PAGE 5
The Satraps
by
The tale tells that Maudelain went toward the little garden he knew so well which adjoined Dame Anne’s apartments. He found the Queen there, alone, as nowadays she was for the most part, and he paused to wonder at her bright and singular beauty. How vaguely odd it was, he reflected, too, how alien in its effect to that of any other woman in sturdy England, and how associable it was, somehow, with every wild and gracious denizen of the woods which blossomed yonder.
In this place the world was all sunlight, temperate but undiluted. They had met in a wide, unshaded plot of grass, too short to ripple, which everywhere glowed steadily, like a gem. Right and left birds sang as in a contest. The sky was cloudless, a faint and radiant blue throughout, save where the sun stayed as yet in the zenith, so that the Queen’s brows cast honey-colored shadows upon either cheek. The priest was greatly troubled by the proud and heatless brilliancies, the shrill joys, of every object within the radius of his senses.
She was splendidly clothed, in a kirtle of very bright green, tinted like the verdancy of young ferns in sunlight, and over all a gown of white, cut open on either side as far as the hips. This garment was embroidered with golden leopards and trimmed with ermine. About her yellow hair was a chaplet of gold, wherein emeralds glowed. Her blue eyes were as large and bright and changeable (he thought) as two oceans in midsummer; and Maudelain stood motionless and seemed to himself but to revere, as the Earl Ixion did, some bright and never stable wisp of cloud, while somehow all elation departed from him as water does from a wetted sponge compressed. He laughed discordantly; but within the moment his sun-lit face was still and glorious, like that of an image.
“Wait–! O my only friend–!” said Maudelain. Then in a level voice he told her all, unhurriedly and without any sensible emotion.
She had breathed once, with an aweful inhalation. She had screened her countenance from his gaze what while you might have counted fifty. More lately the lithe body of Dame Anne was alert, as one suddenly aroused from dreaming. “This means more war, for de Vere and Tressilian and de la Pole and Bramber and others of the barons know that the King’s fall signifies their ruin. Many thousands die to-morrow.”
He answered, “It means a brief and cruel war.”
“In that war the nobles will ride abroad with banners and gay surcoats, and kill and ravish in the pauses of their songs; while daily in that war the naked peasants will kill the one the other, without knowing why.”
His thought had forerun hers. “Many would die, but in the end I would be King, and the general happiness would rest at my disposal. The adventure of this world is wonderful, and it goes otherwise than under the strict tutelage of reason.”
“Not yours, but Gloucester’s and his barons’. Friend, they would set you on the throne to be their puppet and to move only as they pulled the strings. Thwart them and they will fling you aside, as the barons have dealt aforetime with every king that dared oppose them. Nay, they desire to live pleasantly, to have fish o’ Fridays, and white bread and the finest wine the whole year through, and there is not enough for all, say they. Can you alone contend against them? and conquer them? then only do I bid you reign.”
The sun had grown too bright, too merciless, but as always she drew the truth from him, even to his agony. “I cannot. I would not endure a fortnight. Heaven help us, nor you nor I nor any one may transform of any personal force this bitter time, this piercing, cruel day of frost and sun. Charity and Truth are excommunicate, and the King is only an adorned and fearful person who leads wolves toward their quarry, lest, lacking it, they turn and devour him. Everywhere the powerful labor to put one another out of worship, and each to stand the higher with the other’s corpse as his pedestal; and always Lechery and Hatred sway these proud and inconsiderate fools as winds blow at will the gay leaves of autumn. We but fight with gaudy shadows, we but aspire to overpass a mountain of unstable sand! We two alone of all the scuffling world! Oh, it is horrible, and I think that Satan plans the jest! We dream a while of refashioning this bleak universe, and we know that we alone can do it! and we are as demigods, you and I, in those gallant dreams! and at the end we can but poultice some dirty rascal!”