THE TENTH NOVEL.—KATHARINE OF VALOIS IS WON BY A
HUNTSMAN, AND LOVES HIM GREATLY; THEN FINDS HIM, TO
HER HORROR, AN IMPOSTOR; AND FOR A SUFFICIENT REASON
CONSENTS TO MARRY QUITE ANOTHER PERSON, AND
NOT ALL UNWILLINGLY.
In the year of grace 1417, about Martinmas (thus Nicolas begins), Queen Isabeau fled with her daughter the Lady Katharine to Chartres. There the Queen was met by the Duke of Burgundy, and these two laid their heads together to such good effect that presently they got back into Paris, and in its public places massacred some three thousand Armagnacs. This, however, is a matter which touches history; the root of our concernment is that when the Queen and the Duke rode off to attend to this butcher's business, the Lady Katharine was left behind in the Convent of Saint Scholastica, which then stood upon the outskirts of Chartres, in the bend of the Eure just south of that city. She dwelt a year in this well-ordered place.
There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint John the Baptist, the fine August morning that starts the tale. Katharine the Fair, men called her, with some show of reason. She was very tall, and slim as a rush. Her eyes were large and black, having an extreme lustre, like the gleam of undried ink—a lustre at odd times uncanny. Her abundant hair, too, was black, and to-day doubly sombre by contrast with the gold netting which confined it. Her mouth was scarlet, all curves, and her complexion famous for its brilliancy; only a precisian would have objected that she possessed the Valois nose, long and thin and somewhat unduly overhanging the mouth.
To-day as she came through the orchard, crimson-garbed, she paused with lifted eyebrows. Beyond the orchard wall there was a hodgepodge of noises, among which a nice ear might distinguish the clatter of hoofs, a yelping and scurrying, and a contention of soft bodies, and above all a man's voice commanding the turmoil. She was seventeen, so she climbed into the crotch of an apple-tree and peered over the wall.
He was in rusty brown and not unshabby; but her regard swept over this to his face, and there noted how his eyes were blue winter stars under the tumbled yellow hair, and the flash of his big teeth as he swore between them. He held a dead fox by the brush, which he was cutting off; two hounds, lank and wolfish, were scaling his huge body in frantic attempts to get at the carrion. A horse grazed close at hand.
So for a heart-beat she saw him. Then he flung the tailless body to the hounds, and in the act spied two black eyes peeping through the apple-leaves. He laughed, all mirth to the heels of him. 'Mademoiselle, I fear we have disturbed your devotions. But I had not heard that it was a Benedictine custom to rehearse aves in tree-tops.' Then, as she leaned forward, both elbows resting more comfortably upon the wall, and thereby disclosing her slim body among the foliage like a crimson flower green-calyxed: 'You are not a nun—Blood of God! you are the Princess Katharine!'
The nuns, her present guardians, would have declared the ensuing action horrific, for Katharine smiled frankly at him and demanded how he could be certain of this.
He answered slowly: 'I have seen your portrait. Hah, your portrait!' he jeered, head flung back and big teeth glinting in the sunlight. 'There is a painter who merits crucifixion.'
She considered this indicative of a cruel disposition, but also of a fine taste in the liberal arts. Aloud she stated:
'You are not a Frenchman, messire. I do not understand how you can have seen my portrait.'
The man stood for a moment twiddling the fox-brush. 'I am a harper, my Princess. I have visited the courts of many kings, though never that of France. I perceive I have been woefully unwise.'
This trenched upon insolence—the look of his eyes, indeed, carried it well past the frontier—but she found the statement interesting. Straightway she touched the kernel of those fear-blurred legends whispered about her cradle and now clamant.
'You have, then, seen the King of England?'
'Yes, Highness.'
'Is it true that he is an ogre—like Agrapard and Angoulaffre of the Broken Teeth?'
His gaze widened. 'I have heard a deal of scandal concerning the man. But never that.'
Katharine settled back, luxuriously, in the crotch of the apple-tree. 'Tell me about him.'
Composedly he sat down upon the grass and began to acquaint her with his knowledge and opinions concerning Henry, the fifth of that name to reign in England. Katharine punctuated his discourse with eager questionings, which are not absolutely to our purpose. In the main this harper thought the man now buffeting France a just king, and, the crown laid aside, he had heard Sire Henry to be sufficiently jovial and even prankish. The harper educed anecdotes. He considered that the King would manifestly take Rouen, which the insatiable man was now besieging. Was the King in treaty for the hand of the Infanta of Aragon? Yes, he undoubtedly was.
Katharine sighed her pity for this ill-starred woman. 'And now tell me about yourself.'
He was, it appeared, Alain Maquedonnieux, a harper by vocation, and by birth a native of Ireland. Beyond the fact that it was a savage kingdom adjoining Cataia, Katharine knew nothing of Ireland. The harper assured her of anterior misinformation, since the kings of England claimed Ireland as an appanage, though the Irish themselves were of two minds as to the justice of these pretensions; all in all, he considered that Ireland belonged to Saint Patrick, and that the holy man had never accredited a vicar.
'Doubtless, by the advice of God,' Alain said: 'for I have read in Master Roger de Wendover's Chronicles of how at the dread day of judgment all the Irish are to muster before the high and pious Patrick, as their liege lord and father in the spirit, and by him be conducted into the presence of God; and of how, by virtue of Saint Patrick's request, all the Irish will die seven years to an hour before the second coming of Christ, in order to give the blessed saint sufficient time to marshal his company, which is considerable.' Katharine admitted the convenience of this arrangement, as well as the neglect of her education. Alain gazed up at her for a long while, as in reflection, and presently said: 'Doubtless the Lady Heleine of Argos also was thus starry-eyed and found in books less diverting reading than in the faces of men.' It flooded Katharine's cheeks with a livelier hue, but did not vex her irretrievably; yet, had she chosen to read this man's face, the meaning was plain enough.
I give you the gist of their talk, and that in all conscience is trivial. But it was a day when one entered love's wardship with a splurge, not in more modern fashion venturing forward bit by bit, as though love were so much cold water. So they talked for a long while, with laughter mutually provoked and shared, with divers eloquent and dangerous pauses. The harper squatted upon the ground, the Princess leaned over the wall; but to all intent they sat together upon the loftiest turret of Paradise, and it was a full two hours before Katharine hinted at departure.
Alain rose, approaching the wall. 'To-morrow I ride for Milan to take service with Duke Filippo. I had broken my journey these three days past at Chateauneuf yonder, where this fox has been harrying my host's chickens. To- day I went out to slay him, and he led me, his murderer, to the fairest lady earth may boast. Do you not think this fox was a true Christian, my Princess?'
Katharine said: 'I lament his destruction. Farewell, Messire Alain! And since chance brought you hither —'
'Destiny brought me hither,' Alain affirmed, a mastering hunger in his eyes. 'Destiny has been kind; I shall make a prayer to her that she continue so.' But when Katharine demanded what this prayer would be, Alain shook his tawny head. 'Presently you shall know, Highness, but not now. I return to Chateauneuf on certain necessary businesses; to-morrow I set out at cockcrow for Milan and the Visconti's livery. Farewell!' He mounted and rode away in the golden August sunlight, the hounds frisking about him. The fox-brush was fastened in his hat. Thus Tristran de Leonois may have ridden a-hawking in drowned Cornwall, thus statelily and composedly, Katharine thought, gazing after him. She went to her apartments, singing,
