Duke Baldwin had devoted the fairest rooms in his palace to the Duchess Esclaramonde of Thebes before her arrival, when he thought of her only as a visitor whom he might--and the rumors of her encouraged the thought--persuade with no great pains to an intimacy of friendship. The best part of the left wing of the palace was consecrated to her use, and its spacious rooms that looked upon the plain of Athens were furnished and adorned in the most noble manner that the age could compass. Duke Baldwin loved to be prodigal of pleasures to others when the prodigality enforced an almost aching sense of gratitude, and probably any woman in the world, with the exception of the Lady Esclaramonde, would have felt at least a little grateful to Duke Baldwin. All that gold and silver and bronze and ivory and ebony and silks and furs and jewels could lend to make her rooms a little paradise of luxury had been done under the duke's orders by those who knew better than the burly duke how to grace the haven of a fair dame. Money that would have paid twice over the outstanding demands of the Catalan Grand Company had been squandered with a free hand to make a fitting background for the imperious beauty of the lady of Thebes. In fulsome compliment that might have been flagrant irony, the mosaic walls were hung with exquisite arras, upon which the cunning hands of many craftsmen had woven amorous images from every passionate tale of love.
All this the bluff duke had done, and done cheerfully, when his only thoughts concerning his comely visitor were of a personal nature. But when the duchess rode to his gates on that May evening, bearing his son's inanimate body with her, and, while that body still lay inanimate, told the lord of Athens that her troth was plighted to his son, Duke Baldwin's cheerfulness dwindled no whit. His palace hummed with ebullient compliance; he would have no lack of consolation, while his foolish son had done a wise thing unawares. So Duke Baldwin resigned without a sigh all thoughts of his fair Theban neighbor, save as a daughter-in-law, and chuckled inwardly at the little less than prophetic instinct which had led him to prepare so fair a nest for her homing. As for Esclaramonde, who had started upon her journey in a spirit of perfect willingness to entertain with complaisance any homage that the Duke of Athens might lay at her feet, she now readily dressed her temper to accept his paternal caresses, while she smiled significant appreciation of the duke's ostentatious care for her comfort.
On the evening of the day when the great tournament had been fought and won and lost, four of the duchess's favorite women, delicate dissolute minions, waited for their lady's coming in her dimly lit dwelling room. Amicia and Hildeletha, Yelette and Aveline, were huddled together in the alcove of the window, looking out upon the moonlit plain and listening to the sounds of revelry in the rooms below. They had left those rooms, they had left that revelry a little while agone, daintily flushed with wine, daintily prodigal of love-promises, that they might be sure that all was ready for their mistress when she rose from the royal feast. Now they were busy disentangling the imbroglio of their assignations, pitting lover against lover, and trying to remember times and places of meeting, lightly agreed to, and no less lightly forgotten or confused with other trysts.
It had been a wonderful day for the merry girls. There was the tournament in the morning with its unexpected end. Then there was the solemn ceremonial of marriage in the afternoon, when the Archbishop of Athens pronounced his benediction on the heir to the dukedom of Athens and the wondrous widow of Thebes. Then came the splendid banquet stretching through the hours. Now in a little while the bridal pair would be conducted in triumph to the duchess's apartments, and speedily thereafter Amicia and Hildeletha, Yelette and Aveline, would be free to pick their paths in pursuit of love. Meanwhile they babbled with bated breath of the duchess, and her old lord, and her many lovers, and of her fire-new groom who seemed to dwell in a dream even while he knelt at the altar. But they marvelled most over the stranger knight, the Prince of Eleusis, the victor of the lists, who came to the banquet habited in white and gold and sat between two of the fairest ladies of Duke Baldwin's court, and while he himself spoke little, listened to their chatter with a bright, indefinable smile. All the women, it seemed, thought him handsome as the day, and the men swore that he was a comely youth, and those that were nigh enough to see noted that he ate no food but fruit and drank no drink but water, and wondered how such meat could feed such vigor. Each of the gossip girls would have been glad to see the conqueror at still closer quarters, for their places at table were far from where he sat. They were experts in the points of men, and would fain have compared him with their immediate lovers. But they watched him closely, and thought that he seemed both merry and sad at the prattle of his companions, and they agreed that if Sir Rainouart kept his eyes ever upon the face of his bride, their Lady Esclaramonde shot many a glance of an admiration they knew well how to interpret at the grave face of the stranger. And therewith the talk swayed lightly back to their lady, the duchess, and the fair heads pressed together and the sweet voices chuckled over the echoes of many scandals.
Suddenly the sounds of revelry beneath them dwindled, and the minxes heard the swell of joyous music and the tread of marching feet. They sprang to their feet in haste, ready for obeisance, ready for service. The mirthful music and the marching feet came nearer and yet nearer, filling all the stairways and corridors with joyous noise. Then the great entrance door swung open, and a little cluster of golden pages entered bearing scented torches that flooded the room with yellow light. These in turn were followed by a train of fair maidens in white robes, who scattered white roses on the floor and sang to the music of a band of lutanists, the epithalamium which Sir Guy of Hainault had composed in honor of the bride and bridegroom. And this was the song they sang:
"Lo, the lovely pair are wed,
Making one
Gallantry and goodlihead,
Moon and Sun:
Now we bring the bride to bed,
Wedding done;
Flesh to flesh divinely led,
Bone to bone.
From the pillows where her head
Lay alone
Weary solitude has fled,
Wisely flown.
She must share her wine and bread,
Share her throne,
With the lover, dear and dread,
All her own,
Till the one for other dead
Maketh moan.
All is sung and all is said:
Loose her zone!"
As the last words of the song, the last notes of the music, sobbed away into silence, the singing maidens made a lane from the door like two lines of tall white lilies, and through the doorway adown the lane came Duke Baldwin in his bravery holding the Duchess Esclaramonde by the hand, while beneath the heavy tramp of the knight and the light tread of the lady the crushed white petals of the scattered roses suspired a haunting perfume sickly sweet. Even to the familiar cynical eyes of her women, Esclaramonde at that moment showed radiantly fair. Flattery had fanned her cheeks to their loveliest color; triumph had lighted her eyes with their brightest fire; passion mantled her body with its atmosphere of flame.
In an instant Rainouart followed, escorted by Count Ernault, and it seemed to the keen eyes of the dainty waiting-women that his bearing showed less mazed than of late, and that his look was keener than it had seemed since his misadventure in the wood. "Marriage will make a new man of our moon-calf," Yelette whispered into the ears of Aveline, with a sauciness that was partly resentful, for she remembered with a sting how, in spite of her allegiance to her mistress, she had wasted her witcheries on his indifference on the morrow of their arrival at his father's court. "We may have our turn yet," Aveline answered, mockingly, for she, too, was one of the tempters who had failed to tempt, in which particular the two girls from Thebes wore the same kind of shoes that were worn by every delectable dame of Duke Baldwin's court. Then "Hush," cried Hildeletha, as through the doorway thronged those who interested the damsels more than their predecessors.
These were the knights of the court and the knightly visitors--Sir Guy of Hainault, Sir Jaufre de Brabant, Sir Raymond of Provence, Sir Ambrose of Blois, and the rest of Duke Baldwin's chivalry; Andronicus Palæologus, Prince Demetrius of Epirus, and the other noble visitors, squiring and gallanting smiling women. After these came the leaders of the Catalan Grand Company, with Fernand Ximenes at their head, gravely insolent to the ladies they attended, watching the vivid scene with impassive faces, indifferent to the merrymaking of the man who owed them their pay, but not indifferent, with the keen eye of your practised bandit, to the delightful possibilities from the bandit's point of view, if only Athens were to sack. And so the great room filled with light and color and laughter, and through all and over all, immeshing all in slender threads of melody, ran the tender wailing of the lutes.
Duke Baldwin bowed the Duchess of Thebes to the high seat on the dais, and paid her some compliments at once florid and full blooded, which must have embarrassed a maiden, and at which the duchess, with no little difficulty recalling far earlier memories, affected embarrassment. Then the lord of Athens, suggesting that the young couple had liefer be left alone, reminded the assembly of brilliant men and beautiful women that supper was still towards, and so with many smiles and salutations and good wishes the bright company faded in music from the room. A glance and a gesture from Esclaramonde sent Amicia and Hildeletha, Yelette and Aveline, tripping at their heels, and so the bride and groom were left alone together, face to face in the place that swooned with the scent of trampled roses.
The man and woman stood opposite to each other for a while in silence, Esclaramonde thinking inscrutable thoughts, Rainouart gazing at her like a man who wakes from sleep-walking and wonders why he has come to such a spot and how. Esclaramonde was habited in a robe of many reds, subtly blended, for she wished through the richness of these shifting tints to recall some royal rose imperial in its wealth of crimson petals, yet still a tender pink at the core. Indeed, Rainouart thought of a rose as he looked at her: his thoughts had been all of roses since he saw her so clad at the ducal banquet, and because of the rose his heart was full of care and travail. While his senses spurred him to woo such voluptuous beauty, enigmatical memories cried out to him strange forest cries; it was as if soft voices were calling at his ears, asking, "Is this the rose of the guarded garden, is this the noble rose of the world?" But her witchery was potent over his wits; his spirit seemed tugged this way and that inexplicably; he was bewildered; he would and he would not. At last he found voice under the spell of those lamping eyes that lured his pulses, and he stretched out his hands to the wonderful woman.
"To my arms, fair wife!" he cried, and though his voice sounded unreal in his ears, as if it were an echo of speech whispered to him by other lips, it rang real enough in the ears of Esclaramonde, and almost she regretted for the space of half a second that she could not answer promptly to the call. But swiftly she thought of the golden apple, swiftly she remembered that her lord would be no less loving when the night was a little older, and his senses had rekindled from unremembered sleep. She lifted her hand for a moment as if to stay his vehement advance; then she moved to the table, where a golden beaker stood circled with golden goblets, and she saw that the beaker was brimmed with wine. Dexterously and unseen of Rainouart she drew from her girdle a tiny golden phial, jerked the contents into one of the goblets and slipped the phial out of sight. Then she poured two full cups of wine, and held out the treasonable cup in her white hand to her lover.
"Pledge our health and happiness," she said, and her voice and eyes commanded, though voice and eyes seemed only to entreat.
As a shaft of sunlight suddenly pierces a mist, so suddenly did Rainouart's promise to the Prince of Eleusis drive its dart through the dark web of desire that enveloped his mind. Through all the wedding ceremony, through all the later festival, overcrowed by the magic of Esclaramonde, he had forgotten that pledge to the knight who had conquered him. Now it lived again with the duchess's proffer and beat furiously at his heart. He took the cup from his bride's hands and looked eagerly into her eyes, luminous and cryptic as the eyes of a sphinx.
"To your health, Fidelity," he murmured, half in idolatry, half in irony, as he lifted the cup to his lips.
The words "feign to drink" now buzzed in his ears imperative, and he seemed to see that in the glance of Esclaramonde which accentuated their meaning. He carried the cup to the open window and looked out over the wide plain of Attica. He was conscious that the duchess was watching him curiously, and the words of the stranger knight seemed to scourge his numbed intelligence into vitality. Looking steadily at Esclaramonde, he tilted the cup, but no drop of the red wine rippled over his lips. Then he set down the cup on the window-ledge and moved towards his consort. "Feign to sleep" hummed in his ears, and he moved sluggishly, obedient to a will that proved stronger than the will of Thebes.
"Is not the night warm and heavy?" he asked, and his lips and his lids seemed drawn with desire of sleep. Turning towards the casement he pointed at the Athenian sky blazing with its myriad eyes. "The stars swoon and fall from heaven!" he cried. He moved towards her with a reeling gait. "Shall I catch you a handful," he gasped, and so, struggling towards her with out-stretched palms, he stumbled to the table and fell across it with his face between his arms, a seeming heap of sleeping flesh.
The duchess, who had sipped prettily at her cup while she watched him, now set the vessel down upon the table, and bending softly over Rainouart, touched him on the shoulder, and whispered his name to him, wooing. But Rainouart of Athens lay inanimate, making no sign, and the lady of Thebes smiled malignly.
"Sleep sound, my prince," she muttered, "and dream content, and wake fresh and credulous. My boy-lover is fairer than you, and he woos with a golden apple."
She turned away from her motionless lord, and took up a little golden lamp that stood burning on the table hard by the beaker of wine. Going to the open window, she leaned out into the blueness of the night, and held the lamp high above her head, and its tiny flame burned steadily in the still air. The enchanting beauty of the Athenian plain, steeped in moonlight and starlight, haunted by a million divine memories, said nothing to Esclaramonde. She was thinking only of a golden toy which she desired to own, and of a youth with golden hair whom she desired to kiss. After a little while she came back to the room and set down the lamp, and walked about slowly hither and thither as a cat walks, crooning to herself the burden of an ancient song:
"Dwelt a queen in Nineveh
(Take my heart, Semiramis),
Fairer than the dawn of day
In the strength of summer is;
Falser than the Moon of May
Mirrored in the black abyss
Of the stream by Nineveh,
Where the bodies drift and sway
Of the lords who loved amiss,
Of the drowned who died for this--
Once to hold a queen at play,
Once her crimson mouth to kiss;
Tigris bears them to the bay,
Far away from Nineveh
(Take my heart, Semiramis)."
