The Lady Esclaramonde held a little court upon the gallery. Leaning against a pillar and playing with her fan, she summoned this lord and that from the throng of knights now mingled with the brilliant swarm of women, and gave each a few gracious moments of her sunshine ere she dismissed him from her side. Count Ernault had his turn, and the flash of their glances was always alive with intimate memories. Jaufre de Brabant came and Guy de Hainault, and pompous Andronicus Palæologus and the others; none was forgotten; each beamed with the conviction that the duchess preferred him above his fellows. The last that Esclaramonde called to her was Fernand Ximenes, and when the Spaniard was by her side she turned to look into the court-yard, and he following her example, none could hear their speech.
"You have not been brisk to wish me felicity," the duchess complained.
Ximenes shrugged his shoulders.
"I do not think you have made a good shot for fortune," he answered, frankly. "The boy is a fool, and you might have had a man for a master."
The duchess's eyes mocked him under lowered lids, and she patted his hands with her fan.
"Such an one as a certain soldier of fortune?" questioned Esclaramonde. "But I believe I do not desire a master, and, besides, this boy-fool will be Duke of Athens, whereas--"
She left her sentence unfinished, provocatively. Ximenes stared impassive into her defiant face.
"I say you have made a bad shot," he replied, firmly. "You might have chosen better; but I dare say you will be content enough, and, indeed, I hope so."
And with that he bowed very stately and left her, knowing well that his words would rankle uncomfortably. Which indeed they did, for the duchess bit her lip and picked at her fan, brooding over troublous fancies. She thought as well of Ximenes as it was possible for her to think well of any one, and she knew that she held her betrothed by lies and guile. But she had always desired to win him since the first time that her eyes had entreated and his eyes had denied, and it seemed to her a great thing to conquer his scorn. While she stood thus moody there was a flutter among the women a-nigh, and then knights and ladies made a lane down which came the burly Duke Baldwin arm in arm with his son.
Duke Baldwin, sturdy soldier of fortune, with bright eyes ever fixed on the main chance, was all for keeping the young couple together. Enthusiastic about the match, he had confided to his intimates that he thought it the most sensible act his son had ever undertaken, far more sensible than he could have hoped for from a youth who wasted precious living-time in the reading of foolish books. But if Duke Baldwin understood and approved of the alliance, he did not altogether understand or approve of the conduct of his son on the preceding day. In the duchess's company Rainouart appeared to be the very proper image of a perfect knightly worshipper; he had no eyes but for his lady, and his voice echoed with a fair show of passion the endearments of which the duchess was amiably prodigal. But apart from her the youth seemed, in his father's words, to mope. He walked apart with head bent like a scholar pursuing some tangled thread of thought rather than like a soldierly lover hugging his heart at the capture of a fair prize.
This was not an attitude Duke Baldwin admired. Love-making with him was a brisk business, alien from melancholy, sunning itself lustily in the company of the beloved; and as Rainouart seemed to stand in shadow when alone, Duke Baldwin made it his business to see that he should sun himself as much as possible in the duchess's company until the marriage ceremony was over and Thebes and Athens indissolubly linked. So it was that but now having found his son walking apart in a quiet colonnade, Duke Baldwin had rated him for a sluggard lover, had thrust a strong arm within his, and haled him neither willing nor unwilling to the great gallery where he knew that he should find the duchess.
That conduct in the son which had so perplexed the father had not escaped the notice of those knights who were the nearest companions of the prince. These thought him changed, thought his meditative moods strange; but for the most part they set it down playfully to moon-calfishness. "It is the young candle burning overhotly with its first love, and guttering with every draught of fancy," was the comment of Jaufre de Brabant. Guy de Hainault, more sympathetic, if not less cynical, had his doubts, and tried to answer them with friendly questions to which he got no satisfactory answers. Certainly he saw that the prince when in her presence seemed devoted to his imperious mistress, walked loyally by her side, listened reverently to her speech, and seemed to thrill at her frequent caresses. Yet Guy de Hainault said to Count Ernault, who bade him keep his thoughts to himself, that to his eyes the young prince seemed more like a man in a dream than a man in love, and Guy de Hainault had dreamed enough and loved enough to speak with authority.
On one point there was no quarrel: there certainly was no doubt of the duchess's free and full devotion to her lover. She had not even for form's sake made any diffident protest against so swift a wedding, the swiftness whereof came so largely from her own suggestion. Indeed, it seemed as if with shining eyes and sugared tongue she spurred her young lord to protestations and entreaties. The court, for the most part, however, entered into no niceties of discrimination between the conduct of the youth and the lady. It sufficed for those jolly spirits, male and female, that there was to be a wedding, for a wedding meant festivals, and the sight of a wedding, too, had a way of spurring laggard gentlemen into proposals and prompting ladies that would be coy to come to directer terms. Wedding calls for wedding, as blood is said to call for blood.
The genial duke made his way with his son through the rapidly formed alley of retiring lords and ladies to the place where Esclaramonde leaned against a pillar of the gallery and fanned herself languidly, watching their advance with bright eyes.
"Here," said the duke, cheerfully, "is one who would not be denied to come to your presence for all that I could do to occupy him with other matters."
He gently urged Rainouart forward as he spoke, and Rainouart, under the influence of the eyes of Esclaramonde, moved with what seemed to the spectators a lover's eagerness to greet her. The duke smiled a vast smile on all around him.
"I was like that once," he said, with a leer, pinching the chin of the nearest pretty woman and clipping another round the waist. "Come, friends, come; let us leave the young people to themselves. They have little time for courting and must make the most of it." And so with a laughing baggage under each arm Baldwin led the way from the gallery followed obediently by a merry retinue of knights and ladies. The place was swiftly quiet that had been so lively, and for the moment Esclaramonde and Rainouart were left alone. It was, indeed, to be their last occasion for wooing in solitude. The day was all laid out: first the tournament, then the wedding ceremony, then the banquet; the next time this pair were to meet alone it was to be as man and wife. The youth and the woman leaned over the balcony looking down into the almost deserted court-yard. Neither heeded how in a corner, wellnigh concealed from view by an ancient image, a shepherd was standing with a sturdy fellow by his side. Indeed, there was little need to heed, for but a moment after the princely pair were left together the shepherd lad had touched the soldier on the arm, and the two passed quietly out of the court-yard and went their way together in the direction of the tilting-field. When they were gone, Rainouart, who had neither noticed their presence nor their departure, still kept silence for a while, but it was with a strained silence of one who seeks to remember what it was that brought him to the place where he stands. The duchess was silent for a while, with the serenity of one who triumphs and wears her triumph with delight. So a few seconds sped, and then Esclaramonde placed her hand on the hand of her companion where it rested on the marble, and Rainouart's flesh and blood tingled in response to the warm clasp.
"Dear lord," she said, with that caressing voice which always ran like kindly fire over the nerves of those she sought to conquer--"dear lord, your father reminds us that we stand alone as lovers for the last time. You are happy, dear lord?"
Though her words had the form of a question, something in their utterance seemed to sound like a command. The prince turned to her as if he obeyed a summons, and fixed his eyes upon her face--eyes at first indifferent, but which began to glow ardent from the moment that they met her gaze. He put his hand to his forehead and brushed away his hair as a man does who seeks to dissipate perplexing thoughts. It seemed to him as if he had lost his way in the rose-garden; as if, though his heart were still the quivering target for the shafts of love, the living presence of the god were veiled and his voice obscure; as if the noble rose were still afar. He sought in vain to frame the face of Esclaramonde with the mystic petals. But her words sounded imperious and sweet in the halls of his ears, and he took them for the behests of love.
"Surely I am happy," he answered, and the duchess smiled at his speech.
"You love me very much?" she said again, and again her voice was blended with the two notes of interrogation and command.
"Surely I love you very much," he answered again, still in the same smooth, measured manner. It was not very ardent, but it seemed to satisfy the duchess that she could make him say what she pleased.
"When we meet again," she murmured, "you will be the hero of the tournament, yet I think you peril your fame and jeopardize your judgment to proclaim me most fair."
Her words and her eyes stimulated him to the measure of her intention.
"Are you not most fair?" he asked, wonderingly, and his look was compelled admiration and his voice paid the demanded homage.
The duchess smiled provocatively.
"Some have said so, and I smiled at their little wit, but when you assert it my fond heart leaps to believe what my honest mirror denies."
She held out both her hands as she spoke, and Rainouart caught them in his own obediently. It seemed rather that she drew him nearer to her than that he drew her nearer to him.
"The mirror were wicked crystal that showed you other than most fair," he declared, "but there is no such lying glass in the world."
The duchess shook her head, and a cherub wind that was playing along the gallery caught a free lock of her dark hair and blew the tresses against his cheeks, and his cheeks burned.
"I should be proud," she said, "to count myself fair for your sake, for you are the fairest of men and the bravest."
Even while she spoke her spirit seemed to laugh within her, for she remembered to whom she had last said those words, and she wondered to whom she would say them next. But the prince's eyes glowed as if with the exaltation of strong wine.
"Your words are sweet to hear," he vowed. "I will do my best endeavor to merit some little of their grace."
She bent her head forward as if to kiss him on the lips. There was no one to see her--at least no one that counted; no page or servant loitering in the court-yard mattered, and even before a larger audience the duchess would scarcely have denied herself. But even as Rainouart waited for her kiss the quiet of the noontime was broken by the shrill call of a clarion, the call that warned all knights to hasten to the lists and make them ready for the tournament. Rainouart stooped and kissed the white hand of the duchess.
"Farewell, fair lady," he said; "I must go to my tent."
"I will watch your triumph from the gallery," Esclaramonde said, and he turned and left her with no other word, and went down the stairway into the court-yard.
Esclaramonde waited a little while, watching him depart and thinking Thessalian thoughts. He was under her spell; he had forgotten what she willed him to forget; he should never remember while she was by his side. That he was only her lover through the make-believe of her philtres and her will troubled her nothing. He was her lover, comely and young, and she saw herself Duchess of Athens, and her heart leaped and she laughed at times. When Rainouart was out of sight and she was tired of her thoughts, she turned to the far end of the gallery, where her immediate women waited, and summoned them with a gesture to follow her to her appointed pavilion by the lists.
