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Sang Ysabeau:

“Man’s love hath many prompters,
But a woman’s love hath none;
And he may woo a nimble wit
Or hair that shames the sun,
Whilst she must pick of all one man
And ever brood thereon–
And for no reason,
And not rightly,–

“Save that the plan was foreordained
(More old than Chalcedon,
Or any tower of Tarshish
Or of gleaming Babylon),
That she must love unwillingly
And love till life be done,
He for a season,
And more lightly.”

So to Ordish in that twilight came the Countess of Farrington, with a retinue of twenty men-at-arms, and her brother Sir Gregory Darrell. Lord Berners received the party with boisterous hospitality.

“And the more for that your sister is a very handsome woman,” was Rosamund Eastney’s comment. The period appears to have been after supper, and she sat with Gregory Darrell in not the most brilliant corner of the main hall.

The wretched man leaned forward, bit his nether-lip, and then with a sudden splurge of speech informed her of the sorry masquerade. “The she-devil designs some horrible and obscure mischief, she plans I know not what.”

“Yet I–” said Rosamund. The girl had risen, and she continued with an odd inconsequence. “You have told me you were Pembroke’s squire when long ago he sailed for France to fetch this woman into England–“

“Which you never heard!” Lord Berners shouted at this point. “Jasper, a lute!” And then he halloaed, more lately, “Gregory, Madame de Farrington demands that racy song you made against Queen Ysabeau during your last visit.”

Thus did the Queen begin her holiday.

It was a handsome couple which came forward, hand quitting hand a shade too tardily, and the blinking eyes yet rapt; but these two were not overpleased at being disturbed, and the man in particular was troubled, as in reason he well might be, by the task assigned him.

“Is it, indeed, your will, my sister,” he said, “that I should sing–this song?”

“It is my will,” the Countess said.

And the knight flung back his comely head and laughed. “What I have written I shall not disown in any company. It is not, look you, of my own choice that I sing, my sister. Yet if she bade me would I sing this song as willingly before Queen Ysabeau, for, Christ aid me! the song is true.”

Sang Sir Gregory:

“Dame Ysabeau, la prophecie
Que li sage dit ne ment mie,
Que la royne sut ceus grever
Qui tantost laquais sot aymer–“

and so on. It was a lengthy ditty and in its wording not oversqueamish; the Queen’s career in England was detailed without any stuttering, and you would have found the catalogue unhandsome. Yet Sir Gregory sang it with an incisive gusto, though it seemed to him to countersign his death-warrant; and with the vigor that a mangled snake summons for its last hideous stroke, it seemed to Ysabeau regretful of an ancient spring.

Nicolas gives this ballad in full, but, and for obvious reasons, his translator would prefer to do otherwise.

Only the minstrel added, though Lord Berners did not notice it, a fire-new peroration.

Sang Sir Gregory:

“Ma voix mocque, mon cuer gemit–
Peu pense a ce que la voix dit,
Car me membre du temps jadis
Et d’ung garson, d’amour surpris,
Et d’une fille–et la vois si–
Et grandement suis esbahi.”

And when Darrell had ended, the Countess of Farrington, without speaking, swept her left hand toward her cheek and by pure chance caught between thumb and forefinger the autumn-numbed fly that had annoyed her. She drew the little dagger from her girdle and meditatively cut the buzzing thing in two. Then she flung the fragments from her, and resting the dagger’s point upon the arm of her chair, one forefinger upon the summit of the hilt, considerately twirled the brilliant weapon.