pity and a hatred, quite illogical, of all other things existent. She was unhappy, that only he realized; and half way he had strained a soft and groping hand toward his lips when he relinquished it. 'Nay, not even that,' said Edward Maudelain, very proudly, too, and now at last he smiled; 'since we are God's satraps, you and I.'
Afterward he stood thus for an appreciable silence, with ravenous eyes, motionless save that behind his back his fingers were bruising one another. Everywhere was this or that bright color and an incessant melody. It was unbearable. Then it was over; the ordered progress of all happenings was apparent, simple, and natural; and contentment came into his heart like a flight of linnets over level fields at dawn. He left her, and as he went he sang.
Sang Maudelain:
The Queen shivered in the glad sunlight. 'I am, it must be, pitiably weak,' she said at last, 'because I cannot sing as he does. And, since I am not very wise, were he to return even now— But he will not return. He will never return,' the Queen repeated, carefully, and over and over again. 'It is strange I cannot comprehend that he will never return! Ah, Mother of God!' she cried, with a steadier voice, 'grant that I may weep! nay, of thy infinite mercy let me presently find the heart to weep!' And about the Queen of England many birds sang joyously.
Next day the English barons held a council, and in the midst of it King Richard demanded to be told his age.
'Your Grace is in your twenty-second year,' said the uneasy Gloucester, and now with reason troubled, since he had been seeking all night long for the evanished Maudelain.
'Then I have been under tutors and governors longer than any other ward in my dominion. My lords, I thank you for your past services, but I need them no more.' They had no check handy, and Gloucester in particular foreread his death-warrant, but of necessity he shouted with the others, 'Hail, King of England!'
That afternoon the King's assumption of all royal responsibility was commemorated by a tournament, over which Dame Anne presided. Sixty of her ladies led as many knights by silver chains into the tilting-grounds at Smithfield, and it was remarked that the Queen appeared unusually mirthful. The King was in high good humor, already a pattern of conjugal devotion; and the royal pair retired at dusk to the Bishop of London's palace at Saint Paul's, where was held a merry banquet, with dancing both before and after supper.
VII
The Story of the Heritage
