The Fool (Bailey)/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
QUEST OF A QUEEN
THE Queen of France stood looking out by a lancet window, and in the green flat land spread like a carpet two hundred feet below saw neither house nor man. Behind her, her woman was huddled and stitched with blundering fingers. The Queen swept out and began to climb the winding stone stair of the tower. As she rose into the light and clean air, a spear was thrust before her, a man-at-arms barred her way to the walls. She bade him stand aside, but he neither answered nor moved. For a little while she stood there, then turned and went back to the room below. Her woman was crying. "Out, fool, out," the Queen said, and struck her and chose the window again. One hand wrestled with the other.
When she turned at last she found a fool sitting cross-legged on the floor at her side. She was a tall woman and strongly made. She looked down fierce and contemptuous at the little ill-shapen man, but he sat playing with the arms and legs of a naked doll and he bent over it so that his face was hidden under his red hood with its cock's comb and its ass's ears. She stirred him with her foot. "Peace be with you," said he in Latin, and tossed his head with a jingle of bells and smiled up at her.
"Death of God!" says she. "Who are you, knave?"
"If that I knew, no fool were I, but a fool I am so to know were to die."
"To the devil with your jingle. You are not my fool. Who sent you in his livery?"
"Sing soft, cousin Eleanor." He took from his scrip a sprig of broom yellow with blossom. "Are you learned, cousin? Do you speak Latin? Planta genesta here you see, and who wears that is lord of me. Do you know the land which smiles gold in spring?"
"Anjou!"
"You have said. Henry Plantagenet, Henry of Anjou, he is my lord and my brother, and I am Bran, his fool."
"The boy of Anjou," she said, and Bran laughed and her eyes blazed at him. "Aye, you mock me? I think I can teach you fear."
"Nenny, nenny, cousin. I know Fear. He wakes with me and sleeps with me, big brother Fear," and he plucked at her dress and fondled it. She was a beautiful woman.
"God guard me! Stand up, man, stand, never fawn on me. How are you come here?"
"Na, na, cousin. I am not here. Bran is not here. Here is only old Gillies, the Queen of France's fool. I am he, and he is on a journey or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awakened," he giggled. "As how, saith Cousin Queen. Why thus, sweet lady. Here is you, the Queen of France, which her saintly lord King Louis shuts into prison. For what? Nay, no man knows that."
"Have a care," says she through her teeth.
And again Bran laughed. "What should I care for, cousin? See then, here is you, a fair lady in her prime, held in a lonely castle and my lord your husband looks down his nose and goes to prayers and all the world whispers. What shall come of it, cousin Eleanor?"
"No good to the man that does me ill."
"Yea, yea. I can believe you," says he watching her, and indeed the reality of her proud face had a strange look of force. "Now, there is in Anjou a hearty knight which swears it were shame a lady fair should languish alone at the will of a saintly king"
"So he sends me a fool. Aye, a good, gallant knight is he."
"You say well who would say ill, and it needs a fool to do your will, so God save him who is Jack to your Jill. Prithee, cousin, no more of your words, for they are but wind out of emptiness. Thus it is. When holy King Louis sent after you your tirewoman and your cook and your fool there came a night when they lay in a tavern. And good man Gilles he fell a-drinking, and he was and he was not, and in his place was goodman Bran, as like him as a fool to a fool. And if your folks knew him they bit their tongues for fear he was a spy of godly King Louis. And the guards knew nothing, for no wise man knows a fool. And here am I with my head in my hand. Will you take it, cousin?"
"Why, God have mercy, fool, what should you do?"
"What the mouse did for the netted lion. Give me your hand, Eleanor."
"Why, then?" she said, but gave it.
"There is a man in me would kiss it," said he, and he held it to his cheek a moment and laughed and shuffled out.
The Queen sat smiling. She was comforted. She found her world had not passed away. Still she commanded the allegiance of men. Henry of Anjou would serve. The creature could be but a boy indeed, and she—she looked down at herself and laughed. Reason the more he should be her knight-errant. He would serve. The boy was heir to Normandy and England. With him to her champion there was trouble coming on good King Louis. Caution, caution. A boy with a name must still be a boy, and all turned on a boy's wit and a fool's. Who should trust them? Nay, let the worst fall, let them fail, they would make her a noise in the world and a tumult. She would not pine hidden away like a naughty nun bricked up in her cell. So she made out her choice, and night came and she ate and was put to bed and lay wakeful a long while. She woke with a hand on her head. "Cousin Eleanor," the fool said, "cousin Eleanor."
"Rogue," she grasped his hand.
"Woman," says he and laughed. "Well, woman, can you dress in the dark?"
"Why, then?"
"Because you must, cousin."
He heard a rustling, and in the midst of it, "You are the first that has said must to me and I did his will."
"And I am a fool," said Bran.
"I am dressed. What now?"
"Now I make light." He struck flint and steel and lit a candle and going to the window opened it and set the candle on the sill. "Stand behind me, cousin." He stood himself against the wall. After a moment there came a whizzing sound, the candle went out and fell with an odd faint rattle. Bran went on hands and knees groping across the room. He rose with an arrow in his hands to which was tied a light cord, and he hauled that in swiftly and after it came a rope. A moment he stood at the window listening to hear nothing. Then he knotted the rope about her waist. "Have no fear, cousin," he said, and he laughed. She climbed out of the window and slowly he let her down.
"God have mercy, God have mercy," he muttered. "The mother of what dooms hangs there!" and he made the rope fast and slid down after her.
She lit into the arms of a man who kissed her hand and cut the rope from her and throwing her across his shoulder made off swiftly, big woman as she was, down the hill-side. He said not a word and she asked him nothing. But when he stopped by a muster of horses and set her down, "It is a broad back that bears my fortunes," she said.
"It is Henry of Anjou, Lady Eleanor."
She came close to him in the darkness. "You have chosen?"
"I can hold you."
"Oh, my brother," Bran chuckled. "Oh Henry, my brother, the dark will not last and the light is the end of this play."
"Pardieu, the fool is the wisest here. Lady Eleanor, I have no men about me to make head against King Louis. It is mount and ride."
"All night and all day," she said. "But whither?" and Bran laughed.
"We make to safety first." Henry swung her to the saddle.
And all the rest of that night they rode on through the plain and halted in the dawn thirty miles away and slept then in a village of Touraine.
You see them meeting in the noon sunlight, the woman stately and schooled, the man jerking all his broad inches in his haste. She was the taller; there was the assurance of power in her dignity, and the regular composed beauty of her face spoke subtlety and passion. And he, with his bulk and his awkward restlessness, his red face and his big ungainly hands working, he looked a boor and a boy. But what she said was, "Heaven guard me! You are strong."
"You will need that, lady." His full grey eyes strove with hers.
"Na, na, brother,"—Bran stole round him and took his arm—"what Lady Eleanor needs, it is a fool. How, saith Henry. Why thus, brother? That she may feel wise."
Henry smiled at him, then swiftly the bold, wary eyes went back to hers. "Is the fool in the right, lady?"
"How should a man be right who risked his life for me?" She held out her hand: "Cousin fool, I owe you the ransom of my life."
Bran put her hand to his brow. "A thing that I had I never could keep, but all that I lack is mine in my sleep."
Her eyes lingered on him a moment. "Dream well," she said. "And now, my lord, what will you do with me?"
"I will hold you against the world. If"
"My lord, I have a husband."
"A husband? Well!" he shrugged.
"Holy saints, what do I know? I am hurried off to that accursed castle and guarded like a traitor and have speech of none. I am told nothing, not what King Louis intends with me, no word of what he has against me. Death of God, my lord, a felon is better entreated."
"They say King Louis is a holy man."
"And holy have I found him. Let him be what saint he will I am still his Queen."
"That is what irks His Holiness. He has called a Council of France to Beaugency to write him a divorce."
"The fox! Divorce me while I lie buried! What is the charge?"
"Faith, lady, you should guess that better than I."
"He has none, I tell you, none. It is why he hid me away."
"I believe it easily. God's blood, Lady Eleanor, the King is a coward."
"Yes, he is a coward. Me he always feared."
"A coward and a fool. Let him go. You are well rid of him."
"No. Louis is not a fool. Oh, this is a foul trick in him!"
"None so cunning as a saint. None so cleverly a fool. Why, let him shame himself and break himself. I will maintain your honour."
"You!" she looked him over. "Oh, boy! And yet not all a boy."
"Do you know me?" he laughed. "I promise you I will not fear you."
"Alas, poor me! A life indeed," she said very placidly. "You are a quick man, my lord Henry. You have never seen me till this morning's light. And now"
"That have I, Eleanor. I saw you ride into Orleans with King Louis in the spring. And I swore then you were not for him."
"Oh, a knight-errant! He will deliver me from the tyrant. Well, it is an honour. But after all, my lord, I am not only a king's wife. In mine own person I am something."
"The grandest beauty in the world, Eleanor."
"The Duchess of Aquitaine, my lord."
"I shall be Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy and King of England."
"Add Aquitaine to that," she clasped her hands, "and what a realm!" Then she laughed. "Oh, you calculate well."
For a moment he was abashed, but only a moment. "I am cold in counsel, lady, and hot in action. If it is well planned, it is not ill to do." He grasped her arm. "God's body, do you doubt I will fill your life for you?"
"I am cold in counsel, too," she said. "Look, my lord. If I go away with you to my lands or yours, there is King Louis arraigns me to his lords and I am held a guilty woman and shamed."
"Words!" Words! God's blood, are you afraid to do what you will?"
"Not I. And therefore to Beaugency I go and face King Louis."
"What, you cleave to that monk still?"
"I am a woman, Henry. And I think it is what you cannot understand."
"Women were made for men, Eleanor."
She laughed and he stood glowering at her. And Bran began to sing: "The ass for the thistle and the thistle for the ass, and you and I we shall grow in the grass, and feed the beasts whereon we fed, for all that is living lives on the dead, and so this world it comes to pass, you are born of a lass, with alas and alas, and you die with alas and alack the day!" So Bran chanted as he sat cross-legged on the ground looking from one to the other with a twisted smile, and he shook his head at Henry. "Nenny, nenny, brother, we mean naught, neither you nor I."
"Well, I will ride with you to Beaugency, lady," Henry said.
"No, my lord. That writes me guilty with you. I go alone."
His face darkened. "God's blood go, and the devil go with you."
"Na, na, cousin Eleanor. Take the fool instead. Take poor Bran. He is the better man."
"What now?" Henry turned on him.
"When a fool is a fool there is no now but to-morrow."
"Ride with me, good fellow," the Queen said.
"Pardieu, you will be well matched." Henry broke into the loud short laugh which she hated already. Bran looked at him wistfully but he strode away.