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Presently was mingled with the bird’s descant low singing of another kind. Beyond the yew-hedge as these two stood silent, breast to breast, passed young Jehan Kuypelant, the Brabant page, fitting to the accompaniment of a lute his paraphrase of the song which Archilochus of Sicyon very anciently made in honor of Venus Melaenis, the tender Venus of the Dark.

At a gap in the hedge the Brabanter paused. His melody was hastily gulped. You saw, while these two stood heart hammering against heart, his lean face silvered by the moonlight, his mouth a tiny abyss. Followed the beat of lessening footsteps, while the nightingale improvised his envoi.

But earlier Jehan Kuypelant also had sung, as though in rivalry with the bird.

Sang Jehan Kuypelant:

“Hearken and heed, Melaenis!
For all that the litany ceased
When Time had taken the victim,
And flouted thy pale-lipped priest,
And set astir in the temple
Where burned the fire of thy shrine
The owls and wolves of the desert–
Yet hearken, (the issue is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!

“For I have followed, nor faltered–
Adrift in a land of dreams
Where laughter and loving and wonder
Contend as a clamor of streams,
I have seen and adored the Sidonian,
Implacable, fair and divine–
And bending low, have implored thee
To hearken, (the issue is thine!)
And let the heart of Atys,
At last, at last, be mine!”

It is time, however, that we quit this subject and speak of other matters. Just twenty years later, on one August day in the year of grace 1346, Master John Copeland–as men now called the Brabant page, now secretary to the Queen of England–brought his mistress the unhandsome tidings that David Bruce had invaded her realm with forty thousand Scots to back him. The Brabanter found the Queen in company with the kingdom’s arbitress–Dame Catherine de Salisbury, whom King Edward, third of that name to reign in Britain, and now warring in France, very notoriously adored and obeyed.

This king, indeed, had been despatched into France chiefly, they narrate, to release the Countess’ husband, William de Montacute, from the French prison of the Chatelet. You may appraise her dominion by this fact: chaste and shrewd, she had denied all to King Edward, and in consequence he could deny her nothing; so she sent him to fetch back her husband, whom she almost loved. That armament had sailed from Southampton on Saint George’s day.

These two women, then, shared the Brabanter’s execrable news. Already Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham were the broken meats of King David.

The Countess presently exclaimed: “Let me pass, sir! My place is not here.”

Philippa said, half hopefully, “Do you forsake Sire Edward, Catherine?”

“Madame and Queen,” the Countess answered, “in this world every man must scratch his own back. My lord has entrusted to me his castle of Wark, his fiefs in Northumberland. These, I hear, are being laid waste. Were there a thousand men-at-arms left in England I would say fight. As it is, our men are yonder in France and the island is defenceless. Accordingly I ride for the north to make what terms I may with the King of Scots.”

Now you might have seen the Queen’s eyes flame. “Undoubtedly,” said she, “in her lord’s absence it is the wife’s part to defend his belongings. And my lord’s fief is England. I bid you God-speed, Catherine.” And when the Countess was gone, Philippa turned, her round face all flushed. “She betrays him! she compounds with the Scot! Mother of Christ, let me not fail!”

“A ship must be despatched to bid Sire Edward return,” said the secretary. “Otherwise all England is lost.”